The Money Tree

Metcalfe and his boys weren't fooling. They couldn't afford to fool in a deal like this. If they spotted him, more than likely they would shoot to kill.

Now, with everyone out hunting down the rollas, would be the time to get up to that orchard. Although the chances were that Metcalfe had men patrolling it.

Doyle gave the idea some consideration and dropped it. There was, now, just one thing to do and that was get to the car down on the river road as fast as he could make it.

Cautiously, he crawled out of the ditch. Once out of it, he crouched for long minutes in the tangle of fallen branches, listening for sound. There wasn't any sound.

He moved out into the nettles, following the path that had been crushed down by the men who had pursued the rollas. But, crushed down or not, some of the nettles pegged him.

Then he started down the slope, running for the woods.

Ahead of him a shout went up and he braked his speed and swerved. He reached a clump of brush and hurled himself behind it as other shouts went up and then two shots, fired in quick succession.

He saw it moving above the treetops, rising from the woods — a pale ghost of a thing that rose into the sky, with the red glint of early moonlight on it.

From it trailed a twisting line that had the appearance of a vine and from the vine hung a struggling doll-like figure that was screaming thinly. The ghost-like shape was stubby at the bottom and pointed at the top. It had the look about it of a ballooning Christmas tree and there was about it, too, even from a distance, a faint familiarity.

And suddenly Doyle linked up that familiarity — linked it to the woven mass of vegetation that had damned the creek bed. And as he linked it up, he knew without a question the nature of this Christmas tree riding in the sky.

The rollas worked with plants as Man would work with metals. They could grow a money tree and a protective strip of nettles that obeyed, they could make an oak tree fall and if they could do all that, the growing of a spaceship would not be too hard a job.

The ship was moving slowly, slanting up across the ridge, and the doll still struggled at the end of the trailing vine and its screams came down to earth as a far-off wailing sound.

Someone was shouting in the woods below:

'It's the boss! Bill, do something! It's the boss!'

It was quite apparent there was nothing Bill could do.

Doyle sprang from his bush and ran. Now was the time to make his dash, when all the other men were yelling and staring up into the sky, where Metcalfe dangled, screaming, from the trailing vine — perhaps an anchor vine, mayhaps just a part of the ro//«-grown spaceship that had become unravelled. Although, remembering the craftsmanship of that woven barrier blocking the creek-bed, it seemed unlikely to Doyle that anything would come unravelled from a rolla ship.

He could imagine what had happened — Metcalfe glimpsing the last of the rollas clambering up the ship and rushing at them, roaring, firing those two shots, then the ship springing swiftly upward and the trailing vine twisted round the ankle.

Doyle reached the woods and went plunging into it. The ground dropped sharply and he went plunging down the slope, stumbling, falling, catching himself and going on again. Until he ran full tilt into a tree that bounced him back and put exploding stars inside his skull.

He sat upon the ground where the impact had bounced him and felt of his forehead, convinced it was cracked open, while tears of pain streamed down his cheeks.

His forehead was not cracked and there seemed to be no blood, although his nose was skinned and one lip began to puff.

Then he got up and went on slowly, feeling his way along, for despite the moonlight, it was black-dark beneath the trees.

Finally he came to the dry stream-bed and felt his way along it.

He hurried as best he could, for he remembered Mabel waiting in the car. She'd be sore at him, he thought — she'd sure be plenty sore. He had gone and let her think he might be back by dark.

He came to the place where the woven strip of vegetation dammed the stream-bed and almost tumbled over it onto the rocks below.

He ran the flat of his hand across the polished surface of the strip of weaving and tried to imagine what might have happened those several years ago.

A ship plunging down to Earth, out of control perhaps, and shattering on impact, with Metcalfe close at hand to effect a rescue.

It beats all hell, he thought, how things at times turn out.

If it had not been Metcalfe, given someone else who did not think in dollar signs, there might now be trees or bushes or rows of vegetables carrying hopes such as mankind had never known before — hope for surcease from disease and pain, an end to poverty and fear. And perhaps many other hopes that no one now could guess.

And they were gone now, in a spaceship grown by the two deserting rollas under Metcalfe's very nose.