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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 43046 ***
+
+                          PLANET of DREAD
+
+                         By MURRAY LEINSTER
+
+                         Illustrator ADKINS
+
+
+    [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Fantastic Stories
+    of Imagination May 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any
+    evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
+
+
+
+
+     _Moran cut apart the yard-long monstrosity with a slash of flame.
+     The thing presumably died, but it continued to writhe senselessly.
+     He turned to see other horrors crawling toward him. Then he knew he
+     was being marooned on a planet of endless terrors._
+
+
+I.
+
+Moran, naturally, did not mean to help in the carrying out of the plans
+which would mean his destruction one way or another. The plans were
+thrashed out very painstakingly, in formal conference on the space-yacht
+_Nadine_, with Moran present and allowed to take part in the discussion.
+From the viewpoint of the _Nadine's_ ship's company, it was simply
+necessary to get rid of Moran. In their predicament he might have come
+to the same conclusion; but he was not at all enthusiastic about their
+decision. He would die of it.
+
+The _Nadine_ was out of overdrive and all the uncountable suns of the
+galaxy shone steadily, remotely, as infinitesimal specks of light of
+every color of the rainbow. Two hours since, the sun of this solar
+system had been a vast glaring disk off to port, with streamers and
+prominences erupting about its edges. Now it lay astern, and Moran
+could see the planet that had been chosen for his marooning. It was a
+cloudy world. There were some dim markings near one lighted limb, but
+nowhere else. There was an ice-cap in view. The rest was--clouds.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The ice-cap, by its existence and circular shape, proved that the planet
+rotated at a not unreasonable rate. The fact that it was water-ice told
+much. A water-ice ice-cap said that there were no poisonous gases in the
+planet's atmosphere. Sulfur dioxide or chlorine, for example, would not
+allow the formation of water-ice. It would have to be sulphuric-acid or
+hydrochloric-acid ice. But the ice-cap was simple snow. Its size, too,
+told about temperature-distribution on the planet. A large cap would
+have meant a large area with arctic and sub-arctic temperatures, with
+small temperate and tropical climate-belts. A small one like this meant
+wide tropical and sub-tropical zones. The fact was verified by the
+thick, dense cloud-masses which covered most of the surface,--all the
+surface, in fact, outside the ice-cap. But since there were ice-caps
+there would be temperate regions. In short, the ice-cap proved that a
+man could endure the air and temperature conditions he would find.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Moran observed these things from the control-room of the _Nadine_, then
+approaching the world on planetary drive. He was to be left here, with
+no reason ever to expect rescue. Two of the _Nadine's_ four-man crew
+watched out the same ports as the planet seemed to approach. Burleigh
+said encouragingly;
+
+"It doesn't look too bad, Moran!"
+
+Moran disagreed, but he did not answer. He cocked an ear instead. He
+heard something. It was a thin, wabbling, keening whine. No natural
+radiation sounds like that. Moran nodded toward the all-band speaker.
+
+"Do you hear what I do?" he asked sardonically.
+
+Burleigh listened. A distinctly artificial signal came out of the
+speaker. It wasn't a voice-signal. It wasn't an identification beacon,
+such as are placed on certain worlds for the convenience of interstellar
+skippers who need to check their courses on extremely long runs. This
+was something else.
+
+Burleigh said:
+
+"Hm ... Call the others, Harper."
+
+Harper, prudently with him in the control-room, put his head into the
+passage leading away. He called. But Moran observed with grudging
+respect that he didn't give him a chance to do anything drastic. These
+people on the _Nadine_ were capable. They'd managed to recapture the
+_Nadine_ from him, but they were matter-of-fact about it. They didn't
+seem to resent what he'd tried to do, or that he'd brought them an
+indefinite distance in an indefinite direction from their last
+landing-point, and they had still to re-locate themselves.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They'd been on Coryus Three and they'd gotten departure clearance from
+its space-port. With clearance-papers in order, they could land
+unquestioned at any other space-port and take off again--provided the
+other space-port was one they had clearance for. Without rigid control
+of space-travel, any criminal anywhere could escape the consequences of
+any crime simply by buying a ticket to another world. Moran couldn't
+have bought a ticket, but he'd tried to get off the planet Coryus on the
+_Nadine_. The trouble was that the _Nadine_ had clearance papers
+covering five persons aboard--four men and a girl Carol. Moran made six.
+Wherever the yacht landed, such a disparity between its documents and
+its crew would spark an investigation. A lengthy, incredibly minute
+investigation. Moran, at least, would be picked out as a fugitive from
+Coryus Three. The others were fugitives too, from some unnamed world
+Moran did not know. They might be sent back where they came from. In
+effect, with six people on board instead of five, the _Nadine_ could not
+land anywhere for supplies. With five on board, as her papers declared,
+she could. And Moran was the extra man whose presence would rouse
+space-port officials' suspicion of the rest. So he had to be dumped.
+
+He couldn't blame them. He'd made another difficulty, too. Blaster in
+hand, he'd made the _Nadine_ take off from Coryus III with a trip-tape
+picked at random for guidance. But the trip-tape had been computed for
+another starting-point, and when the yacht came out of overdrive it was
+because the drive had been dismantled in the engine-room. So the ship's
+location was in doubt. It could have travelled at almost any speed in
+practically any direction for a length of time that was at least
+indefinite. A liner could re-locate itself without trouble. It had
+elaborate observational equipment and tri-di star-charts. But smaller
+craft had to depend on the Galactic Directory. The process would be to
+find a planet and check its climate and relationship to other planets,
+and its flora and fauna against descriptions in the Directory. That was
+the way to find out where one was, when one's position became doubtful.
+The _Nadine_ needed to make a planet-fall for this.
+
+The rest of the ship's company came into the control-room. Burleigh
+waved his hand at the speaker.
+
+"Listen!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They heard it. All of them. It was a trilling, whining sound among the
+innumerable random noises to be heard in supposedly empty space.
+
+"That's a marker," Carol announced. "I saw a costume-story tape once
+that had that sound in it. It marked a first-landing spot on some planet
+or other, so the people could find that spot again. It was supposed to
+be a long time ago, though."
+
+"It's weak," observed Burleigh. "We'll try answering it."
+
+Moran stirred, and he knew that every one of the others was conscious of
+the movement. But they didn't watch him suspiciously. They were alert by
+long habit. Burleigh said they'd been Underground people, fighting the
+government of their native world, and they'd gotten away to make it seem
+the revolt had collapsed. They'd go back later when they weren't
+expected, and start it up again. Moran considered the story probable.
+Only people accustomed to desperate actions would have remained so calm
+when Moran had used desperate measures against them.
+
+Burleigh picked up the transmitter-microphone.
+
+"Calling ground," he said briskly. "Calling ground! We pick up your
+signal. Please reply."
+
+He repeated the call, over and over and over. There was no answer.
+Cracklings and hissings came out of the speaker as before, and the thin
+and reedy wabbling whine continued. The _Nadine_ went on toward the
+enlarging cloudy mass ahead.
+
+Burleigh said;
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I think," said Carol, "that we should land. People have been here. If
+they left a beacon, they may have left an identification of the planet.
+Then we'd know where we are and how to get to Loris."
+
+Burleigh nodded. The _Nadine_ had cleared for Loris. That was where it
+should make its next landing. The little yacht went on. All five of its
+proper company watched as the planet's surface enlarged. The ice-cap
+went out of sight around the bulge of the globe, but no markings
+appeared. There were cloud-banks everywhere, probably low down in the
+atmosphere. The darker vague areas previously seen might have been
+highlands.
+
+"I think," said Carol, to Moran, "that if it's too tropical where this
+signal's coming from, we'll take you somewhere near enough to the
+ice-cap to have an endurable climate. I've been figuring on food, too.
+That will depend on where we are from Loris because we have to keep
+enough for ourselves. But we can spare some. We'll give you the
+emergency-kit, anyhow."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The emergency-kit contained antiseptics, seeds, and a weapon or two,
+with elaborate advice to castaways. If somebody were wrecked on an even
+possibly habitable planet, the especially developed seed-strains would
+provide food in a minimum of time. It was not an encouraging thought,
+though, and Moran grimaced.
+
+She hadn't said anything about being sorry that he had to be marooned.
+Maybe she was, but rebels learn to be practical or they don't live long.
+Moran wondered, momentarily, what sort of world they came from and why
+they had revolted, and what sort of set-back to the revolt had sent the
+five off in what they considered a strategic retreat but their
+government would think defeat. Moran's own situation was perfectly
+clear.
+
+He'd killed a man on Coryus III. His victim would not be mourned by
+anybody, and somebody formerly in very great danger would now be safe,
+which was the reason for what Moran had done. But the dead man had been
+very important, and the fact that Moran had forced him to fight and
+killed him in fair combat made no difference. Moran had needed to get
+off-planet, and fast. But space-travel regulations are especially
+designed to prevent such escapes.
+
+He'd made a pretty good try, at that. One of the controls on
+space-traffic required a ship on landing to deposit its fuel-block in
+the space-port's vaults. The fuel-block was not returned until clearance
+for departure had been granted. But Moran had waylaid the messenger
+carrying the _Nadine's_ fuel-block back to that space-yacht. He'd
+knocked the messenger cold and presented himself at the yacht with the
+fuel. He was admitted. He put the block in the engine's gate. He duly
+took the plastic receipt-token the engine only then released, and he
+drew a blaster. He'd locked two of the _Nadine's_ crew in the
+engine-room, rushed to the control-room without encountering the others,
+dogged the door shut, and threaded in the first trip-tape to come to
+hand. He punched the take-off button and only seconds later the
+overdrive. Then the yacht--and Moran--was away. But his present
+companions got the drive dismantled two days later and once the yacht
+was out of overdrive they efficiently gave him his choice of
+surrendering or else. He surrendered, stipulating that he wouldn't be
+landed back on Coryus; he still clung to hope of avoiding return--which
+was almost certain anyhow. Because nobody would want to go back to a
+planet from which they'd carried away a criminal, even though they'd
+done it unwillingly. Investigation of such a matter might last for
+months.
+
+Now the space-yacht moved toward a vast mass of fleecy whiteness without
+any visible features. Harper stayed with the direction-finder. From time
+to time he gave readings requiring minute changes of course. The
+wabbling, whining signal was louder now. It became louder than all the
+rest of the space-noises together.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The yacht touched atmosphere and Burleigh said;
+
+"Watch our height, Carol."
+
+She stood by the echometer. Sixty miles. Fifty. Thirty. A correction of
+course. Fifteen miles to surface below. Ten. Five. At twenty-five
+thousand feet there were clouds, which would be particles of ice so
+small that they floated even so high. Then clear air, then lower clouds,
+and lower ones still. It was not until six thousand feet above the
+surface that the planet-wide cloud-level seemed to begin. From there on
+down it was pure opacity. Anything could exist in that dense, almost
+palpable grayness. There could be jagged peaks.
+
+The _Nadine_ went down and down. At fifteen hundred feet above the
+unseen surface, the clouds ended. Below, there was only haze. One could
+see the ground, at least, but there was no horizon. There was only an
+end to visibility. The yacht descended as if in the center of a sphere
+in which one could see clearly nearby, less clearly at a little
+distance, and not at all beyond a quarter-mile or so.
+
+There was a shaded, shadowless twilight under the cloud-bank. The ground
+looked like no ground ever seen before by anyone. Off to the right a
+rivulet ran between improbable-seeming banks. There were a few very
+small hills of most unlikely appearance. It was the ground, the matter
+on which one would walk, which was strangest. It had color, but the
+color was not green. Much of it was a pallid, dirty-yellowish white. But
+there were patches of blue, and curious veinings of black, and here and
+there were other colors, all of them unlike the normal color of
+vegetation on a planet with a sol-type sun.
+
+Harper spoke from the direction-finder;
+
+"The signal's coming from that mound, yonder."
+
+There was a hillock of elongated shape directly in line with the
+_Nadine's_ course in descent. Except for the patches of color, it was
+the only considerable landmark within the half-mile circle in which
+anything could be seen at all.
+
+The _Nadine_ checked her downward motion. Interplanetary drive is rugged
+and sure, but it does not respond to fine adjustment. Burleigh used
+rockets, issuing great bellowings of flame, to make actual contact. The
+yacht hovered, and as the rocket-flames diminished slowly she sat down
+with practically no impact at all. But around her there was a monstrous
+tumult of smoke and steam. When the rockets went off, she lay in a
+burned-out hollow some three or four feet deep with a bottom of solid
+stone. The walls of the hollow were black and scorched. It seemed that
+at some places they quivered persistently.
+
+There was silence in the control-room save for the whining noise which
+now was almost deafening. Harper snapped off the switch. Then there was
+true silence. The space-yacht had come to rest possibly a hundred yards
+from the mound which was the source of the space-signal. That mound
+shared the peculiarity of the ground as far as they could see through
+the haze. It was not vegetation in any ordinary sense. Certainly it was
+no mineral surface! The landing-pockets had burned away three or four
+feet of it, and the edge of the burned area smoked noisesomely, and
+somehow it looked as if it would reek. And there were places where it
+stirred.
+
+Burleigh blinked and stared. Then he reached up and flicked on the
+outside microphones. Instantly there was bedlam. If the landscape was
+strange, here, the sounds that came from it were unbelievable.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There were grunting noises. There were clickings, uncountable clickings
+that made a background for all the rest. There were discordant howls and
+honkings. From time to time some thing unknown made a cry that sounded
+very much like a small boy trailing a stick against a picket fence, only
+much louder. Something hooted, maintaining the noise for an impossibly
+long time. And persistently, sounding as if they came from far away,
+there were booming noises, unspeakably deep-bass, made by something
+alive. And something shrieked in lunatic fashion and something else
+still moaned from time to time with the volume of a steam-whistle....
+
+"This sounds and looks like a nice place to live," said Moran with fine
+irony.
+
+Burleigh did not answer. He turned down the outside sound.
+
+"What's that stuff there, the ground?" he demanded. "We burned it away
+in landing. I've seen something like it somewhere, but never taking the
+place of grass!"
+
+"That," said Moran as if brightly, "that's what I'm to make a garden in.
+Of evenings I'll stroll among my thrifty plantings and listen to the
+delightful sounds of nature."
+
+Burleigh scowled. Harper flicked off the direction-finder.
+
+"The signal still comes from that hillock yonder," he said with
+finality.
+
+Moran said bitingly;
+
+"That ain't no hillock, that's my home!"
+
+Then, instantly he'd said it, he recognized that it could be true. The
+mound was not a fold in the ground. It was not an up-cropping of the
+ash-covered stone on which the _Nadine_ rested. The enigmatic,
+dirty-yellow-dirty-red-dirty-blue-and-dirty-black ground-cover hid
+something. It blurred the shape it covered, very much as enormous
+cobwebs made solid and opaque would have done. But when one looked
+carefully at the mound, there was a landing-fin sticking up toward the
+leaden skies. It was attached to a large cylindrical object of which the
+fore part was crushed in. The other landing-fins could be traced.
+
+"It's a ship," said Moran curtly. "It crash-landed and its crew set up a
+signal to call for help. None came, or they'd have turned the beacon
+off. Maybe they got the lifeboats to work and got away. Maybe they lived
+as I'm expected to live until they died as I'm expected to die."
+
+Burleigh said angrily;
+
+"You'd do what we are doing if you were in our shoes!"
+
+"Sure," said Moran, "but a man can gripe, can't he?"
+
+"You won't have to live here," said Burleigh. "We'll take you somewhere
+up by the ice-cap. As Carol said, we'll give you everything we can
+spare. And meanwhile we'll take a look at that wreck yonder. There might
+be an indication in it of what solar system this is. There could be
+something in it of use to you, too. You'd better come along when we
+explore."
+
+"Aye, aye, sir," said Moran with irony. "Very kind of you, sir. You'll
+go armed, sir?"
+
+Burleigh growled;
+
+"Naturally!"
+
+"Then since I can't be trusted with a weapon," said Moran, "I suggest
+that I take a torch. We may have to burn through that loathesome stuff
+to get in the ship."
+
+"Right," growled Burleigh again. "Brawn and Carol, you'll keep ship. The
+rest of us wear suits. We don't know what that stuff is outside."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Moran silently went to the space-suit rack and began to get into a
+suit. Modern space-suits weren't like the ancient crudities with bulging
+metal casings and enormous globular helmets. Non-stretch fabrics took
+the place of metal, and constant-volume joints were really practical
+nowadays. A man could move about in a late-model space-suit almost as
+easily as in ship-clothing. The others of the landing-party donned their
+special garments with the brisk absence of fumbling that these people
+displayed in every action.
+
+"If there's a lifeboat left," said Carol suddenly, "Moran might be able
+to do something with it."
+
+"Ah, yes!" said Moran. "It's very likely that the ship hit hard enough
+to kill everybody aboard, but not smash the boats!"
+
+"Somebody survived the crash," said Burleigh, "because they set up a
+beacon. I wouldn't count on a boat, Moran."
+
+"I don't!" snapped Moran.
+
+He flipped the fastener of his suit. He felt all the openings catch. He
+saw the others complete their equipment. They took arms. So far they had
+seen no moving thing outside, but arms were simple sanity on an unknown
+world. Moran, though, would not be permitted a weapon. He picked up a
+torch. They filed into the airlock. The inner door closed. The outer
+door opened. It was not necessary to check the air specifically. The
+suits would take care of that. Anyhow the ice-cap said there were no
+water-soluble gases in the atmosphere, and a gas can't be an active
+poison if it can't dissolve.
+
+They filed out of the airlock. They stood on ash-covered stone, only
+slightly eroded by the processes which made life possible on this
+planet. They looked dubiously at the scorched, indefinite substance
+which had been ground before the _Nadine_ landed. Moran moved scornfully
+forward. He kicked at the burnt stuff. His foot went through the char.
+The hole exposed a cheesy mass of soft matter which seemed riddled with
+small holes.
+
+Something black came squirming frantically out of one of the openings.
+It was eight or ten inches long. It had a head, a thorax, and an
+abdomen. It had wing-cases. It had six legs. It toppled down to the
+stone on which the _Nadine_ rested. Agitatedly, it spread its
+wing-covers and flew away, droning loudly. The four men heard the sound
+above even the monstrous cacophony of cries and boomings and grunts and
+squeaks which seemed to fill the air.
+
+"What the devil--."
+
+Moran kicked again. More holes. More openings. More small tunnels in the
+cheese-like, curd-like stuff. More black things squirming to view in
+obvious panic. They popped out everywhere. It was suddenly apparent
+that the top of the soil, here, was a thick and blanket-like sheet over
+the whitish stuff. The black creatures lived and thrived in tunnels
+under it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Carol's voice came over the helmet-phones.
+
+"_They're--bugs!_" she said incredulously. "_They're beetles! They're
+twenty times the size of the beetles we humans have been carrying around
+the galaxy, but that's what they are!_"
+
+Moran grunted. Distastefully, he saw his predicament made worse. He knew
+what had happened here. He could begin to guess at other things to be
+discovered. It had not been practical for men to move onto new planets
+and subsist upon the flora and fauna they found there. On some new
+planets life had never gotten started. On such worlds a highly complex
+operation was necessary before humanity could move in. A complete
+ecological complex had to be built up; microbes to break down the rock
+for soil, bacteria to fix nitrogen to make the soil fertile; plants to
+grow in the new-made dirt and insects to fertilize the plants so they
+would multiply, and animals and birds to carry the seeds planet-wide. On
+most planets, to be sure, there were local, aboriginal plants and
+animals. But still terrestrial creatures had to be introduced if a
+colony was to feed itself. Alien plants did not supply satisfactory
+food. So an elaborate adaptation job had to be done on every planet
+before native and terrestrial living things settled down together. It
+wasn't impossible that the scuttling things were truly beetles, grown
+large and monstrous under the conditions of a new planet. And the
+ground....
+
+"This ground stuff," said Moran distastefully, "is yeast or some sort of
+toadstool growth. This is a seedling world. It didn't have any life on
+it, so somebody dumped germs and spores and bugs to make it ready for
+plants and animals eventually. But nobody's come back to finish up the
+job."
+
+Burleigh grunted a somehow surprised assent. But it wasn't surprising;
+not wholly so. Once one mentioned yeasts and toadstools and fungi
+generally, the weird landscape became less than incredible. But it
+remained actively unpleasant to think of being marooned on it.
+
+"Suppose we go look at the ship?" said Moran unpleasantly. "Maybe you
+can find out where you are, and I can find out what's ahead of me."
+
+He climbed up on the unscorched surface. It was elastic. The
+parchment-like top skin yielded. It was like walking on a mass of
+springs.
+
+"We'd better spread out," added Moran, "or else we'll break through that
+skin and be floundering in this mess."
+
+"I'm giving the orders, Moran!" said Burleigh shortly. "But what you say
+does make sense."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He and the others joined Moran on the yielding surface. Their footing
+was uncertain, as on a trampoline. They staggered. They moved toward the
+hillock which was a covered-over wrecked ship.
+
+The ground was not as level as it appeared from the _Nadine's_
+control-room. There were undulations. But they could not see more than a
+quarter-mile in any direction. Beyond that was mist. But Burleigh, at
+one end of the uneven line of advancing men, suddenly halted and stood
+staring down at something he had not seen before. The others halted.
+
+Something moved. It came out from behind a very minor spire of whitish
+stuff that looked like a dirty sheet stretched over a tall stone. The
+thing that appeared was very peculiar indeed. It was a--worm. But it was
+a foot thick and ten feet long, and it had a group of stumpy legs at its
+fore end--where there were eyes hidden behind bristling hair-like
+growths--and another set of feet at its tail end. It progressed sedately
+by reaching forward with its fore-part, securing a foothold, and then
+arching its middle portion like a cat arching its back, to bring its
+hind part forward. Then it reached forward again. It was of a dark olive
+color from one end to the other. Its manner of walking was insane but
+somehow sedate.
+
+Moran heard muffled noises in his helmet-phone as the others tried to
+speak. Carol's voice came anxiously;
+
+"_What's the matter? What do you see?_"
+
+Moran said with savage precision;
+
+"We're looking at an inch-worm, grown up like the beetles only more so.
+It's not an inch-worm any longer. It's a yard-worm." Then he said
+harshly to the men with him; "It's not a hunting creature on worlds
+where it's smaller. It's not likely to have turned deadly here. Come
+on!"
+
+He went forward over the singularly bouncy ground. The others followed.
+It was to be noted that Hallet the engineer, avoided the huge harmless
+creature more widely than most.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They reached the mound which was the ship. Moran unlimbered his torch.
+He said sardonically;
+
+"This ship won't do anybody any good. It's old-style. That thick belt
+around its middle was dropped a hundred years ago, and more." There was
+an abrupt thickening of the cylindrical hull at the middle. There was an
+equally abrupt thinning, again, toward the landing-fins. The sharpness
+of the change was blurred over by the revolting ground-stuff growing
+everywhere. "We're going to find that this wreck has been here a century
+at least!"
+
+Without orders, he turned on the torch. A four-foot flame of pure
+blue-white leaped out. He touched its tip to the fungoid soil. Steam
+leaped up. He used the flame like a gigantic scalpel, cutting a square a
+yard deep in the whitish stuff, and then cutting it across and across to
+destroy it. Thick fumes arose, and quiverings and shakings began. Black
+creatures in their labyrinths of tunnels began to panic. Off to the
+right the blanket-like surface ripped and they poured out. They scuttled
+crazily here and there. Some took to wing. By instinct the other
+men--the armed ones--moved back from the smoke. They wore space-helmets
+but they felt that there should be an intolerable smell.
+
+Moran slashed and slashed angrily with the big flame, cutting a way to
+the metal hull that had fallen here before his grandfather was born.
+Sometimes the flame cut across things that writhed, and he was sickened.
+But above all he raged because he was to be marooned here. He could not
+altogether blame the others. They couldn't land at any colonized world
+with him on board without his being detected as an extra member of the
+crew. His fate would then be sealed. But they also would be
+investigated. Official queries would go across this whole sector of the
+galaxy, naming five persons of such-and-such description and
+such-and-such fingerprints, voyaging in a space-yacht of such-and-such
+size and registration. The world they came from would claim them as
+fugitives. They would be returned to it. They'd be executed.
+
+Then Carol's voice came in his helmet-phone. She cried out;
+
+"_Look out! It's coming! Kill it! Kill it--._"
+
+He heard blast-rifles firing. He heard Burleigh pant commands. He was on
+his way out of the hollow he'd carved when he heard Harper cry out
+horribly.
+
+He got clear of the newly burned-away stuff. There was still much smoke
+and stream. But he saw Harper. More, he saw the thing that had Harper.
+
+It occurred to him instantly that if Harper died, there would not be too
+many people on the _Nadine_. They need not maroon him. In fact, they
+wouldn't dare.
+
+A ship that came in to port with two few on board would be investigated
+as thoroughly as one that had too many. Perhaps more thoroughly. So if
+Harper were killed, Moran would be needed to take his place. He'd go on
+from here in the _Nadine_, necessarily accepted as a member of her crew.
+
+Then he rushed, the flame-torch making a roaring sound.
+
+
+II.
+
+They went back to the _Nadine_ for weapons more adequate for
+encountering the local fauna when it was over. Blast-rifles were not
+effective against such creatures as these. Torches were contact weapons
+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 skinny, somehow
+disgusting legs of the thing still kicked spasmodically--quite
+separate--on the whitish ground-stuff. Moran had disliked such creatures
+in miniature form on other worlds. Enlarged like this.
+
+It seemed insane that such creatures, even in miniature, should
+painstakingly be brought across light-years of space to the new worlds
+men settled on. But it had been found to be necessary. The ecological
+system in which human beings belonged had turned out to be infinitely
+complicated. It had turned out, in fact, to be the ecological system of
+Earth, and unless all parts of the complex were present, the total was
+subtly or glaringly wrong. So mankind 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 and balances which make life practical would get lopsided. It
+would not maintain itself. The vagaries that could result were admirably
+illustrated in and on the landscape outside the _Nadine_. Something had
+been left out of the seeding of this planet. The element--which might be
+a bacterium or a virus or almost anything at all--the element that kept
+creatures at the size called "normal" was either missing or inoperable
+here. The results were not desirable.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Harper drank thirstily. Carol had watched from the control-room. She was
+still pale. She looked strangely at Moran.
+
+"You're sure it didn't get through your suit?" Burleigh asked
+insistently of Harper.
+
+Moran said sourly;
+
+"The creatures have changed size. There's no proof they've changed
+anything else. Beetles live in tunnels they make in fungus growths. The
+beetles and the tunnels are larger, but that's all. Inchworms travel as
+they always did. They move yards instead of inches, but that's all.
+Centipedes--"
+
+"It was--" said Carol unsteadily. "It was thirty feet long!"
+
+"Centipedes," repeated Moran, "catch prey with their legs. They always
+did. Some of them trail poison from their feet. We can play a blowtorch
+over Harper's suit and any poison will be burned away. You can't burn a
+space-suit!"
+
+"We certainly can't leave Moran here!" said Burleigh uneasily.
+
+"He kept Harper from being killed!" said Carol. "Your blast-rifles
+weren't any good. The--creatures are hard to kill."
+
+"Very hard to kill," agreed Moran. "But I'm not supposed to kill them.
+I'm supposed to live with them! I wonder how we can make them understand
+they're not supposed to kill me either?"
+
+"I'll admit," said Burleigh, "that if you'd let Harper get killed, we'd
+have been forced to let you take his identity and not be marooned, to
+avoid questions at the space-port on Loris. Not many men would have done
+what you did."
+
+"Oh, I'm a hero," said Moran. "Noble Moran, that's me! What the hell
+would you want me to do? I didn't think! I won't do it again. I
+promise!"
+
+The last statement was almost true. Moran felt a squeamish horror at the
+memory of what he'd been through over by the wrecked ship. He'd come
+running out of the excavation he'd made. He had for weapon a four-foot
+blue-white flame, and there was a monstrous creature running directly
+toward him, with Harper lifted off the ground and clutched in two
+gigantic, spidery legs. It was no less than thirty feet long, but it was
+a centipede. It travelled 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 slashed across its body
+with the blue-white fire. Then it collapsed. But Harper was still held
+firmly and half the monster struggled mindlessly to run on while
+another part was dead. Moran fought it almost hysterically, slicing off
+legs and wanting to be sick when their stumps continued to move as if
+purposefully, and the legs themselves kicked and writhed rhythmically.
+But he bored in and cut at the body and ultimately dragged Harper clear.
+
+Afterward, sickened, he completed cutting it to bits with the torch. But
+each part continued nauseatingly to move. He went back with the others
+to the _Nadine_. The blast-rifles had been almost completely without
+effect upon the creature because of its insensitive nervous system.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I think," said Burleigh, "that it is only fair for us to lift from here
+and find a better part of this world to land Moran in."
+
+"Why not another planet?" asked Carol.
+
+"It could take weeks," said Burleigh harassedly. "We left Coryus three
+days ago. We ought to land on Loris before too long. 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 sorts of things. They might
+decide to check back on us where we came from. We can't take the time to
+hunt another planet!"
+
+"Then your best bet," said Moran caustically, "is to find out where we
+are. You may be so far from Loris that you can't make port without
+raising questions anyhow. But you might be almost on course. I don't
+know! But let's see if that wreck can tell us. I'll go by myself if you
+like."
+
+He went into the airlock, where his suit and the others had been sprayed
+with a corrosive solution while the outside air was pumped out and new
+air from inside the yacht admitted. He got into the suit. Harper joined
+him.
+
+"I'm going with you," he said shortly. "Two will be safer than
+one,--both with torches."
+
+"Too, too true!" said Moran sardonically.
+
+He bundled the other suits out of the airlock and into the ship. He
+checked his torch. He closed the inner lock door and started the pump.
+Harper said;
+
+"I'm not going to try to thank you--."
+
+"Because," Moran snapped, "you wouldn't have been on this planet to be
+in danger if I hadn't tried to capture the yacht. I know it!"
+
+"That wasn't what I meant to say!" protested Harper.
+
+Moran snarled at him. The lock-pump stopped and the ready-for exit light
+glowed. They pushed open the outer door and emerged. Again there was the
+discordant, almost intolerable din. It made no sense. The cries and
+calls 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 noises because it is their nature. The noises have no
+meaning. The two men started toward the wreck to which Moran had partly
+burned a passageway. There were clickings from underfoot all around
+them. Moran said abruptly;
+
+"Those clicks come from the beetles in their tunnels underfoot. They're
+practically a foot long. How big do you suppose bugs grow here,--and
+why?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Harper did not answer. He carried a flame-torch like the one Moran had
+used before. They went unsteadily over the elastic, yielding stuff
+underfoot. Harper halted, to look behind. Carol's voice came in the
+helmet-phones.
+
+"_We're watching out for you. We'll try to warn you if--anything shows
+up._"
+
+"Better watch me!" snapped Moran. "If I should kill Harper after all,
+you might have to pass me for him presently!"
+
+He heard a small, inarticulate sound, as if Carol protested. Then he
+heard an angry shrill whine. He'd turned aside from the direct line to
+the wreck. Something black, the size of a fair-sized dog, faced him
+belligerently. 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 like an animal's jaws. The head was utterly
+unlike any animal such as breed and raise their young and will fight for
+them. There was a small thorax, from which six spiny, glistening legs
+sprang. There was a bulbous abdomen.
+
+"This," said Moran coldly, "is an ant. I've stepped on them for no
+reason, and killed them. I've probably killed many times as many without
+knowing it. But this could kill me."
+
+The almost yard-long enormity standing two and a half feet high, was in
+the act of carrying away a section of one of the legs of the giant
+centipede Moran had killed earlier. It still moved. The leg was many
+times the size of the ant. Moran moved toward it. It made a louder
+buzzing sound, threatening him.
+
+Moran cut it apart with a slashing sweep of the flame that a
+finger-touch sent leaping from his torch. The thing presumably died, but
+it continued to writhe senselessly.
+
+"I killed this one," said Moran savagely, "because I remembered
+something from my childhood. When one ant finds something to eat and
+can't carry it all away, it brings back its friends to get the rest.
+The big thing I killed would be such an item. How'd you like to have a
+horde of these things about us? Come on!"
+
+Through his helmet-phone he heard Harper breathing harshly. He led the
+way once more toward the wreck.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Black beetles swarmed about when he entered the cut in the mould-yeast
+soil. They popped out of tunnels as if in astonishment that what had
+been subterranean 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 the creatures crawled swiftly up the legs of Moran's
+suit, and he knocked them savagely away. He found himself grinding his
+teeth in invincible revulsion.
+
+They reached the end of the cut he'd made in the fungus-stuff. Metal
+showed past burned-away soil. Moran growled;
+
+"You keep watch. I'll finish the cut."
+
+The flame leaped out. Dense clouds of smoke and steam poured out and up.
+With the intolerably bright light of the torch overwhelming the
+perpetual grayness under the clouds and playing upon curling vapors, the
+two space-suited men looked like figures in some sort of inferno.
+
+Carol's voice came anxiously into Moran's helmet-phone;
+
+"_Are you all right?_"
+
+"So far, both of us," said Moran sourly. "I've just uncovered the crack
+of an airlock door."
+
+He swept the flame around again. A mass of undercut fungus toppled
+toward him. He burned it and went on. He swept the flame more widely.
+There was carbonized matter from the previously burned stuff on the
+metal, but he cleared all the metal. Carol's voice again;
+
+"_There's something flying.... It's huge! It's a wasp!
+It's--monstrous!_"
+
+Moran growled;
+
+"Harper, we're in a sort of trench. If it hovers, you'll burn it as it
+comes down. Cut through its waist. It won't crawl toward us along the
+trench. It'd have to back toward us to use its sting."
+
+He burned and burned, white light glaring upon a mass of steam and smoke
+which curled upward and looked as if lightning-flashes played within it.
+
+Carol's voice;
+
+"_It--went on past.... It was as big as a cow!_"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Moran wrenched at the port-door. It partly revolved. He pulled. It fell
+outward. The wreck was not standing upright on its fins. It lay on its
+side. The lock inside the toppled-out port was choked with a horrible
+mass of thread-like fungi. Moran swept the flame in. The fungus
+shriveled and was not. He opened the inner lock-door. There was pure
+blackness within. He held the torch for light.
+
+For an instant everything was confusion, because the wreck was lying on
+its side instead of standing in a normal position. Then he saw a sheet
+of metal, propped up to be seen instantly by anyone entering the wrecked
+space-vessel.
+
+Letters burned into the metal gave a date a century and a half old.
+Straggly torch-writing said baldly;
+
+     "_This ship the Malabar crashed here on Tethys II a week ago. We
+     cannot repair. We are going on to Candida III in the boats. We are
+     carrying what bessendium we can with us. We resign salvage rights
+     in this ship to its finders, but we have more bessendium with us.
+     We will give that to our rescuers._
+
+     "_Jos. White, Captain._"
+
+Moran made a peculiar, sardonic sound like a bark.
+
+"Calling the _Nadine_!" he said in mirthless amusement. "This planet is
+Tethys Two. Do you read me? Tethys II! Look it up!"
+
+A pause. Then Carol's voice, relieved;
+
+"_Tethys is in the Directory! That's good!_" There was the sound of
+murmurings in the control-room behind her. "_Yes!... Oh,--wonderful!
+It's not far off the course we should have followed! We won't be
+suspiciously late at Loris! Wonderful!_"
+
+"I share your joy," said Moran sarcastically. "More information! The
+ship's name was the _Malabar_. She carried bessendium among her cargo.
+Her crew went on to Candida III a hundred and fifty years ago, leaving a
+promise to pay in more bessendium whoever should rescue them. More
+bessendium! Which suggests that some bessendium was left behind."
+
+Silence. The bald memorandum left behind the vanished crew was, of
+course, pure tragedy. A ship's lifeboat could travel four light-years,
+or possibly even six. But there were limits. A castaway crew had left
+this world on a desperate journey 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 small, at best.
+It had worked out zero. If the lifeboats made Candida III, their crews
+stayed there because they could go no farther. They'd died there,
+because if they'd been found this ship would have been visited and its
+cargo salvaged.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Moran went inside. He climbed through the compartments of the toppled
+craft, using his torch for light. He found where the cargo-hold had been
+opened from the living part of the ship. He saw the cargo. There were
+small, obviously heavy boxes in one part of the hold. Some had been
+broken open. He found scraps 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 involving
+long-continued pressures of megatons to the square inch with
+temperatures in the millions of degrees. It was purple. It was
+crystalline. Fractions of it in blocks of other metals made the
+fuel-blocks that carried liners winging through the void. But here were
+pounds of it dropped carelessly....
+
+Moran gathered a double handful. He slipped it in a pocket of his
+space-suit. He went clambering back to the lock.
+
+He heard the roaring of a flame-torch. He found Harper playing it
+squeamishly on the wriggling fragments of another yard-long ant. It had
+explored the trench burned out of the fungus soil and down to the rock.
+Harper'd killed it as it neared him.
+
+"That's three of them I've killed," said Harper in a dogged voice.
+"There seem to be more."
+
+"Did you hear my news?" asked Moran sardonically.
+
+"Yes," said Harper. "How'll we get back to the _Nadine_?"
+
+"Oh, we'll fight our way through," said Moran, as sardonically as
+before. "We'll practice splendid heroism, giving battle to ants who
+think we're other ants trying to rob them of some fragments of an
+over-sized dead centipede. A splendid cause to fight for, Harper!"
+
+He felt an almost overpowering sense of irony. The quantity of
+bessendium he'd seen was riches incalculable. The mere pocketfull of
+crystals in his pocket would make any man wealthy if he could get to a
+settled planet and sell them. And there was much, much more back in the
+cargo-hold of the wreck. He'd seen it.
+
+But his own situation was unchanged. Bessendium could be hidden
+somehow,--perhaps between the inner and outer hulls of the _Nadine_. But
+it was not possible 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 salvagers' right to the treasure in the wrecked
+_Malabar's_ hold. But he could not use that treasure to buy his way to
+a landing on a colonized world.
+
+Carol's voice; she was frightened.
+
+"_Something's coming! It's--terribly big! It's coming out of the mist!_"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Moran pushed past Harper in the trench that ended at the wreck's
+lock-door. He moved on until he could see over the edge of that trench
+as it shallowed. Now there were not less than forty of the giant ants
+about the remnants of the monstrous centipede Moran had killed. They
+moved about in great agitation. 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 where the
+noisesome booty should be taken. Some ants pulled angrily against each
+other, whining shrilly. He saw individual ants running frantically away
+in two different directions. They would be couriers, carrying news of
+what amounted to a frontier incident in the city-state civilization of
+the ants.
+
+Then Moran saw the giant thing of which Carol spoke. It was truly huge,
+and it had a gross, rounded body, and a ridiculously small thorax, and
+its head was tiny and utterly 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 moved. Its eyes were
+multiple and huge, and its forelegs though used so deftly for walking
+had a horrifying set of murderous, needle-sharp saw-teeth along their
+edges.
+
+It looked at the squabbling ants with its gigantic eyes that somehow
+appeared like dark glasses worn by a monstrosity. It moved primly,
+precisely toward them. Two small black creatures tugged at a hairy
+section of a giant centipede's leg. The great pale-green 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 shrilly, terribly, as it was borne aloft. The
+mantis closed its arm-like forelegs upon it, holding it as if piously
+and benignly contemplating it. Then it ate it, very much as a man might
+eat an apple, without regard to the convulsive writhings of its victim.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It moved on toward the denser fracas among the ants. Suddenly it raised
+its ghastly saw-toothed forelegs in an extraordinary gesture. It was the
+mantis's spectral attitude, which seemed a pose of holding out its arms
+in benediction. But its eyes remained blind-seeming and
+enigmatic,--again like dark glasses.
+
+Then it struck. Daintily, it dined upon an ant. Upon another. Upon
+another and another and another.
+
+From one direction parties of agitated and hurrying black objects
+appeared at the edge of the mist. They were ants of a special
+caste,--warrior-ants with huge mandibles designed for fighting in
+defense of their city and its social system 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 of something
+huge, booming beyond visibility, and the noises as of sticks trailed
+against picket fences, and hootings which were produced by the rubbing
+of serrated leg-joints against chitinous diaphragms. But now a new
+tumult arose.
+
+From forty disputatious _formicidae_, whining angrily at each other over
+the stinking remains of the monster Moran had killed, the number of ants
+involved in the quarrel became hundreds. But more and more arrived. The
+special caste of warriors bred for warfare was not numerous enough 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 underground nations were
+swept clean of occupants. Only the nurseries retained a skeleton staff
+of nurses--the nurseries and the excavated palace occupied by the
+ant-queen and her staff of servants and administrators. All the
+resources of two populous ant-nations were flung into the fray.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From a space of a hundred yards or less, containing mere dozens of
+belligerent squabblers, the dirty-white ground of the fungus-plain
+became occupied by hundreds of snapping, biting combatants. They
+covered--they fought over--the half of an acre. There were contending
+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 covered an acre. Groups of
+fresh fighters arriving from the city to the right uttered shrill
+stridulations and charged upon the flank of their enemies.
+Simultaneously, reinforcements from the city to the left flung
+themselves into the fighting-line near the center.
+
+Formations broke up. The battle disintegrated into an indefinite number
+of lesser combats; troops or regiments fighting together often moved
+ahead with an appearance of invincibility, but suddenly they broke and
+broke again until there 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. Thousands upon thousands of black,
+glistening, stinking creatures tore at each other in murderous ferocity.
+Whining, squealing battle-cries arose and almost drowned out the deeper
+notes of larger but invisible creatures off in the mist.
+
+Moran and Harper got back to the _Nadine_ by a wide detour past warriors
+preoccupied with each other just before the battle reached its most
+savage stage. In that stage, the space-yacht was included in the
+battleground. Fights went on about its landing-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
+allegiance with its own abdomen ripped open, furiously rending an enemy
+without regard to its own mortal wound. There were those who had
+literally been torn in half, so that only head and thorax remained, but
+they fought on no less valiantly than the rest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the edges of the fighting such cripples were more numerous. Ants with
+antenna shorn off or broken, with legs missing, utterly doomed,--they
+sometimes wandered forlornly beyond the fighting, the battle 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 inhabitants share.
+Possession of the national odor is at once a certificate of citizenship
+in peacetime and a uniform in war. When such victims of the battle came
+upon enemy walking wounded, they fought.
+
+And the giant praying mantis remained placidly and invulnerably still.
+It plucked single fighters from the battle and dined upon them while
+they struggled, and plucked other fighters, and consumed them. It
+ignored the battle and the high purpose and self-sacrificing patriotism
+of the ants. Immune to them and disregarded by them, it fed on them
+while the battle raged.
+
+Presently the gray light overhead turned faintly pink, and became a
+deeper tint and then crimson. In time there was darkness. The noise of
+battle ended. The sounds of the day diminished and ceased, and other
+monstrous outcries took their place.
+
+There were bellowings in the blackness without the _Nadine_. There were
+chirpings become baritone, and senseless uproars which might be
+unbelievable modifications of once-shrill and once-tranquil night-sounds
+of other worlds. And there came a peculiar, steady, unrhythmic pattering
+sound. It seemed like something falling upon the blanket-like upper
+surface of the soil.
+
+Moran opened the airlock door and thrust out a torch to see. Its
+intolerably bright glare showed the battlefield abandoned. Most of the
+dead and wounded had been carried away. Which, of course, was not
+solicitude for the wounded or reverence for the dead heroes. Dead ants,
+like dead centipedes, were booty of the only kind the creatures of this
+world could know. The dead were meat. The wounded were dead before they
+were carried away.
+
+Moran peered out, with Carol looking affrightedly over his shoulder. The
+air seemed to shine slightly in the glare of the torch. The pattering
+sound was abruptly explained. Large, slow, widely-separated raindrops
+fell heavily and steadily from the cloud-banks overhead. Moran could see
+them strike. Each spot of wetness glistened briefly. Then the rain-drop
+was absorbed by the ground.
+
+But there were other noises than the ceaseless tumult on the ground.
+There were sounds in the air; the beating of enormous wings. Moran
+looked up, squinting against the light. There were things moving about
+the black sky. Gigantic things.
+
+Something moved, too, across the diminishingly lighted surface about the
+yacht. There were glitterings. Shining armor. Multi-faceted eyes. A
+gigantic, horny, spiked object crawled toward the torch-glare,
+fascinated by it. Something else dived insanely. It splashed upon the
+flexible white surface twenty yards away, and struggled upward and took
+crazily off again. It careened blindly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It hit the yacht, a quarter-ton of night-flying beetle. The air seemed
+filled with flying things. There were moths with twenty-foot wings and
+eyes which glowed like 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 were drawn by the light which should
+not exist under the cloud-bank. They droned and fluttered and performed
+lunatic evolutions, coming always closer to the flame.
+
+Moran cut off the torch and closed the lock-door from the inside.
+
+"We don't load bessendium tonight," he said with some grimness. "To have
+no light, with what crawls about in the darkness, would be suicide. But
+to use lights would be worse. If you people are going to salvage the
+stuff in that wreck, you'll have to wait for daylight. At least then you
+can see what's coming after you."
+
+They went into the yacht proper. There was no longer any question about
+the planet's air. If insects which were descendents of terrestrial forms
+could breathe it, so could men. When the first insect-eggs were brought
+here, the air had to be fit for them if they were to survive. It would
+not have changed.
+
+Burleigh sat in the control-room with a double handful of purple
+crystals before him.
+
+"This," he said when Moran and Carol reëntered, "this is bessendium past
+question. I've been thinking what it means."
+
+"Money," said Moran drily. "You'll all be rich. You'll probably retire
+from politics."
+
+"That wasn't exactly what I had in mind," said Burleigh distastefully.
+"You've gotten us into the devil of a mess, Moran!"
+
+"For which," said Moran with ironic politeness, "there is a perfect
+solution. You kill me, either directly or by leaving me marooned here."
+
+Burleigh scowled.
+
+"We have to land at space-ports for supplies. We can't hope to hide you,
+it's required that landed ships be sterilized against infections from
+off-planet. 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 papers and not be caught! We could land and tell the
+truth, that you hijacked the ship and we finally overpowered you. But
+there are reasons against that."
+
+"Naturally!" agreed Moran. "I'd be killed anyhow and you'd be subject to
+intensive investigation. And you're fugitives as much as I am."
+
+"Just so," admitted Burleigh.
+
+Moran shrugged.
+
+"Which leaves just one answer. You maroon me and go on your way."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Burleigh said painfully;
+
+"There's this bessendium. If there's more--especially if there's
+more--we can leave you here with part of it. When we get far enough
+away, we charter a ship to come and get you. It'll be arranged.
+Somebody will be listed as of that ship's company, but he'll slip away
+from the space-port and not be on board at all. Then you're picked up
+and landed using his name."
+
+"If," said Moran ironically, "I am alive when the ship gets here. If I'm
+not, the crew of the chartered ship will be in trouble, short one man on
+return to port. You'll have trouble getting anybody to run that risk!"
+
+"We're trying to work out a way to save you!" insisted Burleigh angrily.
+"Harper would have been killed but for you. And--this bessendium will
+finance the underground work that will presently make a success of our
+revolution. We're grateful! We're trying to help you!"
+
+"So you maroon me," said Moran. Then he said; "But you've skipped the
+real problem! If anything goes wrong, Carol's in it! There's no way to
+do anything without risk for her! That's the problem! 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 slight aversion to getting a girl killed or
+killing her just for my own convenience. It's settled. I stay here. You
+can try to arrange the other business if you like. But it's a bad
+gamble."
+
+Carol was very pale. Burleigh stood up.
+
+"You said that, I didn't. But I don't think we should leave you here. Up
+near the ice-cap should be infinitely better for you. We'll load the
+rest of the bessendium tomorrow, find you a place, leave you a beacon,
+and go."
+
+He went out. Carol turned a white face to Moran.
+
+"Is that--is that the real trouble? Do you really--"
+
+Moran looked at her stonily.
+
+"I like to make heroic gestures," he told her. "Actually, Burleigh's a
+very noble sort of character himself. He proposes to leave me with
+treasure that he could take. Even more remarkably, he proposes to divide
+up what you take, instead of applying it all to further his political
+ideals. Most men like him would take it all for the revolution!"
+
+"But--but--."
+
+Carol's expression was pure misery. Moran walked deliberately across the
+control-room. He glanced out of a port. A face looked in. It filled the
+transparent opening. It was unthinkable. It was furry. There were
+glistening chitinous areas. There was a proboscis like an elephant's
+trunk, curled horribly. The eyes were multiple and mad.
+
+It looked in, drawn and hypnotized by the light shining out on this
+nightmare world from the control-room ports.
+
+Moran touched the button that closed the shutters.
+
+
+III.
+
+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.
+
+
+IV.
+
+Moran responded instantly. His hands flew to Hallet's throat, blind fury
+making him unaware of any thought but a frantic lust to kill. It was
+very strange that Moran somehow noticed Hallet's hand insanely pulling
+the trigger of the blast-pistol over and over and over without result.
+He remembered it later. Perhaps he shared Hallet's blank disbelief that
+one could pull the trigger of a blaster and have nothing at all happen
+in consequence. But nothing did happen, and suddenly he dropped the
+weapon and clawed desperately at Moran's fingers about his throat. But
+that was too late.
+
+There was singularly little disturbance at the luncheon-table. The whole
+event was climax and anticlimax together. Hallet's intention was so
+appallingly murderous and his action so shockingly futile that the four
+who were to have been his victims tended to stare blankly while Moran
+throttled him.
+
+Burleigh seemed to recover first. He tried to pull Moran's hands loose
+from Hallet's throat. Lacking success he called to the others. "Harper!
+Brawn! Help me!"
+
+It took all three of them to release Hallet. Then Moran stood panting,
+shaking, his eyes like flames.
+
+"He--he--" panted Moran. "He was going to kill Carol!"
+
+"I know," said Burleigh, distressedly. "He was going to kill all of us.
+You gave me an inkling, so while he was packing bessendium between the
+hulls, and had his space-suit hanging in the airlock, I doctored the
+blaster in the space-suit pocket." He looked down at Hallet. "Is he
+still alive?"
+
+Brawn bent over Hallet. He nodded.
+
+"Put him in the airlock for the time being," said Burleigh. "And lock
+it. When he comes to, we'll decide what to do."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Harper and Brawn took Hallet by the arms and hauled him along the
+passageway. The inner door of the lock clanged shut on him.
+
+"We'll give him a hearing, of course," said Burleigh conscientiously.
+"But we should survey the situation first."
+
+To Moran the situation required no survey, but he viewed it from a
+violently personal viewpoint which would neither require or allow
+discussion. He knew what he meant to do about Hallet. He said harshly;
+
+"Go ahead. When you're through I'll tell you what will be done."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He went away. To the control-room. There he paced up and down, trying to
+beat back the fury which rose afresh at intervals of less than minutes.
+He did not think of his own situation, just then. There are more
+important things than survival.
+
+He struggled for coolness, with the action before him known. He didn't
+glance out the ports at the half-mile circle in which vision was
+possible. Beyond the mist there might be anything; an ocean, swarming
+metropoli of giant insects, a mountain-range. Nobody on the _Nadine_ had
+explored. But Moran did not think of such matters now. Hallet had tried
+to murder Carol, and Moran meant to take action, and there were matters
+which might result from it. The matter the crew of the _Malabar_ had
+forgotten to attend to--.
+
+He searched for paper and a pen. He found both in a drawer for the
+yacht's hand-written log. He wrote. He placed a small object in the
+drawer. He had barely closed it when Carol was at the control-room door.
+She said in a small voice;
+
+"They want to talk to you."
+
+He held up the paper.
+
+"Read this later. Not now," he said curtly. He opened and closed the
+drawer again, this time putting the paper in it. "I want you to read
+this after the Hallet business is settled. I'm afraid that I'm not going
+to look well in your eyes."
+
+She swallowed and did not speak. He went to where the others sat in
+official council. Burleigh said heavily;
+
+"We've come to a decision. We shall call Hallet and hear what he has to
+say, but we had to consider various courses of action and decide which
+were possible and which were not."
+
+Moran nodded grimly. He had made his own decision. It was not too much
+unlike the one that, carried out, had made him seize the _Nadine_ for
+escape from Coryus. But he'd listen. Harper looked doggedly resolved.
+Brawn seemed moody as usual.
+
+"I'm listening," said Moran.
+
+"Hallet," said Burleigh regretfully, "intended to murder all of us and
+with your help take the _Nadine_ to some place where he could hope to
+land without space-port inspection."
+
+Moran observed;
+
+"He didn't discuss that part of his plans. He only asked if I'd make a
+deal to escape being marooned."
+
+"Yes," said Burleigh, nodding. "I'm sure--"
+
+"My own idea," said Moran, "when I tried to seize the _Nadine_, was to
+try to reach one of several newly-settled planets where things aren't
+too well organized. I'd memos of some such planets. I hoped to get to
+ground somewhere in a wilderness on one of them and work my way on foot
+to a new settlement. There I'd explain that I'd been hunting or
+prospecting or something of the sort. On a settled planet that would be
+impossible. On a brand-new one people are less fussy and I might have
+been accepted quite casually."
+
+"Hallet may have had some such idea in his mind," agreed Burleigh. "With
+a few bessendium crystals to show, he would seem a successful
+prospector. He'd be envied but not suspected. To be sure!"
+
+"But," said Moran drily, "he'd be best off alone. So if he had that sort
+of idea, he intended to murder me too."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Burleigh nodded. "Undoubtedly. But to come to our decision. We can keep
+him on board under watch--as we did you--and leave you here. This has
+disadvantages. We owe you much. There would be risk of his taking
+someone unawares and fighting for his life. Even if all went as we
+wished, and we landed and dispersed, he could inform the space-port
+officials anonymously of what had happened, leading to investigation and
+the ruin of any plans for the future revival of our underground. Also,
+it would destroy any hope for your rescue."
+
+Moran smiled wryly. He hadn't much hope of that, if he were marooned.
+
+"We could leave him here," said Burleigh unhappily, "with you taking his
+identity for purposes of landing. But I do not think it would be wise to
+send a ship after him. He would be resentful. If rescued, he would do
+everything possible to spoil all our future lives, and we are
+fugitives."
+
+"Ah, yes!" said Moran, still more wryly amused.
+
+"I am afraid," said Burleigh reluctantly, "that we can only offer him
+his choice of being marooned or going out the airlock. I cannot think of
+any other alternative."
+
+"I can," said Moran. "I'm going to kill him."
+
+Burleigh blinked. Harper looked up sharply.
+
+"We fight," said Moran grimly. "Armed exactly alike. He can try to kill
+me. I'll give him the same chance I have. But I'll kill him. They used
+to call it a duel, and they came to consider it a very immoral business.
+But that's beside the point. I won't agree to marooning him here. That's
+murder. I won't agree to throwing him out the airlock. That's murder,
+too. But I have the right to kill him if it's in fair fight. That's
+justice! You can bring him in and let him decide if he wants to be
+marooned or fight me. I think he's just raging enough to want to do all
+the damage he can, now that his plans have gone sour."
+
+Burleigh fidgeted. He looked at Harper. Harper nodded grudgingly. He
+looked at Brawn. Brawn nodded moodily.
+
+Burleigh said fretfully. "Very well ... Harper, you and Brawn bring him
+here. We'll see what he says. Be careful!"
+
+Harper and Brawn went down the passageway. Moran saw them take out the
+blasters they'd worn since he took over the ship. They were ready. They
+unlocked and opened the inner airlock door.
+
+There was silence. Harper looked shocked. He went in the airlock while
+Brawn stared, for once startled out of moodiness.
+
+Harper came out.
+
+"He's gone," he said in a flat voice. "Out the airlock."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All the rest went instantly to look. The airlock was empty. By the most
+natural and inevitable of oversights, when Hallet was put in it for a
+temporary cell, no one had thought of locking the outer door. There was
+no point in it. It only led out to the nightmare world. And out there
+Hallet would be in monstrous danger; he'd have no food. At most his only
+weapon would be the torch Moran had carried to the _Malabar_ and brought
+back again. He could have no hope of any kind. He could feel only
+despair unthinkable and horror undiluted.
+
+There was a buzzing sound in the airlock. A space-suit hung there. The
+helmet-phone was turned on. Hallet's voice came out, flat and metallic
+and desperate and filled with hate:
+
+"_What're you going to do now? You'd better think of a bargain to offer
+me! You can't lift off! I took the fuel-block so Moran couldn't afford
+to kill me after the rest of you were dead. You can't lift off the
+ground! Now give me a guarantee I can believe in or you stay here with
+me!_"
+
+Harper bolted for the engine-room. He came back, his face ashen. "He's
+right. It's gone. He took it."
+
+Moran stirred. Burleigh wrung his hands. Moran reached down the
+space-suit from whose helmet the voice came tinnily. He began to put it
+on. Carol opened her lips to speak, and he covered the microphone with
+his palm.
+
+"I'm going to go out and kill him," said Moran very quietly. "Somebody
+else had better come along just in case. But you can't make a bargain
+with him. He can't believe in any promise, because he wouldn't keep
+any."
+
+Harper went away again. He came back, struggling into a space-suit.
+Brawn moved quickly. Burleigh suddenly stirred and went for a suit.
+
+"We want torches," said Moran evenly, "for our own safety, and blasters
+because they'll drop Hallet. Carol, you monitor what goes on. When we
+need to come back, you can use the direction-finder and talk us back to
+the yacht."
+
+"But--but--"
+
+"_What are you going to do?_" rasped the voice shrilly. "_You've got to
+make a bargain! I've got the fuel-block! You can't lift off without the
+fuel-block! You've got to make a deal._"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The other men came back. With the microphone still muffled by his hand,
+Moran said sharply, "He has to keep talking until we answer, but he
+won't know we're on his trail until we do. We keep quiet when we get the
+helmets on. Understand?" Then he said evenly to Carol. "Look at that
+paper I showed you if--if anything happens. Don't forget! Ready?"
+
+Carol's hands were clenched. She was terribly pale. She tried to speak,
+and could not. Moran, with the microphone still covered by the palm of
+his hand, repeated urgently;
+
+"Remember, no talking! He'll pick up anything we say. Use gestures.
+Let's go!"
+
+He swung out of the airlock. The others followed. The one certain thing
+about the direction Hallet would have taken was that it must be away
+from the wreck. And he'd have been in a panic to get out of sight from
+the yacht.
+
+Moran saw his starting-point at once. Landing, the _Nadine_ had used
+rockets for easing to ground because it is not possible to make delicate
+adjustments of interplanetary drive. A take-off, yes. But to land even
+at a space-port one uses rockets to cushion what otherwise might be a
+sharp impact. The _Nadine's_ rockets had burned away the yeasty soil
+when she came to ground. There was a burnt-away depression down to
+bed-rock in the stuff all around her. But Hallet had broken the
+scorched, crusty edge of the hollow as he climbed up to the blanket-like
+surface-skin.
+
+Moran led the way after him. He moved with confidence. The
+springy, sickeningly uncertain stuff underfoot was basically
+white-that-had-been-soiled. Between the _Nadine's_ landing-spot and the
+now-gutted wreck, it happened that only that one color showed. But,
+scattered at random in other places, there were patches of red mould and
+blue mould and black dusty rust and greenish surface-fungi. Twenty yards
+from the depression in which the _Nadine_ lay, Hallet's footprints were
+clearly marked in a patch of orange-yellow ground-cover which gave off
+impalpable yellow spores when touched. Moran gestured for attention and
+pointed out the trail. He gestured again for the others to spread out.
+
+Hallet's voice came again. He'd left the _Nadine's_ lock because he
+could make no bargain for his life while in the hands of his companions.
+He could only bargain for his life if they could not find him or the
+precious fuel-block without which the _Nadine_ must remain here forever.
+But from the beginning he knew such terror that he could not contrive,
+himself, a bargain that could possibly be made.
+
+He chattered agitatedly, not yet sure that his escape had been
+discovered. At times he seemed almost hysterical. Moran and the others
+could hear him pant, sometimes, as a fancied movement aroused his panic.
+Once they heard the noise of his torch as he burned a safety-hole in the
+ground. But he did not use it. He hastened on. He talked desperately.
+Sometimes he boasted, and sometimes he tried cunningly to be reasonable.
+But he hadn't been prepared for the absolute failure of what should have
+been the simplest and surest form of multiple murder. Now in a last
+ditch stand, he hysterically abused them for taking so long to realize
+that they had to make a deal.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+His four pursuers went grimly over the elastic surface of this world
+upon his trail. The _Nadine_ faded into the mist. Off to the right a
+clump of toadstools grew. They were taller than any of the men, and
+their pulpy stalks were more than a foot thick. Hallet's trail in the
+colored surface-moulds went on. The giant toadstools were left behind.
+The trail led straight toward an enormous object the height of a
+three-storey house. When first glimpsed through the mist, it looked
+artificial. But as they drew near they saw that it was a cabbage;
+gigantic, with leaves impossibly huge and thick. There was a spike in
+its middle on which grew cruciform faded flowers four feet across.
+
+Then Hallet screamed. They heard it in their helmet-phones. He screamed
+again. Then for a space he was silent, gasping, and then he uttered
+shrieks of pure horror. But they were cries of horror, not of pain.
+
+Moran found himself running, which was probably ridiculous. The others
+hastened after him. And suddenly the mistiness ahead took on a new
+appearance. The ground fell away. It became evident that the _Nadine_
+had landed upon a plateau with levels below it and very possibly
+mountains rising above. But here the slightly rolling plateau fell sheer
+away. There was a place where the yeasty soil--but here it was tinted
+with a purplish overcast of foleate fungus--where the soil had given
+way. Something had fallen, here.
+
+It would have been Hallet. He'd gone too close to a precipice, moving
+agitatedly in search of a hiding-place in which to conceal himself until
+the people of the _Nadine_ made a deal he could no longer believe in.
+
+His cries still came over the helmet-phones. Moran went grimly to look.
+He found himself gazing down into a crossvalley perhaps two hundred feet
+deep. At the bottom there was the incredible, green growing things. But
+they were not trees. They were some flabby weed with thick reddish
+stalks and enormous pinnate leaves. It grew here to the height of oaks.
+But Hallet had not dropped so far.
+
+From anchorages on bare rock, great glistening cables reached downward
+to other anchorages on the valley floor. The cables crossed each other
+with highly artificial precision at a central point. They formed the
+foundation for a web of geometrically accurate design and unthinkable
+size. Crosscables of sticky stuff went round and round the center of the
+enormous snare, following a logarithmic spiral with absolute exactitude.
+It was a spider's web whose cables stretched hundreds of feet; whose
+bird-limed ropes would trap and hold even the monster insects of this
+world. And Hallet was caught in it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He'd tumbled from the cliff-edge as fungoid soil gave way under him.
+He'd bounced against a sloping, fungus-covered rocky wall and with
+fragments of curdy stuff about him had been flung out and into the
+snare. He was caught as firmly as any of the other creatures on which
+the snare's owner fed.
+
+His shrieks of horror began when he realized his situation. He
+struggled, setting up insane vibrations in the fabric of the web. He
+shrieked again, trying to break the bonds of cordage that clung the more
+horribly as he struggled to break free. And the struggling was most
+unwise.
+
+"We want to cut the cables with torches," said Moran sharply. "If we can
+make the web drop we'll be all right. Webspiders don't hunt on the
+ground. Go ahead! Make it fast!"
+
+Burleigh and the others hastened to what looked like a nearly
+practicable place by which to descend. Moran moved swiftly to where one
+cable of the web was made fast at the top. It was simple sanity to break
+down the web--by degrees, of course--to get at Hallet. But Hallet did
+not cooperate. He writhed and struggled and shrieked.
+
+His outcry, of course, counted for nothing in the satanic cacophony that
+filled the air. All the monsters of all the planet seemed to make
+discordant noises. Hallet could add nothing. But his struggles in the
+web had meaning to the owner of the trap.
+
+They sent tiny tremblings down the web-cables. And this was the fine
+mathematical creation of what was quaintly called a "garden spider" on
+other worlds. _Epeira fasciata._ She was not in it. She sat sluggishly
+in a sheltered place, remote from her snare. But a line, a cord, a
+signal-cable went from the center of the web to the spider's retreat.
+She waited with implacable patience, one foreleg--sheathed in ragged and
+somehow revolting fur--resting delicately upon the line. Hallet's
+frantic struggles shook the web. Faintly, to be sure, but distinctively.
+The vibrations were wholly unlike the violent, thrashing struggles of a
+heavy beetle or a giant cricket. They were equally unlike those
+flirtatious, seductive pluckings of a web-cable which would mean that an
+amorous male of her own species sought the grisly creature's affection.
+
+Hallet made the web quiver as small prey would shake it. The spider
+would have responded instantly to bigger game, if only to secure it
+before the vast snare was damaged by frenzied plungings. Still, though
+there was no haste, the giant rose and in leisurely fashion traversed
+the long cable to the web's center. Moran saw it.
+
+"Hallet!" he barked into his helmet-phone, "Hallet! Hold still! Don't
+move!"
+
+He raced desperately along the edge of the cliff, risking a fall more
+immediately fatal than Hallet's. It was idiotic to make such an attempt
+at rescue. It was sheer folly. But there are instincts one has to obey
+against all reason. Moran did not think of the fuel-block. Typically,
+Hallet did.
+
+"_I've got the fuel-block_," he gasped between screams. "_If you don't
+help me--_"
+
+But then the main cable nearest him moved in a manner not the result of
+his own struggles. It was the enormous weight of the owner of the web,
+moving leisurely on her own snare, which made the web shake now. And
+Hallet lost even the coherence of hysteria and simply shrieked.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Moran came to a place where a main anchor-cable reached bed-rock. It ran
+under yeasty ground-cover to an anchorage. He thrust his torch deep,
+feeling for the cable. It seared through. The web jerked wildly as one
+of its principal supports parted. The giant spider turned aside to
+investigate the event. Such a thing should happen only when one of the
+most enormous of possible victims became entangled.
+
+Moran went racing for another cable-anchorage. But when he found where
+the strong line fastened, it was simply and starkly impossible to climb
+down to it. He swore and looked desperately for Burleigh and Brawn and
+Harper. They were far away, hurrying to descend but not yet where they
+could bring the web toppling down by cutting other cables.
+
+The yellow-banded monster came to the cut end of the line. It swung
+down. It climbed up again. Hallet shrieked and kicked.
+
+The spider moved toward him. Of all nightmarish creatures on this
+nightmare of a planet, a giant spider with a body eight feet long and
+legs to span as many yards was most revolting. Its abdomen was obscenely
+swollen. As it moved, its spinnerets paid out newly-formed cord behind
+it. Its eyes were monstrous and murderously intent. The ghastly,
+needle-sharp mandibles beside its mouth seemed to move lustfully with a
+life of their own. And it was somehow ten times more horrible because of
+its beastly fur. Tufts of black hairiness, half-yards in length,
+streamed out as its legs moved.
+
+There was another cable still. Moran made for it. He reached it where it
+stretched down like a slanting tight-rope. He jerked out his torch to
+sever it,--and saw that to cut it would be to drop the spider almost
+upon Hallet. It would seize him then because of his writhings. But not
+to cut it--
+
+He tried his blaster. He fired again and again. The blaster-bolts hurt.
+The spider reacted with fury. The blaster would have killed a man at
+this distance, though it would have been ignored by a chitin-armored
+beetle. But against the spider the bolts were like bites. They made
+small wounds, but not serious ones. The spider made a bubbling sound
+which was more daunting than any cry would have been. It flung its legs
+about, fumbling for the thing that it believed attacked it. It continued
+the bubbling sounds. Its mandibles clashed and gnashed against each
+other. They were small noises in the din which was the norm on this mad
+world, but they were more horrible than any other sounds Moran had ever
+heard.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The spider suddenly began to move purposefully toward the spot where
+Hallet jerked insanely and shrieked in heart-rending horror.
+
+Moran found himself attempting the impossible. He knew it was
+impossible. The blast-pistol hurt but did not injure the giant because
+the range was too long. So--it was totally unjustifiable--he found
+himself slung below the downward-slanting cable and sliding down its
+slope. He was going to where the range would be short enough for his
+blast-pistol to be effective. He slid to a cross-cable, and avoided it
+and went on.
+
+Burleigh and Brawn and Harper were tiny figures, very far away. Moran
+hung by one hand and used his free hand to fire the blaster once more.
+It hurt more seriously, now. The spider made bubbling noises of infinite
+ferocity. And it moved with incredible agility toward the one object it
+could imagine as meaning attack.
+
+It reached Hallet. It seized him.
+
+Moran's blast-pistol could not kill it. It had to be killed. Now! He
+drew out his torch and pressed the continuous-flame stud. Raging, he
+threw it at the spider.
+
+It spun in the air, a strange blue-white pinwheel in the gray light of
+this planet's day. It cut through a cable that might have deflected it.
+It reached the spider, now reared high and pulling Hallet from the
+sticky stuff that had captured him.
+
+The spinning torch hit. The flame burned deep. The torch actually sank
+into the spider's body.
+
+And there was a titanic flame and an incredible blast and Moran knew
+nothing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A long time later he knew that he ached. He became aware that he hurt.
+Still later he realized that Burleigh and Brawn and Harper stood around
+him. He'd splashed in some enormous thickness of the yeasty soil, grown
+and fallen from the cliff-edge, and it was not solid enough to break his
+bones. Harper, doubtless, had been most resolute in digging down to him
+and pulling him out.
+
+He sat up, and growled at innumerable unpleasant sensations.
+
+"That," he said painfully, "was a very bad business."
+
+"It's all bad business," said Burleigh in a flat and somehow exhausted
+tone. "The fuel-block burned. There's nothing left of it or Hallet or
+the spider."
+
+Moran moved an arm. A leg. The other arm and leg. He got unsteadily to
+his feet.
+
+"It was bessendium and uranium," added Burleigh hopelessly. "And the
+uranium burned. It wasn't an atomic explosion, it just burned like
+sodium or potassium would do. But it burned fast! The torch-flame must
+have reached it." He added absurdly. "Hallet died instantly, of course.
+Which is better fortune than we are likely to have."
+
+"Oh, that ..." said Moran. "We're all right. I said I was going to kill
+him. I wasn't trying to at the moment, but I did. By accident." He
+paused, and said dizzily; "I think he should feel obliged to me. I was
+distinctly charitable to him!"
+
+Harper said grimly;
+
+"But we can't lift off. We're all marooned here now."
+
+Moran took an experimental step. He hurt, but he was sound.
+
+"Nonsense!" he said. "The crew of the _Malabar_ went off without taking
+the fuel-block from the wreck's engines. It's in a drawer in the
+_Nadine's_ control-room with a note to Carol that I asked her to read
+should something happen to me. We may have to machine it a little to
+make it fit the _Nadine's_ engines. But we're all right!"
+
+Carol's voice came in his helmet-phone. It was shaky and desperately
+glad.
+
+"_You're--all right? Quite all right? Please hurry back?_"
+
+"We're on the way," said Moran.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He was pleased with Carol's reaction. He also realized that now there
+would be the right number of people on the _Nadine_; they would take off
+from this world and arrive reasonably near due-time at Loris without
+arousing the curiosity of space-port officials.
+
+He looked about him. The way the others had come down was a perfectly
+good way to climb up again. On the surface, above, their trail would be
+clear on the multi-colored surface rusts. There were four men together,
+all with blast-pistols and three with torches. They should be safe.
+
+Moran talked cheerfully, climbing to the plateau on which the _Nadine_
+had landed, trudging with the others across a world on which it was
+impossible to see more than a quarter-mile in any direction. But the way
+was plain. Beyond the mist Carol waited.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Planet of Dread, by Murray Leinster
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 43046 ***