Planet of Dread

but they killed. Blast-rifles did not. And Harper needed to pull himself together again, too. Also, neither Moran nor any of the others wanted to go back to the still un-entered wreck while the skin

d distastefully ferried pests as well as useful creatures to its new worlds as they were made ready for settlement. Mosquitos throve on the inhabited globes of the Rim Stars. Roaches twitched nervous antennae on the settled planets of the Coal-sack. Dogs on Antares had fleas, and scratched their bites, and humanity spread through the galaxy with an attendant train of insects and annoyances. If they left their pests behind, the total system of checks

hed from the control-room. She was sti

hrough your suit?" Burleigh

said s

tunnels they make in fungus growths. The beetles and the tunnels are larger, but that's all. Inc

l unsteadily. "It w

Some of them trail poison from their feet. We can play a blowtorch over Ha

leave Moran here!" s

d Carol. "Your blast-rifles weren't any

ill them. I'm supposed to live with them! I wonder how we can

been forced to let you take his identity and not be marooned, to avoid ques

t's me! What the hell would you want me to do?

led swiftly on grisly, skinny, pipe-thin legs. It loomed over Moran as he reached the surface and he automatically thrust the flame at it. The result was shocking. But the nervous systems of insects are primitive. It is questionable that they feel pain. It is certain that separated parts of them act as if they had independent life. Legs-horrible things-sheared off in the flame of the torch, but the grisly furry thing rushed on until Moran s

nauseatingly to move. He went back with the others to the Nadine. The blast-rifles had been

fair for us to lift from here and find a

ther planet?

There'd be questions asked if we turned up weeks late! We can't afford that! The space-port police would suspect us of all

rom Loris that you can't make port without raising questions anyhow. But you might be almost on

with a corrosive solution while the outside air was pumped out and new ai

shortly. "Two will be safer

e!" said Mora

into the ship. He checked his torch. He closed the

ng to try to

been on this planet to be in danger if I ha

I meant to say!"

and stridulations they now knew to be those of insects had no significance. The unseen huge creatures made them without purpose. Insects do not challenge each other like birds or make mating-calls like animals. They make

nels underfoot. They're practically a foot long.

ed before. They went unsteadily over the elastic, yielding stuff underfoo

you. We'll try to warn y

I should kill Harper after all, you mi

Multiple lensed eyes, five inches across, seemed to regard him in a peculiarly daunting fashion. The creature had a narrow, unearthly, triangular face, with mandibles that worked from side to side instead of up and down l

m for no reason, and killed them. I've probably killed man

tion of one of the legs of the giant centipede Moran had killed earlier. It still moved. The leg was m

at a finger-touch sent leaping from his torch. The thing

t finds something to eat and can't carry it all away, it brings back its friends to get the rest. The bi

Harper breathing harshly. He led t

anean passages suddenly opened to the air. Harper stepped on one, and it did not crush. It struggled frantically and he almost fell. He gasped. Two of t

made in the fungus-stuff. Metal showe

tch. I'll fi

ly bright light of the torch overwhelming the perpetual grayness under the clouds and playi

anxiously into Mo

ou all

an sourly. "I've just uncovere

d it and went on. He swept the flame more widely. There was carbonized matter from the

ng.... It's huge! It's

n gr

as it comes down. Cut through its waist. It won't crawl toward us

mass of steam and smoke which curled upward and

l's

t.... It was as

t lay on its side. The lock inside the toppled-out port was choked with a horrible mass of thread-like fungi. Moran swept the flam

side instead of standing in a normal position. Then he saw a sheet of metal,

a date a century and a half old.

andida III in the boats. We are carrying what bessendium we can with us. We resign salvage rights i

hite, C

uliar, sardonic

ss amusement. "This planet is Tethys Two

n Carol's vo

the control-room behind her. "Yes!... Oh,-wonderful! It's not far off the cour

endium among her cargo. Her crew went on to Candida III a hundred and fifty years ago, leaving a promise to pay in

y to another in the hope that life there would be tolerable. If they arrived, they waited for some other ship to cross the illimitable emptiness and discover either the beacon here or one they'd set up on the other world. The likelihood was

raps of purple bessendium ore dropped while being carried to the lifeboats. A century and a half ago it had not seemed worth while to pick them up, though bessendium was the most precious material in the galaxy. It couldn't be synthesized. It had to be made by some natural process not yet understood, but

ipped it in a pocket of his space-suit

he wriggling fragments of another yard-long ant. It had explored the trench burned

led," said Harper in a dogged

news?" asked Mo

. "How'll we get b

e splendid heroism, giving battle to ants who think we're other ants trying to rob them

ble. The mere pocketfull of crystals in his pocket would make any man wealthy if he could get to a settl

ossible to land the Nadine at any space-port with an extra man aboard her. In a sense, Moran might be one of the richest men in the galaxy in his

ce; she was

's-terribly big! It's c

ion. There was squabbling. Angry, whining stridulations filled the air beneath the louder and more gruesome sounds from fartheraway places. It appeared that scouts and foragers from two different ant-cities had come upon the treasure of dead-if twitching-meat of Moran's providing. They differed about

tterly mild in expression. It walked with an enormous, dainty deliberation, placing small spiked feet at the end of fifteen-foot legs very delicately in place as it m

reen creature-a mantis; a praying mantis twenty feet tall in its giraffe-like walking position-the great creature loomed over them, looking down as through sunglasses. A foreleg moved like lightning. An ant weighing nearly as much as a man stridulated shr

gs in an extraordinary gesture. It was the mantis's spectral attitude, which seemed a pose of holding

d upon an ant. Upon another. Upon

stem and its claim to fragments of dead centipedes. From another direction other parties of no less truculent warriors moved with the swiftness and celerity of a striking task-force. All the air was filled with the deep-bass notes o

nough to take care of the provocative behavior of foreign foragers. There was a general mobilization in both unseen ant-city states. They became nations in arms. Their populations rushed to the scene of conflict. The burrows and dormitories and eating-chambers of the undergrou

tending battalions fighting as masses in the center, while wings of fighting creatures to right and left were less solidly arranged. But reinforcements poured out of the mist from two directions, and momently the situation changed. Presently the battle covere

here was only a complete confusion of unorganized single combats in which the fighters rolled over and over, struggling ferociously with mandible and claw to destroy each other. Presently the battle raged over five acres. Ten. Thou

ing-fins. Horrifying duels could be followed by scrapings and bumpings against its hull. From the yacht's ports the fighting ants looked like infuriated machines, engaged in each other's destruction. One might see a warrior of unidentified allegia

ttle seemingly forgotten. But even such dazed and incapacitated casualties came upon each other. If they smelled alike, they ignored each other. Every ant-city has its particular smell which its inh

upon them while they struggled, and plucked other fighters, and consumed them. It ignored the battle and the high purpose

nd then crimson. In time there was darkness. The noise of battle ended. The sound

ch might be unbelievable modifications of once-shrill and once-tranquil night-sounds of other worlds. And there came a pec

wounded had been carried away. Which, of course, was not solicitude for the wounded or reverence for the dead heroes. Dead ants, like dead centip

The pattering sound was abruptly explained. Large, slow, widely-separated raindrops fell heavily and steadily from the cloud-ba

sounds in the air; the beating of enormous wings. Moran looked up, squinting a

eted eyes. A gigantic, horny, spiked object crawled toward the torch-glare, fascinated by it. Something else dived insanely. It

ike rubies in the torch's light. There were beetles of all sizes from tiny six-inch things to monsters in whom Moran did not believe even when he saw them. All w

ch and closed the loc

in the darkness, would be suicide. But to use lights would be worse. If you people are going to salvage th

which were descendents of terrestrial forms could breathe it, so could men. When the first insect-egg

room with a double handful o

?ntered, "this is bessendium past quest

You'll all be rich. You'll p

" said Burleigh distastefully. "You've g

, "there is a perfect solution. You kill me, e

igh s

t. We can't pass you as a normal passenger. You're not on the ship's papers and they're alteration-proof. Nobody's ever been able to change a ship's pap

how and you'd be subject to intensive investi

" admitte

shru

e answer. You maroon

said pa

ar enough away, we charter a ship to come and get you. It'll be arranged. Somebody will be listed as of that ship's compa

not, the crew of the chartered ship will be in trouble, short one man o

ve been killed but for you. And-this bessendium will finance the underground work that wi

roblem! I could kill all you characters, land somewhere on a colonized planet exactly as you landed here, and be gone from the yacht on foot before anybody could find me! But I have a sli

y pale. Burle

near the ice-cap should be infinitely better for you. We'll load the rest

ol turned a whit

the real troubl

ked at he

poses to leave me with treasure that he could take. Even more remarkably, he proposes to divide up what you take, i

t-b

. A face looked in. It filled the transparent opening. It was unthinkable. It was furry. There were glistening

the light shining out on this nightm

e button that cl