Grove of the Unborn Read online

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  _Glamorous Lyn Venable of Dallas, Texas, makes a first appearance in these pages (but by no means her first appearance in this field), with this sensitive story of a young man who needn't have run. A contributor to William Nolan's (OF TIME AND TEXAS, November, 1956, Fantastic Universe) famous _Ray Bradbury Review_, Miss Venable wants, very very much, to be a part, albeit small, of the comeback of science fiction that is seen today, as she wrote us recently._

  grove of the unborn

  _by ... LYN VENABLE_

  Bheel still stood on the patio, transfixed with horror. He heard the terrified cry "Dheb Tyn-Dall"--and then the vigilant Guardians got him....

  Tyndall heard the rockets begin to roar, and it seemed as though thevery blood in his veins pulsated with the surging of those mighty jets.Going? They couldn't be going. Not yet. Not without him! And he heardthe roaring rise to a mighty crescendo, and he felt the trembling of theground beneath the room in which he lay, and then the great sound grewless, and grew dim, and finally dissipated in a thin hum that dwindledfinally into silence. They were gone.

  * * * * *

  Tyndall threw himself face down on his couch, the feel of the slick,strange fabric cold and unfriendly against his face. He lay there for along time, not moving. Tyndall's thoughts during those hours were ofvery fundamental things, that beneath him, beneath the structure of thebuilding in which he was confined, lay a world that was not Earth,circling a sun that was not Sol, and that the ship had gone and wouldnever come back. He was alone, abandoned. He thought of the ship, asilver streak now in the implacable blackness of space, threading itsway homeward through the stars to Sol, to Earth. The utter desolationwhich swept over him at the impact of his aloneness was more than hecould endure, and he forced himself to think of something else.

  Why was he here then? John Tyndall, 3rd Engineer of the starship_Polaris_. It had been such a routine trip, ferrying a group ofzoologists and biologists around the galaxy looking for unclassifiedlife-supporting planets. They had found such a world circling an obscuresun half way across the galaxy. An ideal world for research expedition,teeming with life, the scientists were delighted. In a few short monthsthey discovered and cataloged over a thousand varieties of flora andfauna peculiar to this planet, called Arrill, after the native namewhich sounded something like Ahhrhell. Yes, there were natives,humanoid, civilized and gracious. They had seemed to welcome thestrangers, as a matter of fact they had seemed to expect them.

  The Arrillians had learned English easily, its basic sounds not beingtoo alien to their own tongue. They had quite a city there on the edgeof the jungle, although, in circling the planet before landing, theexpedition had noted that this was the only city. On a world only alittle smaller than Earth, one city, surrounded completely by thetropical jungle which covered the rest of the world. A city withoutpower, without machinery of any kind, and yet a city that wasself-sufficient.

  Well-tilled fields stretched to the very edge of the jungle, where highwalls kept out the voracious growth. The fields fed the city well, andclothed it well. And there were mines to yield up fine metal andprecious gems. The Earthmen had marveled, and yet, it had seemedstrange. On all this planet, just one city with perhaps half a millionpeople within its walls. But this was not a problem for the expedition.

  The crew of the _Polaris_ and the members of the expedition had spentmany an enjoyable evening in the dining hall of the palace-like home ofthe Rhal, who was something more than a mayor and something less than aking. Actually, Arrill seemed to get along with a minimum of government.All in all, the Earthmen had summed up the Arrillians as being a naive,mild, and courteous people. They probably still thought so, all of them,that is, except Tyndall.

  Of course, now that he looked back upon it, there has been a fewthings ... that business about the Bugs, as the Earthmen had dubbed theoddly ugly creatures who seemed to occupy something of the position ofa sacred cow in the Arrillian scheme of things. The Bugs came in allsizes, that is all sizes from a foot or so in length up to the size ofa full human.

  The Bugs were not permitted to roam the streets and market places, likethe sacred cows of the Earthly Hindus. The Bugs were kept in huge pens,which none but a few high-ranking priests were permitted to enter, andalthough the Earthmen were not prevented from standing outside the pensand watching the ugly beasts munching grass or basking in the sun, theArrillians always seemed nervous when the strangers were about the pens.The Earthmen had shrugged and reflected that religion was a complexitydifficult enough at home, needless to probe too deeply into theArrillian.

  But The Time had been something else again, bringing with it, the firstsign of real Arrillian fanaticism and the first hint of violence.Tyndall and four companions were strolling in a downtown section of thecity, when all at once a hoarse cry in Arrillian shattered the quiet humof street activity.

  "What did he say?" asked one of Tyndall's companions, who had notlearned much Arrillian.

  "I--I think, 'A Time! A Time!' What could ..." he never finished thesentence, all about them Arrillians had prostrated themselves in therather dirty street, covering their faces with their hands, lying facedown. The Earthmen hesitated a moment, and a priest of Arrill appearedas though from nowhere, a wicked scimitar-like weapon in his hand and aface tense with anger.

  "Dare you," he hissed in Arrillian, "dare you not hide your eyes at ATime!" He pushed one of the Earthmen with surprising strength, and thelatter stumbled to his knees. All five men hastened to ape the positionof the prostrate Arrillians; they knew better to risk committingsacrilege on a strange planet. As Tyndall sank to the ground and coveredhis eyes, he heard that priest mutter another sentence, in which his ownname was included. He thought it was "You, Tyn-Dall ... even you."

  A few moments later a bell sounded from somewhere, and the buzzing ofconversation began around them, along with the shuffling, scraping soundof many people getting to their feet at once. A hand touched Tyndall'sshoulder and an Arrillian voice, laughing now, purred, "Up stranger, up,The Time is past."

  The Earthmen got to their feet. Everything about them was the same asthough nothing had happened, people strolling along the street, goingin and out of shops, stopping to chat.

  "I guess that was the all-clear," commented one wryly.

  The others laughed nervously, but Tyndall was strangely troubled, he wasthinking of the strange words of the priest, "You, Tyn-Dall, even you."Why should he have known, and not the others? He tried to forget it.Arrillian was a complex tongue with confusing syntax, perhaps the priesthad said something else. But Tyndall knew one thing for certain, themention of his name had been unmistakable.

  The mood hung on, and quite suddenly Tyndall had asked, "I wonder aboutthe children. Why do you suppose it is?"

  One of the men laughed, "Maybe they feed them to the Bugs." At no time,during their stay on Arrill, had they seen a single child, or youngperson under the age of about twenty-one. The crew had speculated uponthis at great length, coming to the conclusion that the youngsters werekept secluded for some reason known only to the Arrillians, probablysome part of their religion. One of them had made so bold as to ask oneof the scientists who politely told him that since his group was notcomposed of ethnologists or theologists, but of biologists andzoologists, they were interested neither in the Arrillians, theiroffspring nor their religion, but merely in the flora and fauna of theplanet, both of which seemed to be rather deadly. The expedition had hadseveral close calls in the jungle, and some of the plants seemed asviolently carnivorous as the animals.

  It was just a few days after the incident that the Arrillians
kidnappedTyndall. It had been a simple, old-fashioned sort of job, pulled offwith efficiency and dispatch as he wandered a few hundred feet away fromthe ship. It was late, and he had been unable to sleep, so he hadstrolled out for a smoke. The nightwatch must have been somewhere abouton patrol, probably only a few hundred feet away, on the other side ofthe ship. It happened suddenly and silently, the hand clapped over hismouth, the forearm constricting his windpipe, his legs jerked out fromunder him, and a rag smelling sickly-sweet shoved under his nose,bringing oblivion.

  * * * * *

  When he came to consciousness, he found himself in this room, and heknew that since then, many days and nights had passed. His wants weremeticulously attended to, his bath prepared, his food brought to himregularly, delicious and steaming, with a generous supply of full-bodiedArrillian wine to wash it down. Fresh clothes were brought to him daily,the loose-flowing,