We, the Venusians / The Water of Thought

WE, THE VENUSIANS by John Rackham Anthony Taylor sat watching the wealthy Borden Harper on his multi-vision screen. ‘Is there any more news about the – the Greenies?’ the interviewer was asking. ‘None at all.’ Harper dropped his voice to a deep sober sincerity. ‘We keep on trying, But I’m afraid we are just going to have to face the unpleasant fact that the Greenies are nothing more than human-looking animals…’ Anthony could contain his detestation no longer. Snatching the cushion, he rammed it violently into the speaker-grill, wishing he could ram it down Harper’s throat. Harper and the other humans on Venus, milking it of its miraculous beans, using the green-skinned natives to cultivate the crop, because that’s all they could be trained to do. They had no language, no human-style intelligence, no cultural potential, nothing. Anthony grabbed up a dummy piano-keyboard savagely. He struck out a crisp-edged series of chords, double-handed, up the keyboard. The notes were sharp, precise sounds. ‘Not bad..’ he said, aloud. ‘For an animal!’ THE WATER OF THOUGHT by Fred Saberhagen WAS THAT THE KEY TO A WORLD FORGOTTEN? One explorer had already disappeared on the primitive planet, Kappa. So the day that a second Terrestrial, Jones, ran away after drinking the sacred Kappan water that he had coerced the natives into giving him, the remaining planetologists meant to find out just what was going on. Questioning the aliens only deepened the mystery. For they said that what Jones had drunk would enable him to communicate with his animal ancestors. It was their most precious and sacred possession. But how could it affect a person never born on Kappa, a person without such ‘animal’ ancestors? What had really happened to Jones and the other man – and what would happen if either of them managed to bring this incredible liquid back to Earth?’