THE GOD-PLLLNK BY JEROME BIXBY [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of Tomorrow December 1963 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Astronauts and cosmonauts! When you finally reach Mars, please be very careful what you look like! In the shadows of a crater-wall on Phobos, moon of Mars, Grg and Yrl waited to greet the God. If the God continued its present rate of approach, it would land within moments. Grg and Yrl had journeyed all night, with their eyes on that distant glinting speck in the sky. Over cold-crusted sand dunes and jagged crater walls they had flowed, crept, bounded, oozed, toward the spot where the God must land if its course held true. Grg was a Fsgh, which is the equivalent of High Priest, Yrl was a Ffssgghh, or Much Higher Priest. The best wishes of their people had gone with them on their tremendous mission. Now, at the place, they trembled in every tentacle as they peered upward. The rust-red orb of Mars rode the black horizon. Mars was, as Grg and Yrl had learned from their Elders and now taught their Youngers, the stern Seeing-All Eye of It Who Was the Universe. From that great Eye, a day ago, had sprung a shining Messenger, an Emissary, a God that must be coming on a purposeful visit. It had been detected at the half-way point of its trip. But there could be no doubt regarding its origin, its nature, its destination-- For, in the matter of form, the God was a close replica of Grg and Yrl--of all the creatures of their race! It was octopidal, with sinewy double tentacles, and a thinking trunk, and a reproduction pouch! The only significant difference was that the God gleamed mysteriously, as if its angular, hard-line representation of normal form were cast in shining stone. As it flew it reflected starlight--and the red glow of the Universal Eye behind it--from its sleek surfaces. Grg and Yrl blinked their own dull-surfaced, astronomically far-sighted, rust-red eyes at each other in supreme excitement and anticipation. What would the God tell them? What would it reveal? Would it divulge the Cosmic Secret? Would it tell them the place and destiny of their lowly race? Had it come to punish them for not being good enough, for over-reproducing, for worshipping improperly? From a selfish standpoint, it might even tell them how to get rid of the _plllnk_--a subject of constant prayer. How smoothly it flew! While Grg and Yrl and their people could bound about with a great agility in Phobos' light gravity, they could not _fly_. "How wonderful it would be to fly," said Yrl. "Perhaps," said Grg, "we have been found ready to be taught!"