Then they all had coffee and cake, shook hands with Pete Senior, and went to their homes and laboratories.
By this time, of course, at the farthest reaches of Pete's root network, duplicate Petes were popping up above ground, quietly and unostentatiously (Pete stood barely five inches high), and much like their parent. They, too, began sending out spoke-like root networks. Some of them, stronger than others, sent roots for a radius of a hundred miles, others for a few leagues and no more.
Eventually, Pete Senior reached an age where his body cells died more rapidly than they were replaced, that is, he achieved old age, and he passed from his life, leaving a wife, three children, and an unpaid fertilizer bill.
Pete himself, by now was pulsing considerably faster. In fact, incredibly faster, after his once-a-century contraction of short years before. His pulse rate was now in the neighborhood of ten per second, which is a pretty good increase. It soon reached hundreds per second.
And his offspring weren't far behind him either.
Since the whole planet was now as interwoven with Pete-type networks as the inside of a baseball with string, this constant vibration—which slowly began to beat in a united concentration—began to make itself felt.
People started to complain about it.
So scientists with seismographs, and even dousers with willow twigs, began to seek out the source of this unnerving, almost supersonic, thrilling of the planet crust. Eventually, they located the tiny green plants with the spirally leaves at the center—the loudest point—of each network. Someone recognized the plant, and they confirmed this someone's suspicions by a check of the Public Library's back issues of Botanist's Quarterly. It was the moonplant, all right.
The Peter W. Merrill Moonplant. Yes sir. That's what it was.