Adventures on Other Planets by Donald A. Wollheim

Author:Donald A. Wollheim [Wollheim, Donald A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jerry eBooks
Published: 2015-03-05T05:00:00+00:00

The music trees were twisted gray ghosts in the murky dawn. The conductors, except for the few who refused to let even a visit from the Earthmen rouse them from their daylight slumber, squatted like black imps on their podia.

Delbert rode on Smith’s shoulder, one clawlike hand entwined in Smith’s hair to keep from falling off. The Encyclopedia waddled along in the wake of the Earthinan party. Wade led the way toward Alder’s podium.

The Bowl buzzed with the hum of distorted thought, the thought of many little folk squatting on their mounds—an alien thing that made Mackenzie’s neck hairs bristle just a little as it beat into his mind. There were no really separate thoughts, no one commanding thought, just the chitter-chatter of hundreds of little thoughts, as if the conductors might be gossiping.

The yellow cliffs stood like a sentinel wall and above the path that led to the escarpment, the tractor loomed like a straddled beetle against the early dawn.

Alder rose from the podium to greet them, a disreputable-looking gnome on gnarly legs.

The Earth delegation squatted on the ground. Delbert, from his perch on Smith’s shoulder, made a face at Alder.

Silence held for a moment and then Mackenzie, dispensing with formalities, spoke to Alder. “We rescued Delbert for you,” he told the gnome. “We brought him back.”

Alder scowled and his thoughts were fuzzy with disgust. “We do not want him back,” he said.

Mackenzie, taken aback, stammered. “Why, we thought … that is, he’s one of you … we went to a lot of trouble to rescue him—”

‘He’s a nuisance,” declared Alder. “He’s a disgrace. He’s an no-good. He’s always trying things.”

“You’re not so hot yourself,” piped Delberts thought. “Just a bunch of fuddy-duddies. A crowd of com peddlers. You’re sore at me because I want to be different. Because I dust it off—”

“You see,” said Alder to Mackenzie, “what he is like.”

“Why, yes,” agreed Mackenzie, “but there are times when new ideas have some values. Perhaps he may be—” Alder leveled an accusing finger at Wade. “He was all right until you took to hanging around,” he screamed. “Then he picked up some of your ideas. You contaminated him. Your silly notions about music—” Alder’s thoughts gulped in sheer exasperation, then took up again. “Why did you come? No one asked you to? Why don’t you mind your own business?”

Wade, red faced behind his beard, seemed close to apoplexy.

“I’ve never been so insulted in all my life,” he howled. He thumped his chest with a doubled fist. “Back on Earth I wrote great symphonies myself. I never held with frivolous music. I never—”

“Crawl back into your hole,” Delbert shrilled at Alder. “You guys don’t know what music is. You saw out the same stuff day after day. You never lay it in the groove. You never get gated up. You all got long underwear.”

Alder waved knotted fists above his head and hopped up and down in rage. “Such language!” he shrieked. “Never was the like heard here before.”

The whole Bowl was yammering.

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