The Secret of the Ninth Planet

by Donald A. Wollheim

The men were lost in amazement. Russell Clyde uttered a low whistle. "Burl's right. It must be a sort of insect."

"This whole civilization seems to be insectlike, if you ask me," said Burl. "It's like a huge anthill, or a big bee-hive. It seems complicated, and the creatures go through complex activities, and all the time it's something they were born with."

Ferrati nodded. "Now that you mention it, that's exactly what the city was like. Nobody gave orders—everybody just did what they were supposed to do. Nobody was curious about us because it wasn't their business."

"And, individually, they haven't intelligence," Clyde added. "That one—the one you took away from his work—plainly is lost. He doesn't know how to go about getting back. He has no curiosity about us ... he may not even have much of a brain. Individual ants have no brain—only a sort of central nerve center. Collectively, they perform wonders; individually, they are quite helpless."

Lockhart interrupted the discussion. "Well, then, let's get on with it. Obviously, the Sun-tap builders placed their station in this city because it was a safe spot, protected by the Martians themselves, and because the Martians would never think to interfere with them. So you men can go back, take your stuff, dig out the station and put it out of commission. Get going."

Haines and Burl climbed into the jeep with Boulton and Ferrati. Russell Clyde insisted on joining them, and Lockhart gave his consent. Off they went, rumbling over the sand toward the city of instinct.

Burl was excited and curious about the Martians. They presented a strange mixture of contradictions. "How," he asked Russ, "could they have built a world-wide network of canals, set up pumping stations, laid out plantations, mastered hydraulic and power engineering, if they are mere creatures of instinct? Surely there must be brainy ones somewhere? A thinker species?"

"Not necessarily," said Russ. "Remember, these creatures are operating without opposition—they are really the highest type of life here. The need to conserve water and continue their hive life forced them to learn a practical kind of engineering. Nobody knows how the ants and bees formed their complex societies—there are none among them with any larger brains than the rest, and they do not talk. But somehow ants and bees communicate and somehow they act as a mass. Figure it on a world-wide scale, driven by the threat of their world drying up, and these creatures built up a mechanical civilization to meet it. But it also accounts for why they have never flown, not through the air and not through space, why they haven't attempted radio communication with Earth, and why they don't understand what the Sun-tap station is doing to them. Their world is being killed, and they literally haven't the brains to understand it."

They reached the city. All about was a silent hustle and bustle of enigmatic, shining, shelled creatures. Superficially, it looked like an intelligent civilization. There were wheeled carts driven by some sort of steam generator. Steam-driven engines ran factories.

The Martians made way for the jeep with unconcern. Never had they seen creatures as large as themselves that were not of their own kind on hive business. Hence, none such could exist. This was a world totally without individualism, a civilization without a spoken language, without names, without banners. Wherever or however the mass knowledge was located or transmitted, no individual of another species could ever hope to know. It would be forever as remote from human explorers as the farthest star on the farthest galaxy.