The Golden Age of Science Fiction 09 by Various

Author:Various [Various]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Halcyon Press Ltd.
Published: 2010-04-18T07:00:00+00:00

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Contents

DANGER

by Fletcher Pratt and Irvin Lester

The wind rose in the night and by dawn the sky was streaming with torn and ragged masses of cloud moving from south to north like an army in flight. There was a shiver of cold in the air and the seas ran so high that effective work was impossible, so we gathered in Professor Hartford’s cabin to help the old man brave out his discomfort by getting him to talk. The way in which he kept up his spirit, if not his body, through all the miseries of seasickness on that trip, was one of the finest exhibitions of courage I have seen anywhere.

As the senior member of the Museum’s staff he was, in a sense, in charge of the expedition, though like the rest of us, he was inclined to let things run themselves while he pursued his specialty. Perhaps it was fortunate for him that the protozoa can be studied as well on a constantly moving steamer as on dry land; for the work kept his mind off his troubles. At all events, every day that was calm enough for him to be out of bed, found him poring over his microscope in search of hitherto undescribed forms in this remote corner of the Pacific.

On days such as this he lay in his bunk, and between uneasy heavings of the mal-de-mer that plagued him, lectured our crowd of assorted scientific experts on the importance of unicellular life. Very interesting lectures they must have been to the other chaps; even I was sometimes caught by the spell of the professor’s keen and philosophical observation, and as a mere artist I always felt more or less a misfit among all those -ologies and -isms.

I remember this day in particular, partly because the evening brought us to our first view of Easter Island and partly because the conversation turned to those scientific generalizations; which are both easier to understand and more interesting to the non-scientific hearer. But even then, I probably would have recalled it only as one of a number of similar talks, had not after events given it a peculiar, almost a sinister significance.

Burgess, our entomologist, had been trying to draw the professor out by descanting on the rising tide of insect life. “Sooner or later,” he declared, “we will have to fight for our lives with them. Science always plods along behind their attacks. They have taken the chestnut, the boll-weevil and corn-borer are taking two more of our economically important plants. Who knows but that nature is working in its slow way to send us after the dinosaurs?”

Slap, slap, went the waves against the cabin wall.

“Perhaps, perhaps,” mused Professor Hertford, “though I incline to think that the insects will never drive man from the planet. Evolution allows a group only one opportunity—the insects had their chance to rule the world in the Carboniferous, and failed.

“… No,” he went on, “there are many lines of evolution untried, but none of them lead through existing forms.

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