The City And The Stars - Arthur C. Clarke [97]
They came cautiously down over a great level plain, so uniform that its flatness posed an immediate problem. The plain was bordered by higher ground, completely covered with trees whose height could only be guessed—they were so tightly packed, and so enmeshed with undergrowth, that their trunks were virtually buried. There were many winged creatures flying among their upper branches, though they moved so swiftly that it was impossible to tell whether they were animals or insects—or neither.
Here and there a forest giant had managed to climb a few scores of feet above its battling neighbours, who had formed a brief alliance to tear it down and destroy the advantage it had won. Despite the fact that this was a silent war, fought too slowly for the eye to see, the impression of merciless, implacable conflict was overwhelming.
The plain, by comparison, appeared placid and uneventful. It was flat, to within a few inches, right out to the horizon, and seemed to be covered with a thin, wiry grass. Though they descended to within fifty feet of it, there was no sign of any animal life, which Hilvar found somewhat surprising. Perhaps, he decided, it had been scared underground by their approach.
They hovered just above the plain while Alvin tried to convince Hilvar that it would be safe to open the airlock, and Hilvar patiently explained such conceptions as bacteria, fungi, viruses, and microbes—ideas which Alvin found hard to visualise, and harder still to apply to himself. The argument had been in progress for some minutes before they noticed a peculiar fact. The vision screen, which a moment ago had been showing the forest ahead of them, had now become blank.
‘Did you turn that off?’ said Hilvar, his mind, as usual, just one jump ahead of Alvin’s.
‘No,’ replied Alvin, a cold shiver running down his spine as he thought of the only explanation. ‘Did you turn it off?’ he asked the robot.
‘No,’ came the reply, echoing his own.
With a sigh of relief, Alvin dismissed the idea that the robot might have started to act of its own volition—that he might have a mechanical mutiny on his hands.
‘Then why is the screen blank?’ he asked.
‘The image receptors have been covered.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Alvin, forgetting for a moment that the robot would only act on definite orders or questions. He recovered himself quickly and asked:
‘What’s covered the receptors?’
‘I do not know.’
The literal-mindedness of robots could sometimes be as ex-asperating as the discursiveness of humans. Before Alvin could continue the interrogation, Hilvar interrupted.
‘Tell it to lift the ship,’ he said, and there was a note of urgency in his voice.
Alvin repeated the command. There was no sense of motion; there never was. Then, slowly, the image reformed on the vision screen, though for a moment it was blurred and distorted. But it showed enough to end the argument about landing.
The level plain was level no longer. A great bulge had formed immediately below them—a bulge which was ripped open at the top where the ship had torn free. Huge pseudo-pods were waving sluggishly across the gap, as if trying to recapture the prey that had just escaped from their clutches. As he stared in horrified fascination, Alvin caught a glimpse of a pulsing scarlet orifice, fringed with whip-like tentacles which were beating in unison, driving anything that came into their reach down into that gaping maw.
Foiled of its intended victim, the creature sank slowly into the ground—and it was then that Alvin realised that the plain below was merely the thin scum on the surface of a stagnant sea.
‘What was that—thing?’ he gasped.
‘I’d have to go down and study it before I could tell you that,’ Hilvar replied matter-of-factly. ‘It may have been some form of primitive animal—perhaps even a relative of our friend in Shalmirane. Certainly it was not intelligent, or it