The Planet Killers Read online

  And there my career as a writer of Ace Double Books came to its end. I was finding new strengths as a writer, by that time, and was ready to move on to larger and better-paying publishing houses like Doubleday and Ballantine with books of a more complex sort. (Other writers Wollheim had developed, such as Dick, John Brunner, and Samuel R. Delany, were beginning to move along also, and he was, with some justification, resentful of our departures from his list, but we were all young and ambitious and couldn’t remain Ace authors forever.)

  One of Our Asteroids Is Missing appeared ten years and two months from that day in the fall of 1953 when, as a starry-eyed apprentice with dreams of selling a story some day running through his head, I had picked up that very first Ace Double science-fiction volume, the back-to-back van Vogt book. In that decade I had run the whole course from reader and collector to novice writer to successful professional, and my relationship with Ace and its editor Don Wollheim, was an essential step along the way. I’m pleased to see these early novels of mine, so important in my evolution as a writer, returning to print now after these many decades.

  Robert Silverberg

  December 2009

  The Plot Against Earth

  Chapter One

  The morning was bright, clear, and crisp. The sun, a blazing yellow-white ball, climbed toward its noonday height, casting long shadows in the streets of the city of Dyelleran. This was the hot season on the main continent of Morilar. Those beings whose business forced them out into the open moved rapidly toward their destinations. Only a few stopped to peer at the Earthman.

  Lloyd Catton was his name. He was tall, tall as any of the elongated natives of Morilar, but unlike them he was solidly and powerfully built, with none of their spindly flimsiness. He was built to stand up to punishment—even the punishment of a noontime walk in 115-degree heat. One didn’t go to an alien world expecting to find comfort and convenience.

  Catton was dressed in the accepted style of a Terran diplomat: a light-weight sleeveless red doublet, gloves of green velvet trimmed with orange, a golden sash. His dark brown hair was cropped close to his skull. The gleaming blaster fastened to his sash was purely for ceremonial purposes: it neither could be fired nor was intended to be fired. A local law prevented non-residents from carrying any sort of functional weapons, but Catton’s official position required him to be at least decoratively armed.

  An attache case dangled from his left hand. In it was his identification plaque, as well as the credentials naming him for the post of Special Investigator for the Terran Work Government. Sweat beaded his broad back and shoulders, pasting the doublet to his skin. This assignment, he knew, might keep him on Morilar for a long time. He was simply going to have to get used to the heat.

  He crossed a broad well-paved street and looked up at the name-label riveted to a building wall. Translating from the wedge-shaped Morilaru characters, he read: Street of Government . He nodded, satisfied. This was the place he had intended to reach. And he had found his way across the city from the Terran Embassy by himself, without the need of asking a single person for directions, on his first morning here. That was the sort of performance his job was going to require as a constant norm.

  He had arrived late the night before, on a special liner non-stop from Earth. By arrangement, he was quartered at the Terran Embassy. Last night he had met the Ambassador and his attractive young daughter, Estil; this morning, he was due to present his credentials to the Interworld Commission on Crime, of which he was now a member. Catton had been well prepared for this mission. He had been chosen with care from the entire corps of Terra’s Special Agents.

  Standing at the head of the broad street, he looked to the west and saw imposing sleek-walled buildings rising on both sides. His eyes took in the unfamiliar Morilaru numbers, and he searched until he had the one he wanted. There it was—Number Eleven, Street of Government. The towering building with the gray-and-yellow decorative pattern along its flanks. Catton walked toward the main entrance.

  There was no door, only a golden curtain of force. The Earthman stepped through, and his nostrils registered a faint tang of ozone as he passed through the field. He knew he had just been scanned for dangerous weapons. He knew he would never have passed successfully through the field if he were carrying anything more deadly than the plugged blaster. The Morilaru were an innately suspicious race.

  A guard paced back and forth in the pleasantly cool, antiseptically austere lobby of the official building. He stared curiously at Catton for a moment; it was not every day that Earthmen came in here. Catton paused, wondering if the guard would hail him. But the guard made no sign of interference. The Earthman walked past him and into the open liftshaft that waited for him, as if by special appointment, in the rear of the lobby.

  Once he was inside, the walls of the liftshaft closed instantly around him. Catton eyed the indicator dial and twisted it to the Morilaru equivalent of Sixteen. Purring smoothly, the liftshaft rose. The gravitic column that was pushing it upward halted at the building’s sixteenth floor. Catton got out.

  A frosted office door confronted him. The inscription, right-to-left after the manner of Morilaru writing, read:

  INTERWORLD COMMISSION ON CRIME

  Please enter.

  Catton put his hand to the doorplate and the frosted door flicked open. He stood at the threshold, his hand tightening convulsively on the sweaty handle of his attache case.

  A Morilaru receptionist smiled coolly up at him from her desk. It was impossible to tell her age; she might have been twenty, or just as easily seventy. She wore the green crest of an unmarried woman twined in her hair. Her skin was a soft purplish hue; her eyes, light crimson, stood out brilliantly against that background. The clinging blouse she wore left her shoulders bare, revealing the three little inch-high nubbins of bone on each shoulder that marked the chief external anatomical difference between Terran and Morilaru.

  She said, using the local Morilaru dialect, “You have an appointment, sir?”

  Catton nodded. “Pouin Beryaal is expecting me. My name is Lloyd Catton. From Earth.” He spoke the language fluently; after a hundred hours of intensive hypnotraining in the three major Morilaru dialect variations, it was not surprising.

  “Lloyd Catton,” she repeated tonelessly, as if memorizing. “From Earth. To see Pouin Beryaal. Yes. Just one moment, Lloyd Catton. I will check.”

  Catton waited while she spoke briefly into an intercom grid. She used a somewhat different dialect, apparently not realizing that Catton would be aware of its implications. All she said was, “The Earthman is here to see you, Pouin Beryaal.” But the inflected form of the dialect was an expression of contempt. Catton was not annoyed, merely interested. It was vital to him to know exactly how all of these outworlders, whether receptionists or potentates, regarded Earthmen.

  He was unable to hear Pouin Beryaal’s reply. A moment later an inner door opened and a male Morilaru appeared—a hulking purple-skinned spider of a man, with enormous elongated arms and legs. “I am the secretary to Pouin Beryaal,” the Morilaru said in his own language. “You will come this way.”

  Catton followed him inside. The atmospheric pressure dropped considerably in the inner office. Evidently they had conditioners on in here. Catton’s ears were discomforted by the change, but at least it was a relief to emerge from the steam-bath for a while. The humid climate of Morilar was hellish.

  His guide kicked a doorstop and a wooden slat door folded up with a loud clap, admitting them to a circular office whose walls were an iridescent blue-green that flickered irregularly down to the violet end of the spectrum and back again.

  A Morilaru sat at the head of a wide table, and his posture and demeanor left no doubt that he was Pouin Beryaal, chairman of the Interworld Commission on Crime. Seated to his right was an enormously fleshy orange-skinned being whom Catton recognized as a native of Arenadd, and to Beryaal’s left was a gaunt, spectral gray creature from the Skorg system. All three outworlders were staring at C
atton with undisguised curiosity.

  The Morilaru said, “I am Pouin Beryaal. Do you speak Morilaru, Earthman?”

  “The rules of interstellar contact,” Catton said evenly, “require government personnel to be capable of speaking the language of the world to which they are assigned. I understand your language. My name is Lloyd Catton.”

  “Sit down, Lloyd Catton,” Pouin Beryaal said, making no comment on Catton’s acid reply. It was difficult to judge from the intonation, but it seemed to Catton that the Morilaru’s tone in asking him to sit had been intentionally offensive.

  The Earthman sat. He lifted his attache case, placed it on the table before him, and thumbed the release catch. There was a moment’s halt while the scanner-band examined his thumbprint; then the case popped open. Catton drew forth a thin document bound in dark gray fabric.

  “These are my credentials,” he said, handing the document to Pouin Beryaal.

  The Morilaru nodded and leafed through the booklet with no apparent change of expression. When he had reached the last page he nodded again, and casually handed the papers to the ponderous Arenaddin. The Arenaddin’s eyes seemed to emerge from a welter of fat in order to scan the pages. The document was in all four of the major languages of the galaxy: Terran, Morilaru, Arenaddilak, and Skorg.

  In a moment, the Arenaddin was finished. He passed Catton’s document across the table to the Skorg, who leaned forward and perused it with awesome intensity for perhaps thirty seconds.

  “Your papers are in order,” Pouin Beryaal remarked. “Earth now has a delegate to this Commission. Your colleagues, beside myself, are Ennid Uruod of Arenadd, and Merikh eMerikh of Skorg. Do you find the atmosphere of this room offensive, Lloyd Catton?”

  “I have no complaints.”

  “A stoic,” said the Skorg in hollow, cavernous tones. “He would have no complaints even if we turned off the scent-conditioners, no doubt.”

  “I don’t happen to be as sensitive to discomfort as some Earthmen are,” Catton said, restraining himself. The smell of a Skorg was almost intolerable to an Earthman, he knew. But he also knew that Skorgs were tremendously less tolerant of Earthman-odor than Terrans of Skorgs; five minutes after the purifiers in the room were turned off, the Skorg would be groveling in a retching heap on the floor, while Catton would merely feel severe distaste. “I would have no objections if the scent-conditioners are turned off,” Catton said.

  “That will not be necessary,” said Pouin Beryaal dryly. “We do not intentionally wish your discomfort, Earthman. You are, after all, a member of this Commission—a colleague.”

  Catton nodded. He sensed the undercurrent of tension and hostility in the room. It was only to be expected. These three outworlders were representatives of races—Morilaru, Arenaddin, Skorg—that had known and vied with each other for centuries. Into the group had come a fourth race, galactic newcomers. Small wonder that the old, well-established races would regard the fast-moving humanoids from Sol III with some suspicion. Not yet a century had passed since Earth’s first contact with the other races of the galaxy. Hardly an instant, on the galactic timescale.

  Pouin Beryaal said, “When we organized this Commission last year, we felt it was desirable to include an Earthman. Hence the invitation that resulted in your appointment and your presence here. Our problem is a problem that concerns every intelligent race in the galaxy.”

  “Hardly a new problem,” rumbled the Arenaddin. “But one that has become more serious in recent years. It is time to take concerted action.”

  “Have you ever seen a hypnojewel, Earthman?” Pouin Beryaal asked.

  Catton shook his head. “I’ve seen the documentary films on them, and I know what they can do. But I’ve never actually seen a hypnojewel itself.”

  The Morilaru’s face creased in a faint smile. “You should understand the nature of your enemy, Earthman, before you begin to plot his destruction. Here. Look at this, closely and with concentration.”

  Pouin Beryaal drew a small glittering object from a green leather box on the table before him, and slid it down the burnished surface to Catton, who stopped it with his hand. He picked it up. It was a small cloudy gem, a good size for mounting in a ring. It was milk-white in color, and it had been cut with crude, irregular facets.

  “This?” Catton said.

  “Look at it,” murmured the Skorg.

  Uneasily, Catton concentrated on the surface of the stone. He had been warned, at the outset of this mission, to fear traps every step of the way. Perhaps it was better, he thought, not to look at the stone. These three outworlders might have prepared some unpleasant surprise for him. It was wisest to smile and decline the invitation, and hand the stone back. Yes, thought Catton. That was the wise thing to do. He would hand it back to Pouin Beryaal. He would—

  He could not take his eyes from the stone.

  It glowed, he saw now, with some inner light of its own. It was a warm radiant nimbus that swirled in patterns round the core of the gem, dancing and bobbing, weaving dizzyingly. Catton smiled. The tiny blaze of color was breathtakingly beautiful, an intertwining thicket of reds and greens and clashing blues. The stone appeared to have enlarged in size. It was tremendously relaxing to go on staring at it, watching the gay flame dance, while all tension ebbed away, all consciousness of self, all fears and torment vanished.

  The edge of an alien hand chopped down numbingly on the upturned wrist of the Earthman. Catton cried out, and his fingers, suddenly robbed of strength, opened to let the stone fall. It went skittering across the glossy floor. Pouin Beryaal scooped it up with a quick motion and restored it to its box.

  Catton sat transfixed, breathing deeply, while the vision of beauty faded. For almost half a minute, he could not speak.

  “Half an hour more,” said the Skorg, “and to take that stone away from you would have been to destroy your mind. As it is you probably feel withdrawal pangs now.”

  “I feel as if my brain’s been drawn out through my forehead and embedded in that stone,” Catton murmured.

  “The effects are immediate and impressive,” said the Arenaddin. “There isn’t a humanoid race in the galaxy that can withstand them.”

  “Devilish,” Catton said quietly. He was shaken to the core. Up till this moment, he had not really been interested in whether the hypnojewel trade flourished or not; his real purpose lay elsewhere. But now, as he measured the intensity of his yearning for the stone now hidden in the leather box, he realized that this matter was graver than he had suspected. “Where do these things come from?” he asked.

  “We don’t know,” Pouin Beryaal said. “They almost seem to enter the galaxy of their own accord.”

  “We have suspicions,” the Skorg interjected. “There are races in the universe—non-humanoid races—which do not respond to the hypnotic effect of these jewels. One of those races might be manufacturing them and filtering them to the humanoid worlds. We do not know. But the trade in these jewels must be wiped out.”

  Catton nodded weakly. He was a strong man; yet a few seconds’ exposure to the gem had left him limp. “Yes. Earth will do its best in fighting this trade,” he said.

  “The jewels are absolutely deadly,” exclaimed the Arenaddin. “Men have been known to mail them to their enemies—who look at them and are immediately trapped. And there are others, voluntary addicts who escape this life by giving themselves up to the dreamworld the stones offer. Within an hour, the hold is unbreakable.”

  Catton said, “You did well to invite an Earthman to join this Commission. This is a matter that threatens the well-being of all worlds. It transcends what little differences of thinking there may be between Earth and the other humanoid cultures of the galaxy.”

  “Well spoken!” Pouin Beryaal said. It seemed to Catton that there was more than a trace of cynicism in Beryaal’s tone. The hypnotic jewels were dangerous, of course. But the unvoiced enmity between Earth and the Morilar-Arenadd-Skorg axis would not vanish overnight in response to this threat to un
iversal well-being. Only a fool would think so, and neither Catton nor the people who had chosen him for this journey could lay claim to the title of fool.

  “Have you any other—ah— demonstrations for me?” Catton asked.

  “Just this,” the Morilaru said. He drew a thick portfolio from a drawer in the table. “It is a file of our investigations and deliberations previous to your arrival. It may help you to read this, in order to bring yourself up to date. We will have it coded for your retinal patterns.”

  Chapter Two

  Catton was conducted to a laboratory elsewhere in the building, and there a technician took readings of his eyes with an elaborate measuring device. It was a familiar security measure among the Morilaru. From the retinal readings, a print of his retinal pattern—unique in the universe, as all were—was taken. The pattern was then embedded through a simple process on every page of the portfolio Beryaal had given him. As he turned each page, it would be necessary for Catton to stare at the sensitive patch for a few seconds, until the correspondence could be established. If he failed to perform the desensitization, or if any eyes but his scanned the page, the entire portfolio would char and burn beyond readability within half a minute.

  When they had finished preparing the portfolio for him, there was no further reason for Catton to remain in the building. He could not function as a member of the Commission until he had familiarized himself with the situation and with their previous conclusions. So, locking the portfolio carefully into his attache case, Catton made polite but distant farewells to his three fellow Commissioners and stepped out once again into the blazing heat of Dyelleran, capital-city of the world Morilar.

  It was early afternoon, now. The daily siesta-period was coming to its end. The temperature, Catton estimated, was still well over a hundred. He had been assured before he left Earth that there would be few days when the mercury dropped as low as ninety.