column perhaps attaching him to the bean ... and this itching down below, in what seemed to be one doubled-up leg. He thrust again and again, rising higher each time. There was nothing else to do. He never felt tired. He never felt anything, except the itching.
*
Eventually he felt a slackening on the upward pressure. He had kicked with his one leg, risen and found no resistance. Warmth played over him and he uncurled his head. So he had a head.
Habit had accustomed him to seeing with his eyes, from one set focal point. It was some time before he found he could see, in a general way, from any point on his exposed surface.
He could even see parts of himself, where the edges doubled over. It was like being able to run round a large gallery on the top of a dome, looking out at the view—and yet being the entire dome. He was green! He looked down beneath him and saw a long green pillar, tubular and shiny, rising out of a brown background.
He could still feel the beating pressure down below. It struck him that he was a plant, growing from seed which presumably his liquified, atomized or dissolved body had provided, and emerging on the surface of a planet.
Immediately overhead a bright orange satellite swung through a brilliant yellow and white sky. Unless there were two suns here, this was no more than a satellite body, trapped in orbit, for he could feel the fierce beat on his surface from another source on the other side of the sky. This was a vast fiery globe traveling at immense speed.
He felt a vigorous thrusting inside his structure as he expanded. But darkness rushed up from the bottom of the pit in which he stood, and cloud came in to mask the sky.
The general inference was that he was on a very warm planet around which the bright orange satellite swung, and that both were circling the hot sun at a speed far exceeding that of Mercury. Naturally that was only a subjective impression. But the little he had seen did not suggest any system he had ever heard of. He curled up.
Each time the sun went past he grew further out toward the edge of the pit. He branched and clung to the earth with subsidiary tendrils. It was exactly as though he were clawing with fingers into the earth, except that he did not remove them but simply grew on past them. When he reached the top of the pit, and accustomed his seeing to the greater distances now before him, he saw a violently active world of fire and steam. The ultra-rapid rotation of this planet made day and night into the flickering of a primitive film. Mountains of earth were raised up, broke off and shattered. Remote volcanoes fizzed into action briefly like fireworks and faded, their tremendous display spent. Whole swamps heaved and moved with internal motion. He became big enough to be able to lose a side creeper without giving it a thought. He felt no pain.
There were advantages in being a plant, and particularly in being an apparently highly active creeper. He could see from any point in his enormous network. He could organize races between his outlying tendrils. He found that the orange satellite exerted quite a strong pull on his internal sap system, which was not unpleasant.
*
The first sign of life other than himself, oddly, came up from a neighboring pit.
It lay within the area he had grown over, but he had never bothered to send down shoots and side creepers into it. It was a peculiar sensation to recognize—Dr. Adelitka Wynn.
He sent out a sly root and detected that she was a bulb formation. Her indignation was transmitted violently along the ground, in a series of sharp shocks. She stood in tall sheaves of broad-bladed grass which rustled in the wind. He found it was intelligible, though of a different timbre than the deep, rough scraping he made with his own hairy leaves.
“Kindly keep to yourself,” she said in effect.
Her leaves had a high hissing note. He marveled that she had managed to retain the same unpleasant approach to life.
She was objectionable again when she had filled her pit and found she could not extend onto the flat earth beyond, because he had already covered the area.
“Come on,” he said. “We’ve got the whole world to ourselves.”
“I can’t,” she answered hissingly. “You have spikes on your stems. They’ll tear my leaves.”
He shut off the sap from a whole subsidiary system, killing it. She spread over his withered shoots and leaves without a sound of acknowledgment. They both developed toward the marshes.
As he approached, leaving her slower bulb-formation behind as he raced tendril ahead of tendril down the slope, he saw there were other forms of life, in the water.
He said nothing. But he quietly doubled his thorns and built up a reserve in his advance tendrils, so that he could rush an armored shoot across the ground at high speed if necessary. The aquatic life moved and died extremely fast. Whole species expanded from a single specimen, and for no visible reason extinguished themselves. Life on the planet did not seem to be stable. It was highly experimental. He had been down at the marsh for some time before the first crablike object came into existence and began to leave the water in fitful dashes. He gave it an early dose of his thorns. Thereafter it left him alone.
The former Dr. Adelitka Wynn, however, approached the marsh without looking.
He watched with satisfaction. She was a golden brown and tender green, and highly succulent apparently to the crab tribe. She cried for help.
They were, after all, the only two of human origin on the planet. So he put his reserve to work and sent an armored set of shoots racing across the ground as a barrier between her and the marsh. The crab tribes retreated.
“Thank you,” she said, regenerating her clipped stems.
“That’s the first time you’ve ever said that,” he said hoarsely.
“I’m sorry. I am ... really glad you’re here.”
“How glad?”
“This is a most peculiar world,” she said, changing the subject. “I don’t recognize it at all.”
He said nothing but sent out an advancing barrier of thorns to clear a small area of marsh for her. He performed small services with his roots and tendrils, levering apart her bulbs where they were in danger of rotting, brushing small insects off her leaves when they became established in colonies. His main trunk was now thicker than the body of a man, and he covered several miles. In the marsh, his shoots were thick and black, standing like dark fingers deep into the ooze. Out in the drier areas, which seemed to be spreading, he modified his system to conserve internal moisture. He grew fine multitudes of hairs against the heat and predatory insects. Dr. Adelitka Wynn covered several acres herself, surrounded by his thorn barriers.
*
When she felt well established, she flowered in great blue blossoms, heavy with orange pollen. He had been waiting, and flowered all along his immense length in every color of the spectrum, mile upon mile of wide flat flowers, open and ready for the breeze. She did not protest. He sent clouds of pollen from his anthers, turning the landscape into a fine mist that drifted over her. He covered her with several pounds of fine golden dust.
“Thank you,” she said.
He wondered whether she would produce a bulb like her or a young creeper like himself. He kept young tendrils hanging around her like a catcher’s glove, until she told him to go away and let her seed in peace.
