The Tenth Golden Age of Science Fiction Megapack by Carl Jacobi

Author:Carl Jacobi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: science fiction, fantasy, short stories, sci-fi, pulp
ISBN: 9781479404407
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2014-11-09T16:00:00+00:00

THE WAR OF THE WEEDS

At ten o’clock on the morning of May 3, 1956, Harold Field, hired man on the farm of Gustav Peterson in Carver County, Minnesota, was alone in the east field that skirts highway No. 7, seeding corn. Resting a moment to light his pipe, he was suddenly knocked to the ground by what seemed a blinding flash of light and a thunderous report.

When he opened his eyes, it was to gaze upon an upraised mound of earth, the center of which was pierced by a circular hole. Field moved forward, examined this hole and, failing to touch bottom, reported the matter to his employer. Peterson, who owned the property, had read something of meteorites and at once telephoned Professor John Calthay, who he remembered was vacationing in Victoria, three miles away. Employer and hired man then took shovels, and went out to dig.

By nightfall they finally brought to the surface the object which had apparently fallen from the sky. Tapered at either end, it resembled a large shell, three feet in length, seven and a half inches in width. It was formed of a black, amazingly light metal.

Meanwhile Professor Calthay, who had won lasting fame a year before for his development of the “mechanist” theory of growth, rushed to the Peterson farm and with his assistant, Lawson Gage, was present when the cartridge was opened.

The cartridge and its contents made front-page news in every paper in the country. Inside the shell was found a hollow chamber, filled with a fine granulated matter that resembled ground coffee.

According to Professor Calthay, the Peterson shell reached the Earth from some point in outer space. Its construction pointed obviously to the work of beings of scientific intelligence, especially the middle core, which was formed of coronium, a substance discovered spectroscopically in the corona of the sun and known on this Earth only in a gaseous state.

On May 6th, Under Calthay’s direction a quarter acre of the east field was cultivated and harrowed, and one-half of the shell seeds sown broadcast. Results were startling. At the end of a week they had apparently reached full growth, an average height of four feet, six inches.

These weeds—and no other word adequately describes them—were of a peculiar shape. The top half of the plant formed an oblong protuberance, not unlike that of the common cat-tail, save that it was a brittle, reedy material and was hollow with a small opening on one side.

The odd part of it was that from the twelfth to the fifteenth of the month there was little or no wind. And it was not until the sixteenth that Calthay made his discovery.

The professor was sitting on the veranda of the Peterson farmhouse, where he had established his temporary headquarters, when Lawson Gage suddenly broke into his reflections. “What’s that funny noise?”

Calthay drew his pipe from his lips and listened. “I don’t hear anything.”

“It’s stopped now. I’ve been noticing it for ten minutes. It seems to sound only when the wind blows.

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