When morning came, its arrival was the exact reversal of the coming of
night. In the beginning there was darkness, and in the darkness there
was horror.
The creatures of the night untiringly filled the air with sound, and the
sounds were discordant and gruesome and revolting. The creatures of this
planet were gigantic. They should have adopted new customs appropriate
to the dignity of their increased size. But they hadn't. The manners and
customs of insects are immutable. They feed upon specific prey--spiders
are an exception, but they are not insects at all--and they lay their
eggs in specific fashion in specific places, and they behave according
to instincts which are so detailed as to leave them no choice at all in
their actions. They move blindly about, reacting like automata of
infinite complexity which are capable of nothing not built into them
from the beginning. Centuries and millenia do not change them. Travel
across star-clusters leaves them with exactly the capacities for
reaction that their remotest ancestors had, before men lifted off
ancient Earth's green surface.
The first sign of dawn was deep, deep, deepest red in the cloud-bank no
more than fifteen hundred feet overhead. The red became brighter, and
presently was as brilliant as dried blood. Again presently it was
crimson over all the half-mile circle that human eyes could penetrate.
Later still--but briefly--it was pink. Then the sky became gray. From
that color it did not change again.
Moran joined Burleigh in a survey of the landscape from the
control-room. The battlefield was empty now. Of the thousands upon
thousands of stinking combatants who'd rent and torn each other the
evening before, there remained hardly a trace. Here and there, to be
sure, a severed saw-toothed leg remained. There were perhaps as many as
four relatively intact corpses not yet salvaged. But something was being
done about them.
There were tiny, brightly-banded beetles hardly a foot long which
labored industriously over such frayed objects. They worked agitatedly
in the yeasty stuff which on this world took the place of soil. They
excavated, beneath the bodies of the dead ants, hollows into which those
carcasses could descend. They pushed the yeasty, curdy stuff up and
around the sides of those to-be-desired objects. The dead warriors sank
little by little toward oblivion as the process went on. The up-thrust,
dug-out material collapsed upon them as they descended. In a very
little while they would be buried where no larger carrion-eater would
discover them, and then the brightly-colored sexton beetles would begin
a banquet to last until only fragments of chitinous armor remained.
* * * * *
But Moran and Burleigh, in the _Nadine's_ control-room, could hardly
note such details.
"You saw the cargo," said Burleigh, frowning. "How's it packed? The
bessendium, I mean."
"It's in small boxes too heavy to be handled easily," said Moran.
"Anyhow the _Malabar's_ crew broke some of them open to load the stuff
on their lifeboats."
"The lifeboats are all gone?"
"Naturally," said Moran. "At a guess they'd have used all of them even
if they didn't need them for the crew. They could carry extra food and
weapons and such."
"How much bessendium is left?"
"Probably twenty boxes unopened," said Moran. "I can't guess at the
weight, but it's a lot. They opened six boxes." He paused. "I have a
suggestion."
"What?"
"When you've supplied yourselves," said Moran, "leave some space-port
somewhere with papers saying you're going to hunt for minerals on some
plausible planet. You can get such a clearance. Then you can return with
bessendium coming out of the _Nadine's_ waste-pipes and people will be
surprised but not suspicious. You'll file for mineral rights, and cash
your cargo. Everybody will get busy trying to grab off the mineral
rights for themselves. You can clear out and let them try to find the
bessendium lode. You'll be allowed to go, all right, and you can settle
down somewhere rich and highly respected."
"Hmmm," said Burleigh. Then he said uncomfortably; "One wonders about
the original owners of the stuff."
"After a hundred and fifty years," said Moran, "who'd you divide with?
The insurance company that paid for the lost ship? The heirs of the
crew? How'd you find them?" Then he added amusedly, "Only revolutionists
and enemies of governments would be honest enough to worry about that!"
Brawn came into the control-room. He said broodingly that breakfast was
ready. Moran had never heard him speak in a normally cheerful voice.
When he went out, Moran said;
"I don't suppose he'll be so gloomy when he's rich!"
"His family was wiped out," said Burleigh curtly, "by the government we
were fighting. The girl he was going to marry, too."
"Then I take back what I said," said Moran ruefully.
* * * * *
They went down to breakfast. Carol served it. She did not look well. Her
eyes seemed to show that she'd been crying. But she treated Moran
exactly like anyone else. Harper was very quiet, too. He took very
seriously the fact that Moran had saved his life at the risk of his on
the day before. Brawn breakfasted in a subdued, moody fashion. Only
Hallet seemed to have reacted to the discovery of a salvageable shipment
of bessendium that should make everybody rich,--everybody but Moran, who
was ultimately responsible for the find.
"Burleigh," said Hallet expansively, "says the stuff you brought back
from the wreck is worth fifty thousand credits, at least. What's the
whole shipment worth?"
"I've no idea," said Moran. "It would certainly pay for a fleet of
space-liners, and I'd give all of it for a ticket on one of them."
"But how much is there in bulk?" insisted Hallet.
"I saw that half a dozen boxes had been broken open and emptied for the
lifeboat voyagers," Moran told him. "I didn't count the balance, but
there were several times as many untouched. If they're all full of the
same stuff, you can guess almost any sum you please."
"Millions, eh?" said Hallet. His eyes glistened. "Billions? Plenty for
everybody?"
"There's never plenty for more than one," said Moran mildly. "That's the
way we seem to be made."
Burleigh said suddenly;
"I'm worried about getting the stuff aboard. We can't afford to lose
anybody, and if we have to fight the creatures here and every time we
kill one its carcass draws others."
Moran took a piece of bread. He said;
"I've been thinking about survival-tactics for myself as a castaway. I
think a torch is the answer. In any emergency on the yeast surface, I
can burn a hole and drop down in it. The monsters are stupid. In most
cases they'll go away because they stop seeing me. In the others,
they'll come to the hole and I'll burn them. It won't be pleasant, but
it may be practical."
Burleigh considered it.
"It may be," he admitted. "It may be."
Hallet said;
"I want to see that work before I trust the idea."
"Somebody has to try it," agreed Moran. "Anyhow my life's going to
depend on it."
Carol left the room. Moran looked after her as the door closed.
"She doesn't like the idea of our leaving you behind," said Burleigh.
"None of us do."
"I'm touched."
"We'll try to get a ship to come for you, quickly," said Burleigh.
"I'm sure you will," said Moran politely.
* * * * *
But he was not confident. The laws governing space-travel were very
strict indeed, and enforced with all the rigor possible. On their
enforcement, indeed, depended the law and order of the planets.
Criminals had to know that they could not escape to space whenever
matters got too hot for them aground. For a spaceman to trifle with
interstellar-traffic laws meant at the least that they were grounded for
life. But the probabilities were much worse than that. It was most
likely that Burleigh or any of the others would be reported to
space-port police instantly they attempted to charter a ship for any
kind of illegal activity. Moran made a mental note to warn Burleigh
about it.
By now, though, he was aware of a very deep irritation at the idea of
being killed, whether by monsters on this planet or men sent to pick him
up for due process of law. When he made the grand gesture of seizing the
_Nadine_, he'd known nothing about the people on board, and he hadn't
really expected to succeed. His real hope was to be killed without
preliminary scientific questioning. Modern techniques of interrogation
were not torture, but they stripped away all concealments of motive and
to a great degree revealed anybody who'd helped one. Moran had killed a
man in a fair fight the other man did not want to engage in. If he were
caught on Coryus or returned to it, his motivation could be read from
his mind. And if that was done the killing--and the sacrifice of his own
future and life--would have been useless. But he'd been prepared to be
killed. Even now he'd prefer to die here on Tethys than in the strictly
painless manner of executions on Coryus. But he was now deeply resistant
to the idea of dying at all. There was Carol....
He thrust such thoughts aside.
* * * * *
Morning was well begun when they prepared to transfer the wreck's
treasure to the _Nadine_. Moran went first. At fifteen-foot intervals he
burned holes in the curd-like, elastic ground-cover. Some of the holes
went down only four feet to the stone beneath it. Some went down six.
But a man who jumped down one of them would be safe against attack
except from directly overhead, which was an unlikely direction for
attack by an insect. Carol had seen a wasp fly past the day before. She
said it was as big as a cow. A sting from such a monster would instantly
be fatal. But no wasp would have the intelligence to use its sting on
something it had not seized. A man should be safe in such a fox-hole. If
a creature did try to investigate the opening, a torch could come into
play. It was the most practical possible way for a man to defend himself
on this world.
Moran made more than a dozen such holes of refuge in the line between
the _Nadine_ and the wreck. Carol watched with passionate solicitude
from a control-room port as he progressed. He entered the wreck through
the lock-doors he'd uncovered. Harper followed doggedly, not less than
two fox-holes behind. Carol's voice reassured them, the while, that
within the half-mile circle of visibility no monster walked or flew.
Inside the wreck, Moran placed emergency-lanterns to light the dark
interior. He placed them along the particularly inconvenient passageways
of a ship lying on its side instead of standing upright. He was at work
breaking open a box of bessendium when Harper joined him. Harper said
heavily;
"I've brought a bag. It was a pillow. Carol took the foam out."
"We'll fill it," said Moran. "Not too full. The stuff's heavy."
Harper watched while Moran poured purple crystals into it from his
cupped hands.
"There you are," said Moran. "Take it away."
"Look!" said Harper. "I owe you plenty--."
"Then pay me," said Moran, exasperatedly, "by shutting up! By making
Burleigh damned careful about who he tries to hire to come after me! And
by getting this cargo-shifting business in operation! The _Nadine's_
almost due on Loris. You don't want to have the space-port police get
suspicions. Get moving!"
* * * * *
Harper clambered over the side of doorways. He disappeared. Moran was
alone in the ship. He explored. He found that the crew that had
abandoned the _Malabar_ had been guilty of a singular oversight for a
crew abandoning ship. But, of course, they'd been distracted not only by
their predicament but by the decision to carry part of the ship's
precious cargo with them, so they could make it a profitable enterprise
to rescue them. They hadn't taken the trouble to follow all the rules
laid down for a crew taking to the boats.
Moran made good their omission. He was back in the cargo-hold when Brawn
arrived. Burleigh came next. Then Harper again. Hallet came last of the
four men of the yacht. They did not make a continuous chain of men
moving back and forth between the two ships. Three men came, and loaded
up, and went back. Then three men came again, one by one. There could
never be a moment when a single refuge-hole in the soil could be needed
by two men at the same time.
Within the first hour of work at transferring treasure, the bolt-holes
came into use. Carol called anxiously that a gigantic beetle neared the
ship and would apparently pass between it and the yacht. At the time,
Brawn and Harper were moving from the _Malabar_ toward the _Nadine_, and
Hallet was about to leave the wreck's lock.
He watched with wide eyes. The beetle was truly a monster, the size of a
hippopotamus as pictured in the culture-books about early human history.
Its jaws, pronged like antlers, projected two yards before its huge,
faceted eyes. It seemed to drag itself effortfully over the elastic
surface of the ground. It passed a place where red, foleated fungus grew
in a fantastic absence of pattern on the surface of the ground. It went
through a streak of dusty-blue mould, which it stirred into a cloud of
spores as it passed. It crawled on and on. Harper popped down into the
nearest bolt-hole, his torch held ready. Brawn stood beside another
refuge, sixty feet away.
Carol's voice came to their helmet-phones, anxious and exact. Hallet, in
the lock-door, heard her tell Harper that the beetle would pass very
close to him and to stay still. It moved on and on. It would be very
close indeed. Carol gasped in horror.
The monster passed partly over the hole in which Harper crouched. One of
its clawed feet slipped down into the opening. But the beetle went on,
unaware of Harper. It crawled toward the encircling mist upon some
errand of its own. It was mindless. It was like a complex and highly
decorated piece of machinery which did what it was wound up to do, and
nothing else.
Harper came out of the bolt-hole when Carol, her voice shaky with
relief, told him it was safe. He went doggedly on to the _Nadine_,
carrying his bag of purple crystals. Brawn followed, moodily.
* * * * *
Hallet, with a singularly exultant look upon his face, ventured out of
the airlock and moved across the fungoid world. He carried a king's
ransom to be added to the riches already transferred to the yacht.
Moving the bessendium was a tedious task. One plastic box in the
cargo-hold held a quantity of crystals that three men took two trips
each to carry. In mid-morning the bag in Hallet's hand seemed to slip
just when Moran completed filling it. It toppled and spilled half its
contents on the cargo-hold floor, which had been a sidewall. He began
painstakingly to gather up the precious stuff and get it back in the
bag. The others went on to the _Nadine_. Hallet turned off his
helmet-phone and gestured to Moran to remove his helmet. Moran, his
eyebrows raised, obeyed the suggestion.
"How anxious," asked Hallet abruptly, gathering up the dropped crystals,
"how anxious are you to be left behind here?"
"I'm not anxious at all," said Moran.
"Would you like to make a deal to go along when the _Nadine_
lifts?--_If_ there's a way to get past the space-port police?"
"Probably," said Moran. "Certainly! But there's no way to do it."
"There is," said Hallet. "I know it. Is it a deal?"
"What is the deal?"
"You do as I say," said Hallet significantly. "Just as I say! Then ..."
The lock-door opened, some distance away. Hallet stood up and said in a
commanding tone;
"Keep your mouth shut. I'll tell you what to do and when."
He put on his helmet and turned on the phone once more. He went toward
the lock-door. Moran heard him exchange words with Harper and Brawn,
back with empty bags to fill with crystals worth many times the price of
diamonds. But diamonds were made in half-ton lots, nowadays.
Moran followed their bags. He was frowning. As Harper was about to
follow Brawn, Moran almost duplicated Hallet's gestures to have him
remove his helmet.
"I want Burleigh to come next trip," he told Harper, "and make some
excuse to stay behind a moment and talk to me without the helmet-phones
picking up everything I say to him. Understand?"
Harper nodded. But Burleigh did not come on the next trip. It was not
until near midday that he came to carry a load of treasure to the yacht.
When he did come, though, he took off his helmet and turned off the
phone without the need of a suggestion.
"I've been arranging storage for this stuff," he said. "I've opened
plates between the hulls to dump it in. I've told Carol, too, that we've
got to do a perfect job of cleaning up. There must be no stray crystals
on the floor."
"Better search the bunks, too," said Moran drily, "so nobody will put
aside a particularly pretty crystal to gloat over. Listen!"
He told Burleigh exactly what Hallet had said and what he'd answered.
Burleigh looked acutely unhappy.
"Hallet isn't dedicated like the rest of us were," he said distressedly.
"We brought him along partly out of fear that if he were captured he'd
break down and reveal what he knows of the Underground we led, and much
of which we had to leave behind. But I'll be able to finance a real
revolt, now!"
* * * * *
Moran regarded him with irony. Burleigh was a capable man and a
conscientious one. It would be very easy to trust him, and it is
all-important to an Underground that its leaders be trusted. But it is
also important that they be capable of flint-like hardness on occasion.
To Moran, it seemed that Burleigh had not quite the adamantine
resolution required for leadership in a conspiracy which was to become a
successful revolt. He was--and to Moran it seemed regrettable--capable
of the virtue of charity.
"I've told you," he said evenly. "Maybe you'll think it's a scheme on my
part to get Hallet dumped and myself elected to take his identity. But
what happens from now on is your business. Beginning this moment, I'm
taking care of my own skin. I've gotten reconciled to the idea of dying,
but I'd hate for it not to do anybody any good."
"Carol," said Burleigh unhappily, "is much distressed."
"That's very kind," said Moran sarcastically. "Now take your bag of
stuff and get going."
Burleigh obeyed. Moran went back to the business of breaking open the
strong plastic boxes of bessendium so their contents could be carried in
forty-pound lots to the _Nadine_.
Thinking of Carol, he did not like the way things seemed to be going.
Since the discovery of the bessendium, Hallet had been developing ideas.
They did not look as if they meant good fortune for Moran without
corresponding bad fortune for the others. Obviously, Moran couldn't be
hidden on the _Nadine_ during the space-port sterilization of the ship
which prevented plagues from being carried from world to world. Hallet
could have no reason to promise such a thing. Before landing here, he'd
urged that Moran simply be dumped out the airlock. This proposal to save
his life....
Moran considered the situation grimly while the business of ferrying
treasure to the yacht went on almost monotonously. It had stopped once
during the forenoon while a giant beetle went by. Later, it stopped
again because a gigantic flying thing hovered overhead. Carol did not
know what it was, but its bulging abdomen ended in an organ which
appeared to be a sting. It was plainly hunting. There was no point in
fighting it. Presently it went away, and just before it disappeared in
the circular wall of mist it dived headlong to the ground. A little
later it rose slowly into the air, carrying something almost as large as
itself. It went away into the mist.
Again, once a green-and-yellow caterpillar marched past upon some
mysterious enterprise. It was covered with incredibly long fur, and it
moved with an undulating motion of all its segments, one after another.
It seemed well over ten yards in length, and its body appeared
impossibly massive. But a large part of the bulk would be the
two-foot-long or longer hairs which stuck out stiffly in all directions.
It, too, went away.
But continually and constantly there was a bedlam of noises. From
underneath the yielding skin of the yeast-ground, there came clickings.
Sometimes there were quiverings of the surface as if it were alive, but
they would be the activities of ten and twelve-inch beetles who lived in
subterranean tunnels in it. There were those preposterous noises like
someone rattling a stick along a picket fence--only deafening--and there
were baritone chirpings and deep bass boomings from somewhere far away.
Moran guessed that the last might be frogs, but if so they were vastly
larger than men.
* * * * *
Shortly after what was probably midday, Moran brushed off his hands. The
bessendium part of the cargo of the wrecked _Malabar_ had been salvaged.
It was hidden between the twin hulls of the yacht. Moran had, quite
privately, attended to a matter the wreck's long-dead crew should have
done when they left it. Now, in theory, the _Nadine_ should lift off and
take Moran to some hastily scouted spot not too far from the ice-cap. It
should leave him there with what food could be spared, and the kit of
seeds that might feed him after it was gone, and weapons that might but
probably wouldn't enable him to defend himself, and with a radio-beacon
to try to have hope in. Then,--that would be that.
"Calling," said Moran sardonically into his helmet-phone. "Everything's
cleaned up here. What next?"
"_You can come along_," said Hallet's voice from the ship. It was
shivery. It was gleeful. "_Just in time for lunch!_"
Moran went along the disoriented passages of the _Malabar_ to the lock.
He turned off the beacon that had tried uselessly during six human
generations to call for help for men now long dead. He went out the
lock and closed it behind him. It was not likely that this planet would
ever become a home for men. If there were some strangeness in its
constitution that made the descendents of insects placed upon it grow to
be giants, humans would not want to settle on it. And there were plenty
of much more suitable worlds. So the wrecked space-ship would lie here,
under deeper and ever deeper accumulations of the noisesome stuff that
passed for soil. Perhaps millenia from now, the sturdy, resistant metal
of the hull would finally rust through, and then--nothing. No man in all
time to come would ever see the _Malabar_ again.
Shrugging, he went toward the _Nadine_. He walked through bedlam. He
could see a quarter-mile in one direction, and a quarter-mile in
another. He could not see more than a little distance upward. The
_Nadine_ had landed upon a world with tens of millions of square miles
of surface, and nobody had moved more than a hundred yards from its
landing-place, and now it would leave and all wonders and all horrors
outside this one quarter of a square mile would remain unknown....
He went to the airlock and shed his suit. He opened the inner door.
Hallet waited for him.
"Everybody's at lunch," he said. "We'll join them."
Moran eyed him sharply. Hallet grinned widely.
"We're going to take off to find a place for you as soon as we've
eaten," he said.
There was mockery in the tone. It occurred abruptly to Moran that Hallet
was the kind of person who might, to be sure, plan complete disloyalty
to his companions for his own benefit. But he might also enjoy betrayal
for its own sake. He might, for example, find it amusing to make a man
under sentence of death or marooning believe that he would escape, so
Hallet could have the purely malicious pleasure of disappointing him. He
might look for Moran to break when he learned that he was to die here
after all.
Moran clamped his lips tightly. Carol would be better off if that was
the answer. He went toward the yacht's mess-room. Hallet followed close
behind. Moran pushed the door aside and entered. Burleigh and Harper and
Brawn looked at him, Carol raised her eyes. They glistened with tears.
Hallet said gleefully;
"Here goes!"
Standing behind Moran, he thrust a hand-blaster past Moran's body and
pulled the trigger. He held the trigger down for continuous fire as he
traversed the weapon to wipe out everybody but Moran and himself.