Planet of Death

by Robert Silverberg

  Hendrin said, “As you may have heard already, this is going to be a regular six-month exploration trip. We’re going to work in the Andromeda galaxy. We’re beginning with World Seven of Star System Z-16. It’s a jungle world, and it may keep us busy for the full six months. If it doesn’t, we’ll move on to some other planet. Our orders are to survey and give names to as many planets as we can.”

  Nodding, Crawford said, “It sounds fine to me.”

  Hendrin pointed to the others. “These are the men you’ll be working with.” He introduced them, calling off their names quickly. They represented many sciences. A man named Lazenby was a biologist, Grover was a botanist, Chung a geologist, Dorwin a chemist, Bartlett an anthropologist, Murray a mapmaker, and Evans a radio-communications man. The ship’s doctor was named Fernandez.

  Crawford didn’t catch all the names the first time around. But it didn’t matter. He’d be living with these men for the next six months. There would be plenty of time to get to know them.

  Lazenby, the biologist, said, “Come with me, Markham. I’ll show you to your quarters.”

  Crawford followed him down a ladder into the heart of the ship. Lazenby was a slim, stoop-shouldered man about forty years old. He had a soft voice and mild eyes that hid behind thick glasses. In many ways he reminded Crawford of Jeff Hallam.

  “Here you are,” Lazenby said. “It’s not very large, but it ought to do. I guess you’re used to cabins like this one by now.”

  “Oh — yes,” Crawford said. “Naturally.” He had to pretend he had been on lots of Exploration Corps ships. But of course this was the first time he had ever been aboard one.

  Lazenby said, “How many expeditions have you made before this?”

  Lazenby asked the question as a way of making friends, not as a trap. Crawford wasn’t sure what to say, though. So he simply grinned and said, “To tell you the truth, I’ve lost count.”

  “I know what you mean,” said Lazenby. “One trip just blurs into the next. Well, I think we’re in for an interesting time this trip.”

  “I hope so. I’m happy to be aboard. You don’t know how happy I am.”

  Lazenby went up front again, leaving Crawford to get settled. He unpacked the few belongings he had brought with him. So far, so good, he thought. Nobody realized that he wasn’t Paul Markham. And in a little while it would be too late to do anything about it.

  It seemed to him that a hundred years passed before blast-off time. Would the ship never leave? What were they waiting for?

  But then at last came Captain Hendrin’s voice over the loudspeaker:

  “We’re blasting off in five minutes. All hands strap down for blast-off.”

  Crawford fastened his safety belts and waited for the last five minutes to tick away. The final signal came. He closed his eyes.

  The ship lifted from the ground. The rockets roared. Up into the sky they zoomed.

  He had made it! He was safely off Velliran! He would not go to prison!

  He was outward bound!

  CHAPTER 4

  FIRST MAN ON WORLD SEVEN

  The first few days aboard the ship, Crawford did a lot of listening and not much talking. He was afraid of giving himself away. Even though it was too late for the ship to turn back to Velliran, he did not want the truth to come out. He wanted everyone to think he was Paul Markham until the end of the journey.

  Actually, it wasn’t as hard to pretend as he had feared. He had read plenty of stories about the exciting adventures of Exploration Corps men. All he had to do was remember the details of the stories.

  That gave him a fair idea of what the normal routine on ship was like.

  Of course, he didn’t know a thing about ecology. And he was supposed to be an ecologist. But the ship had a good scientific library. In his free time he made use of it. He took out book-tapes on ecology and played them when no one else was around. That way, he learned some of the words he should know.

  The job of the Exploration Corps was to take a look at all the worlds in the universe. It was now known that there were billions of planets. Most of them did not have intelligent people living on them — just wild beasts.

  If a planet had no civilization of its own, Earth could plant a colony there. Of course, there could not be a colony on a planet like Velliran, because Velliran was already inhabited. The Earthmen who lived on Velliran were there by permission of the Vellirani people. But if a planet had no civilization, Earth was free to claim it.

  The ships of the Exploration Corps went out to study these worlds. The Corpsmen had to file a full report on each planet with the computer known as Central Control. This vast electronic brain kept records of all the worlds in the universe.

  What the Exploration Corps had to decide was whether a world was good enough for a colony. Did it have good weather? Would the soil yield rich crops? What kind of animal life was there? Was there a supply of fresh water? Could the air be breathed by Earthmen?

  All this had to be learned and reported. Then, if Central Control agreed, a colony could be sent out. Hundreds of men and women would come to the new world to live. These pioneers would build towns and start to farm. In time there would be great cities where the first towns had been.

  Crawford’s job, as the expedition’s ecologist, was to study the life of World Seven. He had to see how the plants and animals could best be put to use by the colonists. From what he had read in the tapes, he knew that his job was an important one. His thoughts would help decide whether a colony of Earthmen should come to World Seven or not.

  He felt bad because he was not really a scientist. It was unfair to the other men, he knew. Part of the survey job would go undone because the real Paul Markham was not there.

  Yet it had also been unfair to find him guilty for a crime he had not done. It had been necessary to get off Velliran or else. There had been no time to argue about the rights and wrongs of it. So here he was. It was too bad that he could not really help the scientists. But he had had to escape.

  And maybe he could be of some help after all. He hoped so. His sharp eyes and quick trigger finger might be useful. They were going to a wild, dangerous planet. As a trained hunter, he might be able to protect the real scientists.

  It took three weeks to get from Velliran to World Seven. For the first two days the ship traveled on ordinary rocket drive. Then, when it was far enough from Velliran so there would be no danger, it shifted to its special overdrive.

  Overdrive allowed a ship to get from star to star quickly. An ordinary rocketship would need many years to make such a journey. A ship going on overdrive could travel billions of miles in a few weeks.

  As they neared the Andromeda galaxy, they snapped back into ordinary drive.

  Roy Crawford stared out the porthole at the bright sparkling stars.

  “The universe is so big,” he murmured. “So big we can’t even imagine what it’s like!”

  Out there lay millions of stars. Each star had a few planets circling it. It made him dizzy to think of all those millions and millions of worlds.

  Earth could send out Exploration Corps ships from now to the end of time and still not be able to visit all those planets. The sky was full of stars. How far out did they go? How many billions of stars existed?

  The ship moved in toward Star System Z-16.

  It was a group of eleven planets around a bright yellow star. The yellow star looked very much like Earth’s own sun. The sun and this star were the same size and the same color. It was a little like coming home to Earth to see a yellow star again. The star that was Velliran’s sun gave orange light.

  Now the eleven planets of Star System Z-16 were very close. They looked like colored globes spinning in space. Two of them had rings like the planet Saturn. One of the others was so close to the yellow sun that it would be too hot to live on.

  “We’re landing first on World Seven,” Captain Hendrin said.

  The ship swung into orbit and headed down to land.

  The land
ing was beautiful. The slender ship seemed to float down on its rocket blast. It hung for a moment about ten feet above the ground. Then slowly it touched down.

  Before anyone could go outside, the air had to be tested. Not every planet had air that Earthmen could breathe. On some worlds there was no oxygen in the air. On some worlds the air contained poisonous gases. They had to check carefully first.

  A small section of the ship opened, and a metal tube poked out. Air was drawn into the tube. Then it was sealed and pulled back into the ship.

  Dorwin, the expedition’s chemist, tested the sample of air in his laboratory. He checked it and double-checked it. After an hour he came out of the laboratory.

  “It’s fine,” he declared. “It’s about 25% oxygen and 68% nitrogen. Plus small amounts of other gases. We ought to be able to breathe it without any trouble.”

  Everyone sighed with relief. If the air had been poisonous, they would have had to do their exploring wearing spacesuits. It was never very comfortable to walk around inside a bulky, hot spacesuit. Now they could go outside without special breathing equipment.

  “Okay,” Captain Hendrin said. “Now we pick a man to go outside and take a look.”

  Only one man would go out on this first trip. It was too risky to send more than one. If the first man came back alive, the others would go out.

  The Captain opened a box of straws. He took out ten straws and tore one so it was shorter than the others. Then he stuck all ten straws in his fist. The way he did it, no one could tell which was the short straw.

  “Everybody pick a straw,” he said. “Short straw goes outside.”

  Somehow Crawford had a funny feeling that he was the one who was going to pick the short straw. He didn’t know why. It was just his kind of luck.

  He pulled a straw from Captain Hendrin’s fist. Sure enough, it was the short one. He stood grining at it foolishly.

  “Guess I’m the lucky one,” he said.

  The Captain smiled. “Well, it’s good that the ecologist will be the first one out. You can get a head start on your work that way.”

  Crawford carried weapons with him when he went outside. He strapped a little blast-gun to each hip and put a needle-gun in a shoulder-holster. Just for good measure he fastened a wicked-looking hunting knife to his belt.

  “That ought to do it,” he said. “Anything that starts trouble with me will get plenty of trouble right back.”

  He rode the ship’s elevator down to the airlock in the tail. The airlock opened. The other Earthmen would be watching him from the portholes. But he was strictly on his own.

  He took a look at the world outside the ship.

  He saw purplish grass all around. The ship had come down in a little grassy clearing. About a hundred yards away, the jungle began. It looked thick and strange. The trees were very tall and were woven together by a network of vines.

  Crawford took his first step outside the airlock. He looked carefully around. It was very warm here. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead. Sweat dribbled down into his eyebrows. He flicked it away, annoyed.

  He wondered if it was really the heat that was making him sweat like this. Or was it the fact that he was the first man to set foot on an unknown world? Who knew what terrible monsters were hiding in that jungle?

  Very quickly, Roy Crawford found out what World Seven of Star System Z-16 was like.

  He took three steps away from the ship. He walked slowly through the purplish grass. He looked around in all directions and kept his hand on his needle-gun.

  Then something came bounding out of the jungle at a mile a minute. Crawford had no time to fire. He didn’t even have time to think. The creature charged him. It banged into him and knocked him to the ground.

  The needle-gun went flying out of his hand. He got up, feeling groggy, and reached for the weapon. The animal had run right past him and was turning around.

  Crawford took a good look at the whatever-it-was. It was about as tall as a man. It had a huge head, a small middle, and a pair of giant kangaroo-like legs. He saw the flash of white teeth that were as long as his fingers. He stared into big red eyes. The animal had yellow skin, covered with scales.

  It had turned around, and now it charged a second time.

  The powerful kangaroo-like legs tightened. The animal hopped forward. It covered an enormous amount of ground with each hop.

  Crawford tried to get out of the way. But he couldn’t move fast enough. The thing bashed into him a second time and knocked him down again.

  A moment later the animal was on top of him.

  The big feet were planted right in the middle of his chest. Looking up, Crawford saw the glittering teeth. The animal had tiny little arms, but they had sharp claws. In another moment those claws would be digging into his flesh. Those teeth would be taking big bites.

  There wouldn’t be any time for the men in the ship to help him. He couldn’t draw his own weapons. He was pinned flat on the ground. The weight of the animal was tremendous.

  The shining, spike-like teeth came close to his throat.

  Crawford shut his eyes and waited to die.

  And then he felt the heavy weight lifting from his chest. The teeth did not touch him. He could hardly believe it. He opened his eyes and looked up.

  Some other monster had come out of the jungle and had caught the one that had attacked Crawford. The second animal had grabbed the first one up and was about to eat it! Staring up, Crawford saw his attacker dangling in midair.

  He was saved — for the moment, anyway.

  CHAPTER 5

  PLANET OF MONSTERS

  Lying sprawled in the grass, Crawford took a good look at the beast that had saved him.

  He could hardly believe his eyes.

  This monster was tall and thin, maybe fifteen feet high and less than a foot wide. It looked like a walking telescope, green all over. It had two tremendously long arms that reached almost to the ground, and a pair of tiny legs tucked away below. At the very top were three slit-like eyes and something that looked like a cluster of flower petals.

  One of the long dangling arms had stretched out and pulled the animal off Crawford’s chest. The arm had lifted the hopping creature high into the air — toward the cluster of petals.

  Crawford scrambled to his feet. He stepped back against the ship and watched. The beast with the teeth and the strong hind legs was kicking and squirming. But the walking telescope had a good grip on it, and wasn’t letting go.

  As Crawford stared, the animal rose higher and higher. Then the skinny arm held it over the petal cluster on the top. The arm let go.

  The petals spread wide and turned into a mouth. One gulp, and the big kicking animal was inside the walking telescope.

  There was a live and kicking lump in the telescope-animal’s long throat. Then that lump began to sink toward the animal’s stomach. It was a horrible sight to watch. Crawford shuddered.

  Even though the kangaroo-animal had wanted to eat him, Crawford was shaken up to see this. Death was swift and sudden on this jungle planet.

  The telescope-creature seemed to be enjoying its meal. The lump in its narrow throat disappeared. The telescope folded its long arms around its middle. It hugged itself happily and did a little dance. Then it waddled back into the jungle.

  Crawford didn’t stay around to meet any more visitors. He turned around and ducked inside the ship. He slammed the outer door shut to keep anything else from coming in.

  Quickly he went up the elevator to the top. The other nine men looked glad to see him.

  “That was pretty close,” said Captain Hendrin. “You were lucky, Markham.”

  Crawford nodded. “I sure was. We didn’t get a very friendly welcome to World Seven, did we?”

  Everybody would have to keep his eyes open all the time. There was no telling when some dangerous beast would strike.

  “Are you all right?” Lazenby asked.

  Crawford grinned at the little biologist. “Now I am,” he said
. “Not a scratch on me. But I didn’t feel so good with that thing sitting on me.”

  “We saw the whole thing,” said Dr. Fernandez. He was a heavy-set man with black hair and huge eyebrows. “You didn’t have a chance, Markham. That beast moved a mile a minute.”

  Nodding, Crawford said, “It was a lucky thing for me that the other cutie-pie came along. Otherwise I’d have been down his throat ten minutes ago. Ugh!”

  He wiped the sweat from his forehead and looked through the viewscreen at the dark jungle. It was like a wall of green leaves where the clearing ended. A foggy cloud hung low in the sky.

  “This is a rough world,” Lazenby said. The biologist looked pale and nervous. “It’s a young world. Life is cheap here.”

  “We can all get killed out there in no time,” said Bartlett, who was a big man with bulging muscles. Bartlett was the anthropologist. That meant he was supposed to study any intelligent creatures that might live on this planet.

  Captain Hendrin said, “Yes, it’s plenty dangerous out there. We’d better operate in teams when we go out to explore. Nobody goes alone. And we’ll have to be heavily armed. Wide-beam blasters for everyone. There’s no telling what horrible monsters are lurking in that jungle.”

  Crawford was still shaking a little. That sudden meeting with the big-toothed creature hadn’t done his nerves any good. He looked at Captain Hendrin and said, “Maybe we’d better just pull up off this planet, Captain. It’s too dangerous for us. Nobody’s going to be able to settle on a planet with animals like that!”

  Hendrin looked surprised. “What kind of nonsense are you talking, Markham?”

  Crawford wished he hadn’t said anything. After all, he wasn’t really a member of this expedition. He was no scientist. What right did he have to suggest that they should leave the planet?

  But he stuck to his guns, as long as he had started to speak. He said, “We ought to go on to some of the other planets in the system, I think. Maybe they’ll be more friendly. This place is too rough.”

  Captain Hendrin stared straight at him. All the friendliness was gone from the Captain’s face. He didn’t look easygoing any more.