It was a new and mysterious plant. It
could make its own weather; it was
sentient, and it prospered on Venus. But
Earth needed it desperately. And Bat Kendo,
the radar-mutant, was told to bring it in.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories September 1953.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Humans are a strange breed. Forgetful. They grow accustomed to thewonders they live among so easily that they never really figure up thecost. A little time passes and the bright memories tarnish and arecovered over with newer ones. And the men who picked up the check andmaybe paid with their lives? Forgotten.
For example, when you're sitting comfortably in the New York to SanFrancisco stratojet, and you take the trouble to look down at thelush verdure of the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada, do you everremember that a few short years back that lovely fertile parkland wasa rocky, barren waste? Or when you taste the delicious tropical fruitsthat are brought to your table from the Mojave Basin, do you think ofBat Kendo, the man who made all that possible? Like fun you do! I'llgive you ten to one you never heard of Bat Kendo. Maybe you don't evenknow that the reason those once sterile wastelands are now the lardersof the North American continent is ... weather-plant. And I'll giveeight to five you don't even know where that weather-plant came from,or how it got here, or what it cost. Not in money ... in lives.
Well, I know, and for once I'd like to have someone stand still longenough so I could tell the story. The minute anyone sees an oldspaceman like me coming, they jet the hell out of there fast. "OldCaptain Morley's got another shaggy dog to comb out!" they say, andbeat it. My stories, it seems, are too old fashioned for this modernage. Just because I, and a lot of others like me—only maybe not solucky—spent our lives opening up the spaceways instead of sitting homeon our venturiis, we're "odd characters" and "old space-hacks," and ourstories are tall tales—yarns to be avoided, or laughed at if it's notpossible to avoid them.
Okay, I expect that. But I still want to tell how that weather-plantcame to be where it is now, and what Bat Kendo had to do with it. Hewas my shipmate on the R. S. Eagle, and I think he's got a littlecredit coming to him.
The history books will tell you that during the last few years of the20th Century the population of North America increased by somethinglike 600 per cent. They might even tell you that this put such a loadon the continental resources—food, mainly—that famine became apossibility for the first time in the history of the continent. Thingswere pretty tight. People were actually starving amid the technologicalwonders of the time. Hydroponics were tried, but they fizzled badly.
The only answer seemed to be complete utilization of all availableland area for food production. And that meant that a lot of land thatcouldn't grow weeds had to produce edible crops. That's the way thingsstood back in '02, just after the William Robert Holcomb Foundation'sR. S. Explorer returned from Venus with what the botanists thoughtmight be an answer.
Of course, the Earth-Luna System was well traveled even then, but ittook the big money of the Holcomb Foundation plus a whopping WorldFederal Government grant to make a deep space mission feasible.
It was a Holcomb Foundation metallurgist's synthesis of imperviumthat made deep space navigable. Before this time all ships werechemical-fuelled because the weight of lead needed to shield atomicswould nail any sp