Alien Earth

doesn’t live so fast. You can make a man live as long—and as slowly—as a tree, by injecting the right chlorophyll compound into his blood.”

Farris said, “That’s what you meant, by saying that primitive peoples sometimes anticipate modern scientific discoveries?”

Berreau nodded. “This chlorophyll hunati solution may be an age-old secret. I believe it’s always been known to a few among the primitive forest-folk of the world.”

He looked somberly past the American. “Tree-worship is as old as the human race. The Sacred Tree of Sumeria, the groves of Dodona, the oaks of the Druids, the tree Ygdrasil of the Norse, even our own Christmas Tree — they all stem from primitive worship of that other, alien kind of life with which we share Earth.

“I think that a few secret worshippers have always known how to prepare the chlorophyll drug that enabled them to attain complete communion with that other kind of life, by living at the same slow rate for a time.”

Farris stared. “But how did you get taken into this queer secret worship?”

The other man shrugged. “The worshippers were grateful to me, because I had saved the forests here from possible death.”

He walked across to the corner of the room that was fitted as a botanical laboratory, and took down a test- tube. It was filled with dusty, tiny spores of a leprous, gray-green color.

“This is the Burmese Blight, that’s withered whole great forests down south of the Mekong. A deadly thing, to tropical trees. It was starting to work up into this Laos country, but I showed the tribes how to stop it. The secret hunati sect made me one of them, in reward.”

“But I still can’t understand why an educated man like you would want to join such a crazy mumbo-jumbo,” Farris said.

“Dieu, I’m trying to make you understand why! To show you that it was my curiosity as a botanist that made me join the Rite and take the drug!”

Berreau rushed on. “But you can’t understand, any more than Lys could! You can’t comprehend the wonder and strangeness and beauty of living that other kind of life!”

Something in Berreau’s white, rapt face, in his haunted eyes, made Farris’ skin crawl. His words seemed momentarily to lift a veil, to make the familiar vaguely strange and terrifying.

“Berreau, listen! You’ve got to cut this and leave here at once.”

The Frenchman smiled mirthlessly. “I know. Many times, I have told myself so. But I do not go. How can I leave something that is a botanist’s heaven?”

* * *

Lys had come into the room, was looking wanly at her brother’s tare.

“Andre, won’t you give it up and go home with me?” she appealed.

“Or are you too sunken in this uncanny habit to care whether your sister breaks her heart?” Farris demanded.

Berreau flared. “You’re a smug pair! You treat me like a drug addict, without knowing the wonder of the experience I’ve had! I’ve gone into another world, an alien Earth that is around us every day of our lives and that we can’t even see. And I’m going back again, and again.”

“Use that chlorophyll drug and go hunati again?” Farris said grimly.

Berreau nodded defiantly.

“No,” said Farris. “You’re not. For if you do, we’ll just go out there and bring you in again. You’ll be quite helpless to prevent us, once you’re hunati.”

The other man raged. “There’s a way I can stop you from doing that! Your threats are dangerous!”

“There’s no way,” Farris said flatly. “Once you’ve frozen yourself into that slower life-tempo, you’re helpless against normal people. And I’m not threatening. I’m trying to save your sanity, man!”

Berreau flung out of the room without answer. Lys looked at the American, with tears glimmering in her eyes.

“Don’t worry about it,” he reassured her. “He’ll get over it, in time.”

“I fear not,” the girl whispered. “It has become a madness in his brain.”

Inwardly, Farris agreed. Whatever the lure of the unknown world that Berreau had entered by that change in life-tempo, it had caught him beyond all redemption.

A chill swept Farris when he thought of it — men out there, living at the same tempo as plants, stepping clear out of the plane of animal life to a strangely different kind of life and world.

The bungalow was oppressively silent that day — the servants gone, Berreau sulking in his laboratory, Lys moving about with misery in her eyes.

But Berreau didn’t try to go out, though Farris had been expecting that and had been prepared for a clash. And by evening, Berreau seemed to have got over his sulks. He helped prepare dinner.

He was almost gay, at the meal — a febrile good humor that Farris didn’t quite like. By common consent, none of the three spoke of what was uppermost in their minds.

Berreau retired, and Farris told Lys, “Go to bed — you’ve lost so much sleep lately you’re half asleep now I’ll keep watch.”

In his own room, Farris found drowsiness assailing him too. He sank back in a chair, fighting the heaviness that weighed down his eyelids.

Then, suddenly, he understood. “Drugged!” he exclaimed, and found his voice little more than a whisper. “Something in the dinner!”

“Yes,” said a remote voice. “Yes, Farris.”

Berreau had come in. He loomed gigantic to Farris’ blurred eyes. He came closer, and Farris saw in his hand a needle that dripped sticky green.

“I’m sorry, Farris.” He was rolling up Farris’ sleeve, and Farris could not resist. “I’m sorry to do this to you and Lys. But you would interfere. And this is the only way I can keep you from bringing me back.”

Farris felt the sting of the needle. He felt nothing more, before drugged unconsciousness claimed him.

CHAPTER 4 Incredible World

Farris awoke, and for a dazed moment wondered what it was that so bewildered him. Then he realized.

It was the daylight. It came and went, every few minutes. There was the darkness of night in the bedroom, and then a sudden burst of dawn, a little period of brilliant sunlight, and then night again.

It came and went, as he watched numbly, like the slow, steady beating of a great pulse — a systole and diastole of light and darkness.

Days shortened to minutes? But how could that be? And then, as he awakened fully, he remembered.

“Hunati! He injected the chlorophyll drug into my bloodstream!”

Yes. He was hunati, now. Living at a tempo a hundred times slower than normal.

And that was why day and night seemed a hundred times faster than normal, to him. He had, already, lived through several days!

Farris stumbled to his feet. As he did so, he knocked his pipe from the arm of the chair.

It did not fall to the floor. It just disappeared instantly, and the next instant was lying on the floor.

“It fell. But it fell so fast I couldn’t see it.”

Farris felt his brain reel to the impact of the unearthly. He found that he was trembling violently.

He fought to get a grip on himself. This wasn’t witchcraft. It was a secret and devilish science, but it wasn’t supernatural.

He, himself, felt as normal as ever. It was his surroundings, the swift rush of day and night especially, that alone told him he was changed.

He heard a scream, and stumbled out to the living-room of the bungalow. Lys came running toward him.

She still wore her jacket and slacks, having obviously been too worried about her brother to retire completely.