Planet of Dread, Page 2

keepenough for ourselves. But we can spare some. We'll give you theemergency-kit, anyhow."

  * * * * *

  The emergency-kit contained antiseptics, seeds, and a weapon or two,with elaborate advice to castaways. If somebody were wrecked on an evenpossibly habitable planet, the especially developed seed-strains wouldprovide food in a minimum of time. It was not an encouraging thought,though, and Moran grimaced.

  She hadn't said anything about being sorry that he had to be marooned.Maybe she was, but rebels learn to be practical or they don't live long.Moran wondered, momentarily, what sort of world they came from and whythey had revolted, and what sort of set-back to the revolt had sent thefive off in what they considered a strategic retreat but theirgovernment would think defeat. Moran's own situation was perfectlyclear.

  He'd killed a man on Coryus III. His victim would not be mourned byanybody, and somebody formerly in very great danger would now be safe,which was the reason for what Moran had done. But the dead man had beenvery important, and the fact that Moran had forced him to fight andkilled him in fair combat made no difference. Moran had needed to getoff-planet, and fast. But space-travel regulations are especiallydesigned to prevent such escapes.

  He'd made a pretty good try, at that. One of the controls onspace-traffic required a ship on landing to deposit its fuel-block inthe space-port's vaults. The fuel-block was not returned until clearancefor departure had been granted. But Moran had waylaid the messengercarrying the _Nadine's_ fuel-block back to that space-yacht. He'dknocked the messenger cold and presented himself at the yacht with thefuel. He was admitted. He put the block in the engine's gate. He dulytook the plastic receipt-token the engine only then released, and hedrew a blaster. He'd locked two of the _Nadine's_ crew in theengine-room, rushed to the control-room without encountering the others,dogged the door shut, and threaded in the first trip-tape to come tohand. He punched the take-off button and only seconds later theoverdrive. Then the yacht--and Moran--was away. But his presentcompanions got the drive dismantled two days later and once the yachtwas out of overdrive they efficiently gave him his choice ofsurrendering or else. He surrendered, stipulating that he wouldn't belanded back on Coryus; he still clung to hope of avoiding return--whichwas almost certain anyhow. Because nobody would want to go back to aplanet from which they'd carried away a criminal, even though they'ddone it unwillingly. Investigation of such a matter might last formonths.

  Now the space-yacht moved toward a vast mass of fleecy whiteness withoutany visible features. Harper stayed with the direction-finder. From timeto time he gave readings requiring minute changes of course. Thewabbling, whining signal was louder now. It became louder than all therest of the space-noises together.

  * * * * *

  The yacht touched atmosphere and Burleigh said;

  "Watch our height, Carol."

  She stood by the echometer. Sixty miles. Fifty. Thirty. A correction ofcourse. Fifteen miles to surface below. Ten. Five. At twenty-fivethousand feet there were clouds, which would be particles of ice sosmall that they floated even so high. Then clear air, then lower clouds,and lower ones still. It was not until six thousand feet above thesurface that the planet-wide cloud-level seemed to begin. From there ondown it was pure opacity. Anything could exist in that dense, almostpalpable grayness. There could be jagged peaks.

  The _Nadine_ went down and down. At fifteen hundred feet above theunseen surface, the clouds ended. Below, there was only haze. One couldsee the ground, at least, but there was no horizon. There was only anend to visibility. The yacht descended as if in the center of a spherein which one could see clearly nearby, less clearly at a littledistance, and not at all beyond a quarter-mile or so.

  There was a shaded, shadowless twilight under the cloud-bank. The groundlooked like no ground ever seen before by anyone. Off to the right arivulet ran between improbable-seeming banks. There were a few verysmall hills of most unlikely appearance. It was the ground, the matteron which one would walk, which was strangest. It had color, but thecolor was not green. Much of it was a pallid, dirty-yellowish white. Butthere were patches of blue, and curious veinings of black, and here andthere were other colors, all of them unlike the normal color ofvegetation on a planet with a sol-type sun.

  Harper spoke from the direction-finder;

  "The signal's coming from that mound, yonder."

  There was a hillock of elongated shape directly in line with the_Nadine's_ course in descent. Except for the patches of color, it wasthe only considerable landmark within the half-mile circle in whichanything could be seen at all.

  The _Nadine_ checked her downward motion. Interplanetary drive is ruggedand sure, but it does not respond to fine adjustment. Burleigh usedrockets, issuing great bellowings of flame, to make actual contact. Theyacht hovered, and as the rocket-flames diminished slowly she sat downwith practically no impact at all. But around her there was a monstroustumult of smoke and steam. When the rockets went off, she lay in aburned-out hollow some three or four feet deep with a bottom of solidstone. The walls of the hollow were black and scorched. It seemed thatat some places they quivered persistently.

  There was silence in the control-room save for the whining noise whichnow was almost deafening. Harper snapped off the switch. Then there wastrue silence. The space-yacht had come to rest possibly a hundred yardsfrom the mound which was the source of the space-signal. That moundshared the peculiarity of the ground as far as they could see throughthe haze. It was not vegetation in any ordinary sense. Certainly it wasno mineral surface! The landing-pockets had burned away three or fourfeet of it, and the edge of the burned area smoked noisesomely, andsomehow it looked as if it would reek. And there were places where itstirred.

  Burleigh blinked and stared. Then he reached up and flicked on theoutside microphones. Instantly there was bedlam. If the landscape wasstrange, here, the sounds that came from it were unbelievable.

  * * * * *

  There were grunting noises. There were clickings, uncountable clickingsthat made a background for all the rest. There were discordant howls andhonkings. From time to time some thing unknown made a cry that soundedvery much like a small boy trailing a stick against a picket fence, onlymuch louder. Something hooted, maintaining the noise for an impossiblylong time. And persistently, sounding as if they came from far away,there were booming noises, unspeakably deep-bass, made by somethingalive. And something shrieked in lunatic fashion and something elsestill moaned from time to time with the volume of a steam-whistle....

  "This sounds and looks like a nice place to live," said Moran with fineirony.

  Burleigh did not answer. He turned down the outside sound.

  "What's that stuff there, the ground?" he demanded. "We burned it awayin landing. I've seen something like it somewhere, but never taking theplace of grass!"

  "That," said Moran as if brightly, "that's what I'm to make a garden in.Of evenings I'll stroll among my thrifty plantings and listen to thedelightful sounds of nature."

  Burleigh scowled. Harper flicked off the direction-finder.

  "The signal still comes from that hillock yonder," he said withfinality.

  Moran said bitingly;

  "That ain't no hillock, that's my home!"

  Then, instantly he'd said it, he recognized that it could be true. Themound was not a fold in the ground. It was not an up-cropping of theash-covered stone on which the _Nadine_ rested. The enigmatic,dirty-yellow-dirty-red-dirty-blue-and-dirty-black ground-cover hidsomething. It blurred the shape it covered, very much as enormouscobwebs made solid and opaque would have done. But when one lookedcarefully at the mound, there was a landing-fin sticking up toward theleaden skies. It was attached to a large cylindrical object of which thefore part was crushed in. The other landing-fins could be traced.

  "It's a ship," said Moran curtly. "It crash-landed and its crew set up asignal to call for help. None came, or they'd have turned the beaconoff. Maybe they got t
he lifeboats to work and got away. Maybe they livedas I'm expected to live until they died as I'm expected to die."

  Burleigh said angrily;

  "You'd do what we are doing if you were in our shoes!"

  "Sure," said Moran, "but a man can gripe, can't he?"

  "You won't have to live here," said Burleigh. "We'll take you somewhereup by the ice-cap. As Carol said, we'll give you everything we canspare. And meanwhile we'll take a look at that wreck yonder. There mightbe an indication in it of what solar system this is. There could besomething in it of use to you, too. You'd better come along when weexplore."

  "Aye, aye, sir," said Moran with irony. "Very kind of you, sir. You'llgo armed, sir?"

  Burleigh growled;

  "Naturally!"

  "Then since I can't be trusted with a weapon," said Moran, "I suggestthat I take a torch. We may have to burn through that loathesome stuffto get in the ship."

  "Right," growled Burleigh again. "Brawn and Carol, you'll keep ship. Therest of us wear suits. We don't know what that stuff is outside."

  * * * * *

  Moran silently went to the space-suit rack and began to get into asuit. Modern space-suits weren't like the ancient crudities with bulgingmetal casings and enormous globular helmets. Non-stretch fabrics tookthe place of metal, and constant-volume joints were really practicalnowadays. A man could move about in a late-model space-suit almost aseasily as in ship-clothing. The others of the landing-party donned theirspecial garments with the brisk absence of fumbling that these peopledisplayed in every action.

  "If there's a lifeboat left," said Carol suddenly, "Moran might be ableto do something with it."

  "Ah, yes!" said Moran. "It's very likely that the ship hit hard enoughto kill everybody aboard, but not smash the boats!"

  "Somebody survived the crash," said Burleigh, "because they set up abeacon. I wouldn't count on a boat, Moran."

  "I don't!" snapped Moran.

  He flipped the fastener of his suit. He felt all the openings catch. Hesaw the others complete their equipment. They took arms. So far they hadseen no moving thing outside, but arms were simple sanity on an unknownworld. Moran, though, would not be permitted a weapon. He picked up atorch. They filed into the airlock. The inner door closed. The outerdoor opened. It was not necessary to check the air specifically. Thesuits would take care of that. Anyhow the ice-cap said there were nowater-soluble gases in the atmosphere, and a gas can't be an activepoison if it can't dissolve.

  They filed out of the airlock. They stood on ash-covered stone, onlyslightly eroded by the processes which made life possible on thisplanet. They looked dubiously at the scorched, indefinite substancewhich had been ground before the _Nadine_ landed. Moran moved scornfullyforward. He kicked at the burnt stuff. His foot went through the char.The hole exposed a cheesy mass of soft matter which seemed riddled withsmall holes.

  Something black came squirming frantically out of one of the openings.It was eight or ten inches long. It had a head, a thorax, and anabdomen. It had wing-cases. It had six legs. It toppled down to thestone on which the _Nadine_ rested. Agitatedly, it spread itswing-covers and flew away, droning loudly. The four men heard the soundabove even the monstrous cacophony of cries and boomings and grunts andsqueaks which seemed to fill the air.

  "What the devil--."

  Moran kicked again. More holes. More openings. More small tunnels in thecheese-like, curd-like stuff. More black things squirming to view inobvious panic. They popped out everywhere. It was suddenly apparentthat the top of the soil, here, was a thick and blanket-like sheet overthe whitish stuff. The black creatures lived and thrived in tunnelsunder it.

  * * * * *

  Carol's voice came over the helmet-phones.

  "_They're--bugs!_" she said incredulously. "_They're beetles! They'retwenty times the size of the beetles we humans have been carrying aroundthe galaxy, but that's what they are!_"

  Moran grunted. Distastefully, he saw his predicament made worse. He knewwhat had happened here. He could begin to guess at other things to bediscovered. It had not been practical for men to move onto new planetsand subsist upon the flora and fauna they found there. On some newplanets life had never gotten started. On such worlds a highly complexoperation was necessary before humanity could move in. A completeecological complex had to be built up; microbes to break down the rockfor soil, bacteria to fix nitrogen to make the soil fertile; plants togrow in the new-made dirt and insects to fertilize the plants so theywould multiply, and animals and birds to carry the seeds planet-wide. Onmost planets, to be sure, there were local, aboriginal plants andanimals. But still terrestrial creatures had to be introduced if acolony was to feed itself. Alien plants did not supply satisfactoryfood. So an elaborate adaptation job had to be done on every planetbefore native and terrestrial living things settled down together. Itwasn't impossible that the scuttling things were truly beetles, grownlarge and monstrous under the conditions of a new planet. And theground....

  "This ground stuff," said Moran distastefully, "is yeast or some sort oftoadstool growth. This is a seedling world. It didn't have any life onit, so somebody dumped germs and spores and bugs to make it ready forplants and animals eventually. But nobody's come back to finish up thejob."

  Burleigh grunted a somehow surprised assent. But it wasn't surprising;not wholly so. Once one mentioned yeasts and toadstools and fungigenerally, the weird landscape became less than incredible. But itremained actively unpleasant to think of being marooned on it.

  "Suppose we go look at the ship?" said Moran unpleasantly. "Maybe youcan find out where you are, and I can find out what's ahead of me."

  He climbed up on the unscorched surface. It was elastic. Theparchment-like top skin yielded. It was like walking on a mass ofsprings.

  "We'd better spread out," added Moran, "or else we'll break through thatskin and be floundering in this mess."

  "I'm giving the orders, Moran!" said Burleigh shortly. "But what you saydoes make sense."

  * * * * *

  He and the others joined Moran on the yielding surface. Their footingwas uncertain, as on a trampoline. They staggered. They moved toward thehillock which was a covered-over wrecked ship.

  The ground was not as level as it appeared from the _Nadine's_control-room. There were undulations. But they could not see more than aquarter-mile in any direction. Beyond that was mist. But Burleigh, atone end of the uneven line of advancing men, suddenly halted and stoodstaring down at something he had not seen before. The others halted.

  Something moved. It came out from behind a very minor spire of whitishstuff that looked like a dirty sheet stretched over a tall stone. Thething that appeared was very peculiar indeed. It was a--worm. But it wasa foot thick and ten feet long, and it had a group of stumpy legs at itsfore end--where there were eyes hidden behind bristling hair-likegrowths--and another set of feet at its tail end. It progressed sedatelyby reaching forward with its fore-part, securing a foothold, and thenarching its middle portion like a cat arching its back, to bring itshind part forward. Then it reached forward again. It was of a dark olivecolor from one end to the other. Its manner of walking was insane butsomehow sedate.

  Moran heard muffled noises in his helmet-phone as the others tried tospeak. Carol's voice came anxiously;

  "_What's the matter? What do you see?_"

  Moran said with savage precision;

  "We're looking at an inch-worm, grown up like the beetles only more so.It's not an inch-worm any longer. It's a yard-worm." Then he saidharshly to the men with him; "It's not a hunting creature on worldswhere it's smaller. It's not likely to have turned deadly here. Comeon!"

  He went forward over the singularly bouncy ground. The others followed.It was to be noted that Hallet the engineer, avoided the huge harmlesscreature more widely than most.

  * * * * *

  They reached the mound which was the ship. Moran unlimb
ered his torch.He said sardonically;

  "This ship won't do anybody any good. It's old-style. That thick beltaround its middle was dropped a hundred years ago, and more." There wasan abrupt thickening of the cylindrical hull at the middle. There was anequally abrupt thinning, again, toward the landing-fins. The sharpnessof the change was blurred over by the revolting ground-stuff growingeverywhere. "We're going to find that this wreck has been here a centuryat least!"

  Without orders, he turned on the torch. A four-foot flame of pureblue-white leaped out. He touched its tip to the fungoid soil. Steamleaped up. He used the flame like a gigantic scalpel, cutting a square ayard deep in the whitish stuff, and then cutting it across and across todestroy it. Thick fumes arose, and quiverings and shakings began. Blackcreatures in their labyrinths of tunnels began to panic. Off to theright the blanket-like surface ripped and they poured out. They scuttledcrazily here and there. Some took to wing. By instinct the othermen--the armed ones--moved back from the smoke. They wore space-helmetsbut they felt that there should be an intolerable smell.

  Moran slashed and slashed angrily with the big flame, cutting a way tothe metal hull that had fallen here before his grandfather was born.Sometimes the flame cut across things that writhed, and he was sickened.But above all he raged because he was to be marooned here. He could notaltogether blame the others. They couldn't land at any colonized worldwith him on board without his being