Eden Read Online Free PDF Page B

vegetable spiders grew fairly close together, but it was possible to pass between them. Here and there on the stalks were brighter offshoots, almost the color of Earth leaves, and they ended in closed buds. Once again the Doctor threw a pebble into the "abdomens" suspended twenty feet above the ground; when nothing happened, he examined one of the stalks and finally nicked it with his knife. Out came tiny drops, a bright-yellow sap that immediately began to foam, turning orange, red. In a few moments it coagulated to form a thick resin with an intense aromatic odor that they all liked at first but soon found sickening. Beneath this curious shrubbery it was a little cooler than on the plain.
    The plant abdomens offered shade, and there was more shade the deeper they went. They tried not to touch the stalks, and particularly the whitish buds at the ends of the youngest shoots, which aroused an unaccountable repugnance.
    The ground was soft, spongy, and gave off a vapor that made it difficult to breathe. The shadows of the abdomens passed across their faces and hands—now larger, now smaller. Some abdomens were slender with orange spikes; others were withered, faded, with long flaccid threads dangling from them. When a wind came up, the entire thicket emitted an unpleasant hollow rustling, not the sigh of an Earthly forest but a sound like that of sandpaper. At times individual plants blocked the way with intertwined branches, and the men had to go around. Thus they proceeded even more slowly than on the plain. After a while they stopped looking up at the thorny abdomens, stopped trying to see nests, cones, or cocoons in them.
    Suddenly the Doctor, who headed the column, noticed a thick black hair hanging before his face—a shiny thread, a painted wire. He was about to brush it aside with his hand, but since this was something new, he raised his eyes—and froze.
    A pearl-colored, bulbous thing hanging from the stalks that converged at the base of one of the "cocoons" was watching him. The Doctor felt its gaze even though he could not locate the monster's eyes. He saw no head, no limbs—only puffy skin filled with blebs, glistening, and a dark, funnel-shaped protuberance from which dangled a thick black hair six feet long.
    "What is it?" asked the Engineer, behind him. When the Doctor did not answer, he looked up and also froze.
    "What's it looking with?" whispered the Engineer, and instinctively backed away, such was the revulsion he felt for the creature, which seemed to be piercing him with a greedy, extraordinarily intense gaze—though no eyes were visible.
    "Disgusting!" the Chemist hissed. They were now all standing beside the Doctor, who had been the first to retreat from under the monster—the others stood as far away as the stalks allowed. The Doctor produced the oxidized cylinder from his suit, aimed it slowly at the swollen body, which was lighter than the vegetation surrounding it, and pressed the trigger.
    In the next second a great deal happened. First there was a flash that blinded them all except the Doctor, who blinked at that exact moment. A thin stream was still squirting upward when the stalks began sagging, collapsing. A puff of black vapor enveloped the men, and the creature fell with a heavy, wet smack. It lay helpless for perhaps a second, like a gray, rough balloon deflating. The black hair alone danced and whipped above it like a mad thing, cleaving the air in lightning-fast convulsions. Then the hair disappeared, and shapeless pieces of the creature began to crawl like snails in all directions on the spongy moss at their feet. Before any of the men could say or do anything, the creature's escape—or dispersal—was completed: its last pieces, as small as caterpillars, burrowed into the soil beneath the stalks and were gone. All that remained was a nasty acrid smell.
    "A colony of some kind…?" the Chemist asked uncertainly. He pressed his hand to his eyes, still seeing black spots.
    "E pluribus