Mind Webs - The Unfinished

A surreal sci-fi series exploring speculative concepts, dreams, and philosophical what-ifs. Each episode is a cerebral journey into the mind’s deepest questions.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:13):
My mind Way.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Welcome to a half hour of mind Way short stories
from the world of Specs of Fiction. No Thissus Michael Hanson.
The mind Web story of this half hour is the
Unfinished by Frank's Balknap Long Story, copyright nineteen fifty one

(01:14):
by super Science Stories. This was the time we were
exploring for the Larkin Museum, half across the Milky Way.
We had rocket trouble and had a land for repairs,
and a little green world a thousand light years from home.
We'll have to bring her down, Sean, the old one said,

(01:37):
glancing up sharply from the navigation's aisle. It's too bad,
but there's no help for it. I gave a booming
laugh of disgust, thinking of the steamy jungles, which were
pretty much the rule on the inner planets of Class
G stars, tall and gloomy old forests filled with rotting
vegetation and vast swarms of stinging, bloodsucking insects. The old

(02:00):
one was secretly happy about it. He liked to tramp
the wild and feel the wind and rain on his face. Slowly,
as I stared at him, he took on the unmistakable
glow of a lad whose idea of paradise was to
sit on a sun dappled bank in the russet autumn,
watching baked drift downstream and a beauty rising to his lure.

(02:20):
He liked to explore, but was satisfied just to fish
and hunt. He could take root anywhere, like a hungry
mass of leavin, sheeted of its birthright. He was happy
enough in space, but he could never quite reconcile himself
to the absence of growing things. In the bridge room
of a rocket ship. It's been ages since I've lain

(02:41):
on my back in a spruce forest, staring straight up
at the stars. He grinned, flucked shoes, stained his jagged teeth,
ages in our trade jaw, the shining metal of the
finest rocket ship ever built, for one sniff of a good,
sweet earth. It's the same everywhere, on all the planets.

(03:01):
You see in the jungle. Sure, sure, I said, to
pass by and keep it from bursting, and saw, sure
paradise in the palm of your hand. Now, if you'll
just brace yourself and grab hold of that safety rail,
I'll try to bring her down without shaking it loose
in your pipe drains. It was a smooth landing. As

(03:21):
landings go down, we swooped between towering walls of foliage
gold and yellow and burning emerald green, the view screen
at my elbow and corus skating, and the dazzling bursts
of sunlight. My hands were steady on the controls, but
for a moment I felt like a badly scared giant
killers ringing down from a bean stalk that would have

(03:42):
spanned the gulfs between the stars. I really did. Star
rovers are linked to the world of childhood in a
great variety of ways, where they see the same strange
hues everywhere they turned for the lights that never was
shines only for them. And even an old man married

(04:03):
fifty years could put his arm around his wife and say,
tomorrow I'll be in deep space and your eyes will
be as pretty as misty moon swimming in the sea
of gold. And he could mean every word of it too,
because in space time seems to fall away, and your
memory has become the memories of youth, and you see
everything as if for the first time through absolutely unspoiled eyes.

(04:29):
I shook off the feeling of the gesture now you
can let go. Now we're resting that attention, but we
it couldn't be more firmly grounded if we were pushing
up daisies. He unhooked his arm from the rail and
squabbed the perspiring brow. Here, good pilot, son, Hey, they
don't come any steadier. I looked at him. Well, we

(04:50):
better go outside and check on the damage. We won't
need the oxygen masks. The atmosphere ratings a bit high,
but we can take that and stride. I was not
mindful of his compliments, but it confused and embarrassed me
to have him turned the searchlight on my competence. Sure
I was a good pilot at my crosss the galaxy
twenty times without losing the ship. I was as proud

(05:14):
of my record as the next man. But I saw
no reason for shoulder zumping. A man needs all his
self esteem in space, but it should be accepted as
something to be put on like a shining garment and
worn in simons. We emerged from the vacuum poard completely unarmed,
carrying only a few necessary tools, and expecting to be

(05:37):
greeted by a howling wind in an empty forest clearing.
We were greeted by howling, all right, but it came
from a familiar throat, and the wind that swept strong
across the clearing made a moaning sound which was almost
as painful to listen to him. The man was down
on his knees on the forest floor, howling either rage

(06:00):
or pain. There was a great red gash in his shoulder,
and he was rolling his eyes about and slapping at
the wound with his palms. Now, I don't scare easily,
but the sight was so unexpected that it jolted me
back on my heels. I can't speak for the old one.
He seemed calm enough as he stood staring at my side,
a look of serene wonder in his eyes. Serene wonder. Yes,

(06:24):
it just about sums it up. There was an eternal
childlike quality about him I've never seen equaled in man
or intelligent beast. Nothing under the wheeling stars could really
scare him, or he'd mastered the knack of accepting nature
in all of her moods, the worst along with the best.

(06:44):
Even atrocious pain and death, he could accept as the
dark side of a very bright and wonderful coin. The
wounded man was plainly as savage. He wore no clothes,
and there was a metal bracelet on his right ankle
with jangle as he thrashed. He was called to. He'd
built a powerful brood of an aboriginate with a look
of native intelligence about him, which voted ill for his enemies. Hey,

(07:07):
stay where you are, shun, I would be right back.
The old one ducked quickly back and was back in
the court, leaving me alone with the brute. I looked
down at the heavy magnetic wrench in my hand my
mouth as drying his desk, and I had a vision
of myself under savage attack, bringing the blunt weapon down
on the skull of one of my fellows. The vision

(07:28):
sicken the poor devil was half maddened by pain. And
in my book, the savage had a moral right to
strike out blindly at anything but menaced his security. In
his book, I was a hostile stranger from the sky.
Why I'd be a kind of murderer even if he
attacked me? No, sure, I'm thin skins and without others.

(07:49):
The Larkin Museum didn't expect me to be colonizing brutes.
All they wanted were records, archaeological, anthropological somatic with a
greater glory of science. When I was a kid, and
he hied to a grasshopper. My dad used to say
that a soldier of science takes twenty steps back down
the ladder when he sheds blood. And I've never gotten

(08:10):
over being the son of my father. He has he
spoken at all, the old One asked, popping out of
the port to the incredible eagerness of a yearling colt
a semantic recorder in a long roll of translating tape
under his arm. He started threading the tape under the
recorder without waiting for my reply, his face mirroring about

(08:32):
seventeen levels of delight. We'll get him to talk, he'll
say something, and then then we'll play the tape back.
The old One isn't often wrong, but he was for once,
apparently the wounded aborigin. He just didn't want his thoughts
translated by a mechanical metal box into the speech to
Strangers from the sky. He stood up and glared as

(08:55):
for a second or two, his eyes smoldering with emotions
as old as man. Sure boy, I thought, sure, we've
got you at a bad moment, with your hair down.
He'll have your pride. I must have guessed what he
was thinking, for he suddenly drew himself up with though
in fierce pride, and stood at his bull heights, the

(09:16):
wound gleaming in his flash. That's some great crimson metal,
one for valor beyond the call of duty on a battlefield.
The jungle could never claim. The man's spirit can be
a pretty fine plucky thing when it doesn't try to
conceal the grievousness of its wounds. And I admired that savage,

(09:37):
or all the things we had in common, and the
milestones we still must pass here to say something. Now
he's going to speak. I never saw a man or
beast turn quite as fast as that savage. One minute
he was facing us in the sunlight, as still as
a subcritical mask getting set for an atomic explosion. He

(10:00):
was plunging furiously away from us through the underbrush, a
cloud of buzzing insects in his wake. The old one
had a shining gift or understatement when frustration gnawed at him. Well,
now was all he said. The magnificent Savage was gone,
and we were alone again, and the clearing so still.

(10:21):
He could have heard a gnat pulgulating, But I didn't
let it throw me. Guiding the ship repaired came first.
That was the big important job. Anyway. I took the
old one by the arm and hurried him toward the
stern rocket tubes. We got to work fast. I told him,
if he comes back with his tribe, they'll take it
for granted that we wounded him. Why does savages shift

(10:45):
guilt around like that? It seems like most savages simply
work off their rage on the first stranger they meet. You,
innocent or guilty. It works for a rough kind of
justice in the long run, at some time in their lives.
Most of us are guilty. If they become careless too,
they deserve what they get. The damage wasn't too bad. Oh,

(11:10):
it's an hour's job if we work our heads off.
Maybe I'm an alarmist, but I think we should try
to whittle that estima down a bit, just as you say, Shan.
The old one grinned and stripped off his weather jacket.
That was the best thing about him. He could talk
himself into a blue funk, but when a job really
looked tough, he became a solid and laconic as a

(11:32):
square of granite. We finished the repair job in exactly
twenty eight minutes, and we're heading back to the vacuum
fort when the old one grabbed my arm. Look. The
alien beasts were standing at the edge of the clearing
in the blaze reddening sunlights. They had emerged from the
underbrush in utter silence, appearing so suddenly out of the shadows.

(11:56):
It seemed almost like a conjuring tricks. In all my variance,
I had never seen creatures so repulsive. For the first
time in my life that I could remember, I was
afraid when I just couldn't fit them into any sane
pattern of fear, couldn't explain exactly why they made my
blood run cold. The creatures walked uprights and were vaguely

(12:20):
lizard like, but with a raw skinned aspect of face
and limb that made me repudiate the idea that they
could be true reptiles. Embryonic it's tricky, but there's a
certain flabby paintness, a blubber mouthed kind of painness that
suggests the unformed, the monstrous, and the creatures must have

(12:42):
possessed a fair degree of intelligence, for they wore fantastic
garments and carried metal weapons. But the embryonic impression wouldn't down,
you know, the shiver you get when you see something
soft and pink and modeled with tadpole arms, breaking water,
making blubbering noises at the ear of his stagnant pool.
These creatures were on dry lands, were almost as large

(13:05):
as we, but the blubber mouth feeling stayed with me.
There were just two of the beasts, and they seemed
to be discussing us. It made harsh, refolding noises, which
sounded to the old one like intelligent speech. In ten
seconds flat, he had forgotten his surprise and disgusts and
was busy with his semantic recorder, his eyes shining as

(13:28):
he tored them across the clearing. I moved forward to warning,
but he was deaf to all caution. He waved me back,
his eyes hard with high scientific purpose. The clearing seemed
suddenly bleak and lonely. We were alone with strange beasts,
with dangerous beasts, a thousand light years from green lawns

(13:51):
and the laughter of children from smoky fireplaces, book lined
studies and the bright right of friendship. One segment of
my mind was alert to our danger, but the other,
the other was back in the little country town. I
was walking arm in arm with the prettiest miss ever
to wettesty roving explorer, and lived to rule the day.

(14:12):
The Old One was twenty feet from the nearest of
the beasts when their metal weapons roared. It was a
brutal attack, as unexpected as it was senseless. He hadn't
made a single menacing gesture. He had simply advanced across
the clearing, clasping an instrument of science, his clear blue
eyes wide with the innocence of his breath. In sick horror,

(14:34):
I saw him stagger back and sink to his knees.
For an instant's dark incredulity looked out of his eyes,
and then he swayed and cried out to me, don't
don't let him fire again. Watch out, I can get
mad fast. I went after the beasts in blind fury,
not carrying the hood. If I caught a weapon blast
full in the face, I'd crushed under foot a poisonous

(14:57):
snake that struck without warning, And I had less compunction
of doing the same to creatures intelligent enough to forge
metal weapons. When they saw me charging at them, they
dropped their weapons and went plunging into the forest. I
kept right on after them, ignoring the interlacing tendrils and
prickly vines which lashed toward my flesh. I overtook one

(15:18):
of them a hundred feet from the clearing. I had
a curious feeling of excitement as I closed in on it.
My arms spread wide with it attempts to fight back.
The eyes bored into mind were unmistakably intelligent. Surely it
knew fear, but it was trembling evulsively. It kept backing
away from me, as if it could not accept the

(15:39):
reality of my nearness and the fact that it's had
no chance at all Behind it. The vegetation was so
densely courted that a beast twice its earth could not
have broken through. It was still recoiling when my arms
went around it and I crushed it to me in
a tight, unyielding embrace. I'd get a spine that I

(16:01):
could crack, lungs which would collapse in the frothy bubbling,
and I was sure of nothing. I only knew that
I was about to crush the life from a creature
whose flesh was cold, soggy, like the flesh of a
scavenger bird. Just being so close to la physically sick

(16:22):
as its repulsive cries, whimpered into silence that bobbed his
head about. And I could have sworn it hissed at me.
But I may have been mistaken about things. Suddenly all
my anger blessed me. What's the use, I thought. Let
it crawl away into its lair, Let it live out
a seeful life from the deep jungle scorpion stateres lizards

(16:43):
and green vermillion poisoned blotches protruding from their throats. The
trouble was, such lizards were beautiful to look at. This
creature was as ugly as an eyelis love. The fact
that it had eyes, and wore clothes and possessed intelligence
of the sort didn't make it one with less ugly.

(17:04):
I felt disgusted. Hating an animal because nature had made
it that way was as stupid as hating the worm
non apple, or a leech covered stone at the edge
of a pond. I opened my arms wide and let
the loathsome beast slip to the ground. Beasts who developed

(17:26):
intelligence without shedding their jungle instincts had a long and
unpleasant history behind me. I had encountered such beasts before
on more worlds, and I carried to remember but never
in such an evolve stage of culture. I thought of
the rock splitting birds spagoon, their blude flint weapons and

(17:46):
elaborate burial customs. Now I remember the fire lizards of Galmar,
not so name because they could pass through fire like salamanders,
but because they had actually mastered the use of fire
and knew how to forge iron. Arrowheads. Beasts scaly, leathery,
warm blooded, A few within the weight range of man.

(18:09):
This creature was well within the weight range of man.
But I was pretty sure it had a lifespan as
brief as the skunk weeds of our suburban gardens. The
boom in the late autumn night at the first touch
of frost. That would mean it could never learn very much.
Natural selection would eventually finish what I'd started out to do.

(18:29):
You can thank Dane nature for your good luck, mister
scorpion eyes, I said, And the beast seemed to know
that it had been glanded to reprieve, for it started
to whimper again, and suddenly it was dragging itself away
from me over the forest floor. Fighting down my revulsion,
I swung about and went striding back to the clearing.

(18:52):
You gotta let me play the record through, son, the
old man said, hours later, do you have to let me?
I tell you I feel all right now. I am okay.
It was just a flesh wound. What if I did
lose a little blood. We were almost in deep space,
a good five billion miles from the class G star sun,

(19:13):
which warmed a worm riddled little green butter out of
the world. I hope never to see again, worm riddled
because those creatures were on it. I thought of the
savage standing straight and proud in the sunlight, claiming his birthright,
despite his pain, a great throbbing wound in his side,
and yet he could still draw himself up in the finance. Well,

(19:37):
someday that little green butternut of a world would belong
to a magnificent savage with a civilizing gleam in his eyes,
and he wouldn't be wearing the primitive chain bracelet on
his ankle. Then he'd be on his way to the stars.
So the old one wanted to play the recording through.
Did he he had failed to get a semantic recording
of the magnificent savages speech. All he had was warm,

(20:00):
firm speech from the throat of creatures who had tried
to kill him. Why did he wished to inflict further
torment on himself? I had no moral right to oppose him.
He was an able scientist, and he had to find
childlike curiosity of his breed. And if he felt strong
enough to listen to a recording the first rate scientific importance,

(20:20):
I had no call to put my ore in, so
I said, now, go ahead, go ahead? Who was stopping?
He seemed a little apologetic as he turned to the
quarter on. You made a fine job of abandon gan
up my arm, son. I don't think I'm not grateful
for what you did. Dog ahead, play it didn't give

(20:41):
you any fun. Play its twenty times if you want
to get up and dance to it. Don't forget. They
were intelligent beasts. Their speech will translate. We'll get something
more than the gibberish we heard. I'm sure we will
a long string of obscenities, most likely the old man
s glip my arm. Listen, Eddie, Eddie. A voice spoke

(21:05):
out of the recorder. Eddie, Oh no, hey, don't start
thinking things. I see cool, and I'm not excited. But
they're wearing clothes, Eddie, Well crude. They are curry clothes
or wants the difference? Can't you see? It's some the
dumb valley talker's ideas of a joke. But we haven't
got three bears, Addie Jack, the bear that broke away, Jash,

(21:29):
Mike Bruin who turned aque onus. Well they're from from
other furs, then that don't wash it. There ain't a
Mattie circus within one hundred miles a year. Nobody could
have dressed out of bears like that anyway. They're wearing
carney clothes. No, just funny looking jumper suits. Oh well,

(21:50):
you don't get things and things. Who wants to get
two more bears to play a joke like that? Be sensible? Eddie? Well,
how anybody know Mike throwing with the greatest cane. We'd
have to go hunting with shot kind of I'll bet
you twenty bucks. Now look at it. We go after
and eskate bear in a rampage, otherwise he'll kill somebody

(22:11):
in the circus. He'll give you blame, all right if
you take a pot shot at him, rouse out of him.
Rush man, you work two collar bears, And behind that
is that twenty tons cigar right back up in silver
boil and they're dressed up where fancy costume wall hunting. Well,
you're gonna start fast days. I have twenty tons of

(22:31):
Silver's cigar and all members to jar in the end
of the brus exactly right at the end of the
double barrels checks. I don't when you break it open.
Only there are more rocket tubes than that walk get
the pools now, I know, just a corf that's not
a space ship. Yeah, but they wouldn't be bears. How

(22:54):
do you know what the Martians look like? Hey? Did
you ever see a market? But but bears looking at
it this way? Eddie? Maybe there are no real bears
on Mars or wherever they come from them. If that
was so, they wouldn't picture themselves as bears. They picture
themselves as men. I mean, they wouldn't look like bears

(23:15):
to themselves. Well, and how they put a frock, That's
what I'm worried about. How would we look to a beard?
How would we look to a mic self? Stat's ruin?
If my camp brains well a bear, we strains a
bear slappiness? What are your meaning slappy? Then? When a frog?

(23:39):
What look class means? A croc? Just asked him to
be skin a line. I got a hunt week the
great on a bear in more ways than the bears.
Wait on, u, Eddie looks he's older enough. The mothers
cylinder he's coming bordered with other culders. Paul, it must
be a ray guns if we don't get them first.

(24:00):
A dull roar rang out in the bridge room. The
clicking stops. The old one looked at me, lads, Oh,
what is a bear? Well, you got me. That's what
those beasts called USh bears. They said, we just look
like men to ourselves. Well, if we just look like men,

(24:25):
we've got a lot of company. There are men like
ourselves on every planet capable of supporting life in the
galactic universe. Any school kid knows that parallel evolution holds
good everywhere in space. It's as universal as the second
law of thermodynamics. Here you're right, but gosh, suppose well
it admits of no argument. See everywhere in space. Biological

(24:48):
evolution follows the same pattern unicellular organisms, spiny invertebrates, amphibians, reptiles,
primitive arctoid Carnivora, distinguished by their massive bodies, short limbs, retails,
and then finally, man yes, yeah, sure, I know. But look,
did you ever see a bear? You've done a lot
of star hopping in your time. Yeah, you're right, of course,

(25:12):
I guess it's plumb crazy. Maybe we'd better break up
that recording. Why should we do that? I don't know.
Just having it around sort of gives me the jitters.
We're gonna keep it. It was utter nonsense anyway. You
looked at it on one little planet, in a mighty
sweep of starfield, stretching out and blazing splendor for a

(25:34):
million light years, a loathsome little biped, fleshy pink with
no fur on its face, that said, we just looked
like men to ourselves. You know, I've been thinking. I've
been thinking how a single grain of sand dropped into
a big intricate machine and clog the works in sand

(25:57):
flywheels spinning off in all directions. If that grain he's
hard and bright enough, he got a master atomic theory
before he can have space flights. You saw those beasts,
did they look like they had that kind of brightness
inside of them? And I laughed again because the old
one had looked for a minute like the wilted edge

(26:18):
of the great rug. Suddenly he was joining me in
my merriment, his voice booming out in the bridge room.
Highest among the virtues of man is that supreme confidence
in himself and his destiny, which can brook no rival.
I stood up in majestic confidence, watching my image rise

(26:41):
with me on the polished metal surface of the navigation dial.
But it was not myself as an individual. I saw
in the sturdy chest covered with a rich matting of
white fur, in the long, tapering face and deep set
eyes that smoldered with undying fires. I saw myself as
the apex of a pyramid, the culmination of five million

(27:04):
years of evolutionary striving. How had the poet phrased.

Speaker 3 (27:09):
Its eternal man? Whose name it's blaze? On all the
stories you've heard?

Speaker 2 (27:55):
The Unfinished a story by Frank Dalknap Long copyright nineteen
fifty one by super Science Stories. So this is Michael Anson,
technical operation for this broadcast by Bob Chaan Mind webs
is a production of WHA Radio and Madison, a service
of University of Wisconsin Extension