by Earl
THEY stepped from the cool, regulated temperature of their space-ship into the hot humidity of the planet’s climate. The air came through their masks warm and soggy, but with an exhilarating tang that they enjoyed. It was the odor of life and growing things. They could hear a steady murmur in the air. Overhead wheeled exotic birds. Insects buzzed from hidden sources.
Alora Crodell, glad to be free of the cramped quarters, capered away from the ship lightly, over a carpet of thick grasses and leaves. Fostar ran after her and caught her arm.
“Not too far!” he warned, his voice reproduced by a resonator in the filter-mask. “We don’t know what monsters—”
As though he had summoned one, a towering bulk twenty feet high emerged from the jungle edge, a hundred yards off. Half-bear and half-dinosaur, the nameless horror lumbered forward with a screeching roar, straight for them.
“Run!” barked Fostar, shoving the girl toward the ship. Then he jerked out his blast-pistol and fired. Designed to stop the biggest beasts in the solar system, the gun’s atomic-charge sent its lightning blast against the beast’s scaly hide. A gaping, smoking wound appeared, but the monster came on, screaming its rage.
Fostar fired again and turned to run, with a hopeless feeling that he would be overtaken. He heard its hoarse pant close behind him. For all of its size, the creature was fast.
Then he heard the welcome crack of an atomic-rifle, and the beast’s small head vanished, blown to atoms. The body, still vested with life, blundered on past Fostar and the ship and back into the jungle. For another few seconds they heard its crashing progress, before it stilled.
The nightmarish incident left Fostar with shaking nerves. “Thanks, Angus,” he said simply. Alora ran trembling into his arms, too unnerved to say a word.
“This is not a world for humans,” vouched Angus Macluff, leaning on his rifle.
“No, it isn’t,” agreed Dr. Bronzun. “It would be a constant struggle for survival, till the jungles had been cleared. It was hard enough on Venus, establishing a few cities in the past 500 years. We will have to find a world much more suited for quick settlement. Come, let’s leave—”
“Look!”
It was a sharp exclamation from Alora. She was pointing up, and they saw something smooth and shiny descending from the sky.
“A ship!” gasped Dr. Bronzun. “Is it possible that other intelligence—”
“No, it’s an Earth ship!” cried Fostar. “And only one person could have brought it here—Marten Crodell!”
He looked at Alora and saw the quick alarm in her eyes. Though they had not spoken of it since leaving Earth, they had wondered if this moment would arrive—and what it would mean. What amazing relentlessness had driven the man to pursue them across greater space?
The ship, somewhat smaller than theirs, landed a hundred yards away.
A few minutes later four men stepped out, equipped with breathing masks. They advanced, stumbling for a moment in the unaccustomed gravity, but quickly recovered. The leader, tall and awkward, was Marten Crodell, his dark thin face gleaming from behind his visor. The men following wore the uniforms of Interplanetary police. All were armed with pistols held before them.
Fostar stiffened and drew his own weapon. Alora trembled at his side. Angus Macluff almost casually raised his rifle to the crook of his aim, in readiness. What strange drama of human emotions was about to be enacted under the shifting shadows and lights of p alien double sun?
The approaching party stopped fifty feet away. Marten Crodell swept his eyes over the group, his gaze lingering a moment on his daughter.
“Father!” exclaimed Alora chokingly.
“Alora, come here!” commanded the land-owner.
“I won’t!” she cried quickly. “Until you put down your guns and tell me what madness this is!”
Marten Crodell’s eyes burned across to Fostar’s, his face hard, determined. “You and your two companions are under arrest, Rolan Fostar!” he barked. “The situation hasn’t changed just because you’ve left the Solar System. My transspace drive was finished the day after you left. I’ve tracked you through space simply enough by tracing your rocket-residue. My companions are expert in that art, developed to trail pirates. There was some retracing at times because of the faintness of the trail, but now we’ve caught you and—”
“But good God!” exploded Fostar. “With the trans-space drive, you could have gone out to the Beyond yourself, and seen the truth—or at least disproved our claims, instead of wasting all this time and effort chasing us!”
Marten Crodell waved a hand. “You brought back no proof,” he reminded. “Your claims are preposterous. Convinced of that, I followed you.” His eyes burned with animosity. “I can’t forgive what you’ve done to my daughter—poisoned her mind with your own wild theories. However, back on Earth, an expedition will be sent to the Beyond, before you are convicted for your alarmist machinations.”
“But the time wasted!” groaned Fostar. “That’s why we shirked the trivial counts against us, to search for a new world. Stop to think, Marten Crodell—suppose we are right? Every golden minute wasted may mean thousands of lives lost!”
“I won’t mince words with you!” snapped the land-owner. His eyes flashed dangerously. “I said I would destroy you, Rolan Fostar. I will—if you resist!” He waved his gun eloquently.
Quick anger burned in Fostar. The motives of Marten Crodell, in the light of Earth’s fate, were blind, petty, unreasoning. But words alone would not change him.
“Marten Crodell,” said Fostar decisively, “we’re not going back to Earth!”
The land-owner glared and then stepped forward, motioning his men with him. Four menacing guns faced Fostar and his party. The first shot fired would precipitate battle—death. It seemed like an unreal nightmare.
Alora Crodell, with a low moan, had flung herself forward, as though to stand between the two parties. But suddenly she stopped, horror-struck.
It had happened with stunning rapidity. Marten Crodell’B foot had stumbled against something lying half concealed in the thick grasses over the ground. Instantly, a long, whip-like cord encircled his legs and began winding itself around his body. Slimy and worm-like, the tentacle pulled its victim to the ground, squeezing.
Before they could take warning, the other three men had stumbled into similar lianas vested with boa-constrictor-like life, and all four were writhing on the ground, shouting feebly. In seconds, their faces were purple as the powerful coils tightened like steel springs. Another of this prolific planet’s deadly life-forms had manifested itself!
With a choked cry, Alora leaped toward her father. Fostar sprang after her, and pulled her short. “Watch out—there may be others!”
“But we must help him!” moaned the girl. “He’s being—killed!”
“Stay back, all of you!” warned Fostar. Alone, he moved forward as rapidly as he dared, peering intently into the grasses before his feet. He was able to advance to within twenty feet of the captured men before he saw a thick, snakelike object across his path. It quivered as though in anticipation of a victim.
Fostar hastily followed its length with his eyes and saw where it vanished into a smooth hole in the ground. It was some sort of giant worm that lay half on the surface, waiting for chance victims!
Fostar sent a blast from his gun at the juncture of the hole. With a sucking sound, the horrible creature jerked back into its hole, but leaving its severed end writhing over the ground. With desperate haste, Fostar moved forward and cut three more of the worm-monsters in half. Then he stood before Marten Crodell, whose cries had subsided to low, breathless whimpers.
Fostar quickly found the creature’s hole and blasted with his gun. With soundless agony, the huge worm uncoiled itself and writhed away. Marten Crodell’s limp body lay still, with the marks of the constriction pressed into his clothes and throat.
Realizing that he must work fast to save the other three men, Fostar turned to them, but at that moment something jerked him off
his feet. Unwarily, he had tripped against a waiting worm-monster whose coils whipped about his body with machine-like swiftness and deadly purpose. His gun was knocked from his hand and his arms were pinned to his sides. He fell over and the crushing coils relentlessly drew tighter.
Already gasping for breath, he dimly saw Angus Macluff running toward him. Before he arrived, dancing spots were in front of Fostar’s vision and he felt his eyes and tongue protruding. Then swift and merciful blackness cut off his agony. . .
CHAPTER VIII
THE NEW WORLD
FOSTAR awoke with a pain in his chest, but otherwise sound. He found himself in his bunk, in the ship, and in the next bunk lay Marten Crodell. Angus and Alora had been tending them both. Dr. Bronzun stood at the side, with a look of relief on his face.
“You’re both all right,” pronounced the engineer, looking at his patients critically. “But a few more squeezes by that blasted worm—”
Alora left the side of her father to kiss Fostar tenderly. “You were brave!” she whispered.
Fostar looked around. There was no one else in the ship. “The other three men?” he queried.
“Gone, lad!” said Angus Macluff. “I had scarcely time to rescue you, after you had done the same for Crodell. I shot the worms that had the others, but the men were dead, life squeezed out. They had already been half-drained of blood. Vampire-worms! Ah, gentlemen, the rest of us are lucky to leave this planet alive!”
“I think we had better leave as soon as possible,” suggest Dr. Bronzun, “without even attempting to bury the men, or retrieve anything from the other ship. It’s too dangerous to step out again.”
Fostar nodded and left his bunk. He paused beside the reclining form of Marten Crodell. He was breathing heavily, and his skin still had a mottled appearance from the near strangulation he had undergone. There was lurking horror in his eyes, from his experience, but a thankfulness in them as he looked up.
“You saved my life, Fostar,” he gruffly acknowledged. “I’m obligated to you to that extent.”
“Forget it,” shrugged Fostar. He went on, earnestly. “Why can’t we be friends, Marten Crodell? It’s all been a misunderstanding between us—” He had extended his hand, but the land-owner ignored it. His hostile attitude reasserted itself. “Are you heading back for Earth?” he asked.
“This ship is going on!” stated Fostar quietly.
“Rut you’ll eventually have to go back,” hissed Crodell. “And back on Earth, we’ll have a reckoning!” Fostar shook his head wearily. “You don’t realize—” he began, then started again. “All right, but for the present, you can have the freedom of the ship, if you promise not to oppose us in any way.”
“I’ll neither help nor hinder you in your fanciful searchings for a new world!” retorted the landowner with fine scorn.
UNDER this truce, the party of five went on in its cosmic search in the crowded star-cluster. Each star they visited gave them renewed hope, only to prove bitter disappointment. Many had no planetary systems. Those that did displayed circling worlds whose utterly alien environments could not be a home to the human race. An air of hopelessness rode with the ship.
Alora tried to be optimistic, though at times her amber eyes were dulled and apathetic. Dr. Bronzun searched the heavens with a weary patience, picking out their course from sun to sun. Marten Crodell watched with a cynical indifference. He spoke little, even to his daughter. Between them was a barrier of estrangement, human nature being what it was.
Fostar felt a brooding dread of the future stealing over him, with their many disappointments. There should be many ships searching, plumbing the stars. Finding a world was such a small part of it, anyway. After that, the bigger tasks remained—building transport ships, settling the new world, solving the thousand and one new problems that would arise when mankind changed its age-old home.
And there was so little time! The doom was so near!
Angus Macluff’s mutterings were doleful in the extreme. “It is too much to hope for,” he would often say. “We will never find a suitable world!”
And then, as though his every dire prophecy must be contradicted, they found it!
Two weary months had gone by before they came upon this yellow star whose warm light filled their cabin with a beautiful golden glow.
“Spectral class GO!” observed Dr. Bronzun excitedly, busy with his instruments. “Just slightly bigger and hotter than Sol. And it has several planets in comparable positions!”
Pulses throbbing, they approached, passing the orbits of several cold, outermost planets. Two of them were ringed like Saturn, striking a familiar note of one of them had five great moons. The fifth outward planet glinted redly, something like Mars, though it had a moon so big that it was almost a binary planet, rather than primary and satellite.
The first two planets, on the same side of the sun, were cloudy and veiled, like twin Venuses. In the next orbit, as a surprise, was a gigantic planet, with a dozen attendant satellites. It was like a misplaced Jupiter, with heavy bands of vari-colored atmosphere.
More and more it looked like the Solar System somewhat rearranged, and when, on the other side of the sun, they came upon the fourth planet, its two polar ice-caps and blue halo of atmosphere stabbed through their hearts.
There, to judge by appearances alone, lay a world one might mistake for Earth itself!
“It’s beautiful—unbelievable!” Alora was murmuring, with a catch in her voice.
“The exact prototype of Earth, as seen from a space-ship,” whispered Fostar.
“Looks are deceiving,” grumbled Angus Macluff dourly. “It might have a poisonous atmosphere!”
Dr. Bronzun looked up from his spectroscope. “No, Angus,” he vouched. “The atmosphere is like Earth’s to a remarkable degree. Distance from this sun, about 100 million miles. Temperature and climate must be similar, too, and it has about the same inclination of the axis!” His voice held a low eagerness. “I think this world will prove a new Earth!”
Fostar stared moodily. “And that brings up the question of previous intelligent life!” Glances were exchanged, but no further comment was made on the subject, though it loomed large now.
The landscape they were cruising over a few hours later was lushly green, dimpled with lakes sparkling in the sunshine. Forests and widespread verdure gave evidence of a rich soil. A lofty mountain range climbed over the horizon and the basin beyond was rolling prairie, splayed by silvery threads of rivers.
The setting was arboreal, peaceful and somehow—unfulfilled. So like Earth it was that they had been half expecting cities, farms, winding roads. But no sign of civilization greeted them.
Dr. Bronzun heaved a sigh of relief. “A world, waiting for us!”
“What’s that up ahead?” Alora was pointing.
Something grayish and widespread lay half-concealed by vegetation, shadowed by great trees. Fostar spiraled the ship over it and they saw it to be a collection of hoary ruins, of some once-great city. Drawn by a natural curiosity as they all were, Fostar made a landing in a clear grassy area at the outskirts of the dead city.
The air they breathed, when they stepped out, had the heavenly scent of a clean, bright world, filled with the good things of nature. Warm, tingling sunlight bathed their skins and a cool breeze whispered through nearby trees. The soil, black and rich, crunched underfoot. Off in the distance, snow-capped mountains sparkled and seemed to look down benignly.
“A new Earth!” Dr. Bronzun said, confirming his previous conjecture.
“And perhaps a better one!” added Fostar, filling his lungs again and again.
But Alora, close at his side, trembled a little. “I have a strange feeling that we’re being—watched!” she murmured, flicking her eyes nervously over their surroundings.
“Feminine intuition?” laughed Fostar. “There are probably animals in the forest, eyeing us. But we’ve seen that no higher life-forms rule the planet.”
“But those ruins!” grumbled
Angus Macluff, staring at them. “No present civilization, and the ruins of a former one—what’s the answer? Mark my words, gentlemen, all is not as simple as it looks!”
“We’ll look over those ruins,” said Dr. Bronzun. “They strike an incongruous note in this propitious environment.”
Fostar nodded, but his eyes were bright. “I can already picture a new city rising on this site—many cities, over this world, inhabited by transplanted mankind.” He met the dark eyes of Marten Crodell.
The land-owner smiled thinly. “A splendid colony world,” he acknowledged, looking around as though surveying a future addition to his holdings.
CHAPTER IX
THE PLANET BEINOS
AN HOUR later, after eating, they stepped out again, save for Marten Crodell. Still contemptuous of their purpose, he watched them leave with glittering eyes.
Fostar led the way toward the ruins. Lightly clothed, they enjoyed the exhilaration of open air, unconfined spaces. Though armed, they had no sense of danger in the peaceful setting. The bright, overhead sun shafted down pleasantly.
A few hundred yards from the ship, they came to the first of the ruins. Half-tumbled walls of stone threw cool shadows over piled-up debris. Here and there a skeleton tower of some stubborn metal up-reared, with gaping spaces leering like empty eye-sockets. They looked down a wide avenue whose torn, uprooted paving suggested repeated bombings. Had warfare visited this once great city of some intelligent race of beings?
It was a mystery that defied casual inspection. Over everything lay the thick dust of centuries and the crawling green of lichenous plants. They peered into empty spaces that might once have been chambers. All sign of the inhabitants and their paraphernalia had vanished, disintegrated by time.
The four humans moved along on the eerie atmosphere of the place. Even Angus Macluff found no appropriate words for the occasion.
Alora stopped suddenly, looking back half-longingly at their ship, which was barely visible behind rock heaps. “I feel—eyes!” she breathed, shuddering. “Eyes watching our every move!”