STABILITY Lester del Rey Doc Baron straightened up and made motions across his forehead with a damp handkerchief, but it did no good. Sweat still came running down from his greyish hair, over the bridge of his short nose and into his little moustache. He scowled up at the glaring white curtain that was the dazzling sky of Venus and shook his head. In seven days there, he’d lost fifteen pounds. His short figure was still pudgy, but his clothes no longer fitted.
Darn it, why did he have to be doctor, biologist and general all-around scientist on this first expedition to Venus, anyway?
But he was grinning again as he dropped back to the curious plant he was studying. Tilings could have been worse. At least, he didn’t have to wear a pressure suit. In spite of all the talk of Venus’s poison atmosphere it had proved to be about the same as that of Earth—which only proved again that appearances can be deceiving. The planet was habitable enough, if a man could breathe.
Then he forgot it as he went back to studying the plant. So far no animals had been found, but the plants made up for it. They were completely unstandardized—no two were exactly alike; and they were even more unpredictable. Something like a poison-oak plant had been here yesterday; today it was replaced by a growth that most resembled a cactus with wooden branches added. At first, Doc had suspected a terrifically rapid growth and decay. Then he’d considered the possibility that the plants moved around during the ink-black night. Now he was beginning to doubt that. The plant had changed while he watched.
Doc cleared his throat, cursing the humidity, and trying to get rid of the post-nasal drip that had grown worse, together with his asthma. Hmm, interesting—the cockeyed plant was turning now into what, without a doubt, was some kind of bush.
Behind him, footsteps sounded, uncertainly. Walt or Rob must have got tired of waiting for him to come back to the ship. Doc crooked a finger over his shoulder. “Take a look at this.”
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