Robert Sheckley - The Odour of Thought

Leroy Cleevy's real trouble started when he was taking Mailship 243 through the uncolonized Seergon cluster. Before this, he had the usual problems of an interstellar mailman; an old ship, scored tubes, and faulty astrogation. But now, while he was taking line-of-direction readings, he noticed that his ship was growing uncomfortably warm.

He sighed unhappily, switched on the refrigeration, and contacted the postmaster at Base. He was at the extreme limit of radio contact, and the postmaster's voice floated in on a sea of static.

'More trouble, Cleevy?' the postmaster asked, in the ominous tones of a man who writes schedules and believes in them.

'Oh, I don't know,' Cleevy said brightly. 'Aside from the tubes and astrogation and wiring, everything's fine except for the insulation and refrigeration.'

'It's a damned shame,' the postmaster said, suddenly sympathetic. 'I know how you feel.'

Cleevy switched the refrigeration to full, wiped perspiration from his eyes, and decided that the postmaster only thought he knew how he felt.

'Haven't I asked the Government for new ships over and over again?' The postmaster laughed ruefully. 'They seem to feel that I can get the mail through in any old crate.'

At the moment Cleevy wasn't interested in the postmaster's troubles. Even with the refrigeration labouring at full, the ship was overheating.

'Hang on a moment,' he said. He went to the rear of the ship, where the heat seemed to be emanating, and found that three of his tanks were filled not with fuel, but with a bubbling white-hot slag. The fourth tank was rapidly undergoing the same change.

Cleevy stared for a moment, turned, and sprinted to the radio.

'No more fuel,' he said. 'Catalytic actions, I think. I told you we needed new tanks. I'm putting down on the first oxygen planet I can find.'

He pulled down the Emergency Manual and looked up the Seergon Cluster. There were no colonies in the group, but the oxygen worlds had been charted for future reference. What was on them, aside from oxygen, no one knew. Cleevy expected to find out, if his ship stayed together long enough.

'I'll try 3-M-22!' he shouted over the mounting static.

'Take good care of the mail,' the postmaster howled back. 'I'm sending a ship right out.'

Cleevy told him what he could do with the mail, all twenty pounds of it. But the postmaster had signed off by then.

Cleevy made a good landing on 3-M-22, exceptionally good, taking into consideration the fact that his instruments were too hot to touch, his tubes were warped by heat, and the mail sack strapped to his back hampered his movements. Mailship 243 sailed in like a swan. Twenty feet above the planet's surface it gave up and dropped like a stone.

Cleevy held on to consciousness, although he was certain every bone in his body was broken. The sides of the ship were turning a dull red when he stumbled through the escape hatch, the mail sack still firmly strapped to his back.

He staggered a hundred yards, eyes closed. Then the ship exploded and knocked him flat on his face. He stood up, took two more steps, and passed out completely.

When he recovered consciousness, he was lying on a little hillside, face down in tall grass. He was in a beautiful state of shock. He felt that he was detached from his body, a pure intellect floating in the air. All worries, emotions, fears remained with his body; he was free.

He looked around and saw that a small animal was passing near him. It was about the size of a squirrel, but with dull green fur.

As it came close, he saw that it had no eyes or ears.

This didn't surprise him. On the contrary, it seemed quite fitting. Why in hell should a squirrel have eyes or ears? Squirrels were better off not seeing the pain and torture of the world, not hearing the anguished screams of ...

Another animal approached, and this one was the size and shape of a timber wolf, but also coloured green. Parallel evolution? It didn't matter in the total scheme of things, he decided. This one, too, was eyeless and earless. But it had a magnificent set of teeth.

Cleevy watched with only faint interest. What does a pure intellect care for wolves and squirrels, eyeless or otherwise? He observed that the squirrel had frozen, not more than five feet from the wolf. The wolf approached slowly. Then, not three feet away, he seemed to lose the scent. He shook his head and turned a slow circle. When he moved forward again, he wasn't going in the right direction.

The blind hunt the blind, Cleevy told himself, and it seemed a deep and eternal truth. As he watched, the squirrel quivered; the wolf whirled, pounced, and devoured it in three gulps.

What large teeth wolves have, Cleevy thought. Instantly the eyeless wolf whirled and faced him.

Now he's going to eat me, Cleevy thought. It amused him to realize that he was the first human to be eaten on this planet.

The wolf was snarling in his face when Cleevy passed out again.

It was evening when he recovered. Long shadows had formed over the land, and the sun was low in the sky. Cleevy sat up and flexed his arms and legs experimentally. Nothing was broken.

He got on one knee, groggy, but in possession of his senses. What had happened? He remembered the crash as though it were a thousand years ago. The ship had burned, he had walked away and fainted. After that he had met a wolf and a squirrel.

He climbed unsteadily to his feet and looked around. He must have dreamed that last part. If there had been a wolf, he would have been killed.

Glancing down at his feet, he saw the squirrel's green tail and, a little farther away, its head.

He tried desperately to think. So there had been a wolf, and a hungry one. If he expected to survive until the rescue ship came, he had to find out exactly what had happened, and why.

Neither animal had eyes or ears. How did they track each other? Smell? If so, why did the wolf have so much trouble finding the squirrel?

He heard a low growl and turned. There, not fifty feet away, was something that looked like a panther. A yellow-brown, eyeless, earless panther.

Damned menagerie, Cleevy thought, and crouched down in the tall grass. This planet was rushing him along too fast. He needed time to think. How did these animals operate? Instead of sight, did they have a sense of location?

The panther began to move away.

Cleevy breathed a little easier. Perhaps, if he stayed out of sight, the panther ...

As soon as he thought the word 'panther', the beast turned in his direction.

What have I done? Cleevy asked himself, burrowing deeper into the grass. He can't smell me or see me or hear me. All I did was decide to stay out of his way...

Head high, the panther began to pace towards him.

That did it. Without eyes or ears, there was only one way the beast could have detected him.

It had to be telepathic!

To test his theory, he thought the word 'panther', identifying it automatically with the animal that was approaching him. The panther roared furiously and shortened the distance between them.

In a fraction of a second, Cleevy understood a lot of things. The wolf had been tracking the squirrel by telepathy. The squirrel had frozen - perhaps it had even stopped thinking! The wolf had been thrown off the scent -until the squirrel wasn't able to keep from thinking any longer.

In that case, why hadn't the wolf attacked him while he was unconscious? Perhaps he had stopped thinking - or at least, stopped thinking on a wavelength that the wolf could receive. Probably there was more to it than that.

Right now, his problem was the panther.

The beast roared again. It was only thirty feet away and closing the distance rapidly.