SOURCES:"Proxima Centauri" by Murray Leinster (Astounding, March 1935)

DESCRIPTION: "For an instant they seemed almost like men. They had two legs, and two dangling things--tentacles--which apparently served as arms and tapered smoothly to ends which split into movable, slender filaments. The tentacles and legs alike seemed flexible in their entire lengths. There were no "joints" such as men use in walking, and the result was that the Centaurians walked with a curiously rolling gait. Most startling, though, was the fact that they had no heads. They came wabbling accustomedly out of the air lock, and at the end of one "arm" each carried a curious, semi-cylindrical black object which they handled as if it might be a weapon. They wore metallic packs fastened to their bodies. The bodies themselves were queerly "grained"...Jack...looked for eyes, for nostrils, for amouth. He saw twin slits only. He guessed at them for eyes. He saw no sign of any mouth at all. There was no hair. He saw a scabrous, brownish substance on the back of one of the Things which turned to hoot excitedly at the rest. It looked like tree bark..." (Astounding, March 1935)

NOTES: The Centaurians possess weapons and space-flight technology equal or superior to the humans. The men, both loyal and mutineers, in this tale must keep the Plant Aliens from ever finding Earth and its rich source of animal life.

HISTORY: The Plant Aliens of Leinster's story are descendents of Burroughs Plant Men of Barsoom and William Hope Hodgson's Weed Men. Leinster does a terrific job of getting across how a plant might see an animal, just as a source of food.