Jupiter Jones, naked and helpless in the slime of
that vile world, cursed the space warp that had
flung him down among its groveling mutants. For
their rising, excited whispers proclaimed him a
knight in shining armor--the bright weapon in his
hands their only hope against the terrible octopods!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Winter 1949.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The Mizar, a glittering needle with stubby, backswept wings, hurtled
out of deep space, arced into orbital flight a thousand kilometers
above the surface of the planet. The starship had approached from the
night side. Now, as it decelerated rapidly, it flashed into the raw
orange daylight of the planet's K1 type sun, angled downward into the
stratosphere.
Inside the Mizar's control blister, Jupiter Jones lifted red-rimmed
eyes to the fuel gauge. It showed only a few centigrams left. Little
more than enough to land.
He swore under his breath, hunched lower over the controls, a long,
loose-framed man with a shock of red hair and vivid green eyes. The
olive uniform of the Galactic Colonization Board was wrinkled as if
it had been slept in, and he had allowed his beard to grow. The bushy
orange-red mass of it hid his face almost to the eyes.
He was alone in the ship. He'd been alone, operating the Mizar
single-handed since Briggs, his co-pilot, had gone crazy and killed
himself.
It had been a damned inconsiderate thing for Briggs to do, Jones felt.
Not that he could altogether blame the co-pilot.
They had blundered into a space warp beyond Alpha Centaurus. The Mizar
had been flung into an uncharted region of the cosmos, hundreds,
perhaps thousands of parsecs from Sol. Hopelessly lost, the chance of
ever finding their way back to Earth had been slimmer than trying to
locate one certain atom of oxygen in Earth's envelope of air. Briggs
had cracked under the strain.
When the co-pilot had failed to relieve him at the end of his watch,
Jupiter Jones had switched the controls over to "George," the robot
pilot, and had gone in search of him. He'd found Briggs dead in his
bunk. An analysis of his stomach had revealed that he'd taken cyanide.
There had been no note. Nothing.
He had recorded the tragedy in the log along with a biting opinion of
the Psychiatric Board for allowing a man with a flaw in his psychosis
to be assigned to advance exploration. Then he'd heaved the body out
the refuse port.
Well, he was still lost, Jupiter Jones reflected savagely. Fortunately
though, he'd discovered this huge K1 type sun with its system of seven
planets while he still had fuel enough to reach it.
Spectroscopic observations had revealed that the second planet
possessed an atmosphere high in oxygen and showing traces of water
vapor. It was a small world about the size of Mars and uncomfortably
close to its flaming orange sun, but it had been his only bet.
He glanced obliquely at the fuel gauge again. His lips thinned, and he
dropped his eyes to the scanner.
Immediately, the surface seemed to bounce up at him. Dense jungles. The
sheen of an inland sea. The terrain flowed past like an immense relief
map.
Then he saw the city.
* * * * *
It rose at the edge of the sea, all turrets and spires and battlements
like a walled medieval town. He caught a glimpse of quays with ships
warped against them, of cultivated fields like a vast checkerboard.
Then the Mizar had flashed past. The city seemed to dwindle and vanish,
only the sparkle of orange sunlight on the spires lingering an instant
longer.
Jupiter Jones blew out his breath. His first reaction had been to swing
the Mizar around, but caution prevailed. He was too old a hand at
Galactic exploration to burst unannounced on an alien culture.
The terrain below had been growing progressively rougher. Just ahead a
range of mountains reared saw-edged peaks into the clouds. He nursed
the Mizar along until the gorges fell away beneath him like blue-green
troughs. There was no sign of habitation anywhere.
He braked and banked, spiraling lower and lower, dropping into a deep
valley with a river cutting through it like a silver thread. At the
last moment, he frantically buckled himself down and cut in "George".
Flame bellowed around the Mizar as the automatic landing jets burst
into life. With a fierce crackling roar the star ship sliced through
the tangled vegetation, came to rest a hundred meters from the river.
Jupiter Jones threw off the safety straps, stood up, feeling a tingle
of excitement take hold of him.
He was down, the ship resting on the crust of a strange world. A world
that might well be his home for the rest of his natural life.
It was a dismaying thought.
With gravity dragging at his feet once more, he moved to the
transparent rind of the thermoplas blister and stared out.
The landing jets had charred a huge swathe in the vegetation, charred
it to the finest ash and baked the ground like brick, leaving a wall of
jungle hemming the ship in.
Nothing moved.
He flicked on the outside amplifiers, but the silence was tomb-like.
The thunder of his descent must have frightened off all the wild life.
He was conscious of a cumulative weariness like an ache. Experience
had taught him the necessity of being fresh before venturing into an
alien environment. He entered his landing in the log, switched on the
electronic alarm.
"Let 'George' keep watch," he thought. "George's" senses were keener
than any human's, and "George" could be depended on!
With a last glance at the dark mass of jungle, he climbed down the
ladder to the cabin, flung himself into his bunk.
He was awakened by the wild ringing of the alarm bell.
* * * * *
Jupiter Jones sprang from his bunk. It seemed as if his head had barely
touched the pillow; but as he yanked himself through the well to the
control blister above, he saw that night had fallen.
The bluish pallor of the riding lights illuminated the instruments.
Through the skin of the blister, he could see the black vault of the
heavens sparkling with unfamiliar constellations. But that was all. The
Mizar, itself, seemed to be lying in a vale of tar-like darkness.
The clamor of the bell never abated. It drowned out any sound that
might be coming through the amplifiers.
He shut it off. As the ringing fell silent, he could hear coughing
grunts. The hair on the nape of his neck rose like the hackles of a dog
and he switched on the floodlights.
Instantly the burn blazed with a fierce white illumination. He caught a
glimpse of a dozen startled figures at the edge of the jungle!
They were human--in shape at least--tall, kilted men with long red
hair and copper colored features. Blinded by the light they stood in
postures of frozen surprise.
Staring out from the darkened blister, Jupiter Jones thought he'd
never seen such feral savagery as was reflected in their expressions.
Like--like mad wolves! They were armed with bows. Swords dangled from
harness over their backs. Two of them carried a litter.
A frown clouded Jupiter's face.
The litter-bearers belonged to a different race. They were squat,
naked, powerful brutes, their slick hides tinged a greenish cast. But
it wasn't altogether that. The pair had a passive, resigned look like
oxen.
Like the beasts of burden they appeared to be, he thought. Probably
a slave race. Then his whole attention was focused on the fantastic
creature in the litter.
It was no bigger than a large monkey. Eight spidery arms sprouted from
its grotesque body which was covered with a glittering purple shell
like a huge mollusk. Jupiter Jones noted these details almost before
the creatures recovered from their surprise at the blinding light. His
first impression of the purple-shelled octopod in the litter had been
that it must be a captive.
Then the octopod raised a silver tube to an orifice in its head, blew a
single, piercing note.
The two slate-green porters wheeled and bore the thing off into the
jungle. The half dozen naked, copper-skinned warriors followed hard on
their heels for all the world like a pack of fox hounds.
He wiped the sweat from his forehead.
Lord, he thought; what was that thing? Could it have been the dominant
life form?
He switched out the floodlights, reset the alarm. His first exultation
at finding a habitable and inhabited world began to give way to a
gnawing distrust.
Suddenly the darkness appeared malignant, concealing hosts of savage
brute-men, unguessable horrors. There was the feel of movement out
there. He heard something grunt and thrash in the underbrush followed
by a squealing noise like a stuck pig.
He shivered, glanced at the photo-electric chronometer.
The sun had set at nine hours, Earth time, he saw. It was fifteen
o'clock now. He had ascertained the rotation of the planet while still
out in space and knew it wouldn't be light for three hours yet.
He set himself to the task that had occupied him during every leisure
moment since the warp had hurled the Mizar beyond the known regions of
space--charting the stars in an effort to locate himself.
But he couldn't concentrate. He kept listening subconsciously for any
untoward sound of the world outside.
* * * * *
His real name was Jones RV860-09-34271. The Jupiter had been pinned on
because he had been marooned once on that planet for three months and
had lived to tell about it.
There were two things which Jupiter especially didn't like. He didn't
like men; and he didn't like women.
He prided himself on being self-sufficient and tough--and he was tough,
morally tough, and physically and intellectually tough. He had grown up
in the stews of Venusport, fending for himself since the age of nine.
Because he'd never seen the stars, he'd had one consuming ambition--to
go to space.
He had studied, worked and fought his way through the Galactic
Colonization Board's Institute of Technology. The Institute was a
hard school. The men of the advance exploratory units, the special
corpsmen, had to be well versed in all sciences from astro-physics to
zoomorphology.
No one had believed that Jupiter could make it. Briggs, who had been an
upper classman, had ridden him unmercifully. All of which had merely
crystallized his determination. In the end he'd graduated with top
honors.
It was the same sort of determination that sustained him at this moment.
Jupiter had long since reached the dismaying conclusion that the Mizar
had been swept entirely beyond the local system, even beyond any of the
adjacent star clusters. That was the final straw that had caused Briggs
to crack.
At the thought of Briggs, Jupiter Jones spat into the waste chute and
arranged his lank frame before the powerful electronic telescope with
which all the ships of advance exploration were equipped. But he didn't
use it right away. Instead, he gazed upward at the star-encrusted
heavens.
The milky way, he saw, began down near the horizon, though it climbed
less than a third of the way up into the sky. The rest of that
tremendous path was blotted out by an inky blackness.
He tugged at his beard. There was something familiar about that black
pall, and he turned to the star charts again.
Sure enough the "rift", a dark nebula, split the milky way from the
constellations of Centaurus to Cygnus!
He must be very close to it, perhaps within a few light years, for it
to blot out so much of the super galaxy. But was it the same one? There
were hundreds of these dark nebulae. And even if it was, on what side
of it was he in relation to Earth?
His elation slowly ebbed.
Pulling out his notes, he recommenced the endless task of mapping the
universe. He kept hard at it until the giant orange sun had suffused
the sky with a saffron light, blotting out the stars.
The Mizar was only one of many such units probing the local star
system in search of habitable worlds. Their role in the long Galactic
Colonization plan was to make a superficial examination: vegetation,
atmosphere, dominant life form if any and report their findings. Later,
depending on the reports of these advance units, the real exploration
by staffs of specialists commenced.
Although Jupiter was sure the planet was too many light years off ever
to be colonized, he entered the composition of the air in the log from
force of habit.
He broke out the emergency pack, selected a semi-automatic carbine
from the Mizar's arsenal. He added electroscope, geiger counter, ultra
violet ray lamp and prospecting tools to the load. If he ever were
to lift the Mizar from the surface again, he must find a deposit of
uranium or thorium bearing minerals.
Then he shaved off his great red beard, revealing a hard face, bold
featured with a wide, thin-lipped mouth. He slung the load to his
shoulders, opened the main port.
A strong saffron sunlight beat into his eyes as he let himself to the
ground. He stood still a moment, feeling the dirt press against the
soles of his feet, examining the blank hostile wall of jungle, tasting
the moist warm air.
Bird-like creatures flitted through the foliage. The vegetation looked
mesozoic with its great pulpy stems and fern-like fronds. One of the
bird things sailed overhead. It was apple green and appeared as if it
might be some freakish symbiosis of plant and animal.
Damn Briggs, he thought for the hundredth time. It was suicidal to
attempt the exploration of a strange world alone!