extent and nature of this fantastic development can be determined. The disturbance is of a nature both electromagnetic and atomic, and seems to be centered in the swampy districts of the extreme western range of the Tihar Forest, approximately 1,300 miles from Castarona. Little is known of this area, and the few explorations which have been attempted in the past met with disaster.

Landings will be difficult, and surface penetration is not to be considered. However, suicide squads are now being recruited among the convict laborers most familiar with conditions in the Tihar Forest with full pardon as reward, and an expedition will be launched for the purpose of mapping and reconnoitering the locale. If possible, landings are to be made and the menace run to earth, although not much is hoped for in this line since the terrain is swampy and practically impassable on foot. Bulletins will be issued as further material becomes available.

Repeat-- "General alarm! Warning, do not enter the Tihar Forest area for any reason."

Within the past two months a startling change has been taking place in the Tihar vegetation. It was noted weeks ago in the outer trading posts and most advanced weather stations. Experts sent to the spot have made their reports, and the story can now be told.

Three small villages and one sizable town have been utterly destroyed. Refugees have begun to drift in with tales of massacre and destruction. Piecing together their stories, and giving a new consideration to the reports by plant experts, we can quickly understand what has happened. A pattern becomes apparent.

It is general knowledge that the Tihar Forest is unique, even on Venus. Its plant life is all mutant and practically unclassified. This mutant vegetation, isolated as it is and not under observation by qualified scientists, continued its variant development. Now, the whole forest, with all its manifold life-forms, has suddenly become symbiotic. Plants, animals, and possibly other life-forms totally unfamiliar to us, are now united in one communal, interdependent life. The forest is functioning as a gigantic organism with each of its previous entities as a single shell.

Not only is this gigantic organism a functioning entity, but it is intelligent, malignant, ambitious. We must not fall into the pitfall of considering this monstrous entity merely a gigantic plant or community. There is much more behind such a development than a mere changed relationship between the life entities 

 Prev. P 21/32 next