Planet of Death Page 6

  “Did it do its tricks for you?” Lazenby asked.

  “You bet it did!” Grover said. He was the youngest man in the team, with curly black hair and a high, squeaky voice. “It went into action as soon as I got there. An animal came along, something like a deer, except instead of antlers it had three long straight horns. The tree whipped out a long vine and grabbed the animal into the air. The beast must have weighed eight hundred pounds. The tree swooped it up and pushed it into that mouth on top. I filmed the whole thing. It wasn’t pretty.”

  Fernandez, the ship’s big, beefy doctor, said in his rumbling voice, “This is no world for a ten-man team. We ought to go on to the next planet in this star system. Let Earth send a fully armed expedition out here if it’s interested in exploring this world. We’re risking our lives every time we step outside the ship.”

  “Right,” said Bartlett. The powerful, muscular anthropologist banged his fist on a table. “I’m for leaving! We already know this planet isn’t fit for colonizing — at least, not for another hundred million years or so. It’s too tough now, too dangerous. There’s nothing here that’s useful — to us or anybody else. So why are we sticking around?”

  “Why don’t you ask Captain Hendrin that?” Lazenby suggested quietly. “He’ll be here in a few minutes. If you don’t want to stay on this planet, tell him you’d like to leave.”

  Everybody looked at Lazenby. Bartlett said, “Are you trying to stir up trouble? You know what Hendrin will say!”

  “Yes,” said Lazenby. “He’ll say that we should stay here until we’ve finished our work. And I agree. I’m very interested in giving this world some careful study. So is the Captain. There won’t be any colony here, but scientifically speaking, it’s a remarkable tropical world.”

  Bartlett’s eyes blazed with anger. “Remarkable! Remarkable! When every beast in that jungle is waiting to eat us? You can have your remarkable planet, Lazenby. I’d like to get moving — to someplace safe!”

  “What’s that, Bartlett?” asked a cold, crisp voice from the doorway.

  Heads rapidly turned to look. It was Captain Hendrin, standing at the entrance. One of his hands was tightly clamped against the edge of the door. He looked furious. He said, “Would you care to repeat your words in my presence, Bartlett?”

  The husky anthropologist squirmed in his seat. Then his eyes met the Captain’s. Bartlett said in a low voice, “I was expressing an opinion, sir. I think that maybe we’ve done all we need to do on this planet. I think that maybe we ought to move on, since clearly this is an unsafe world for human beings.”

  “I see,” said the Captain. His voice was very flat and soft just now. He was keeping his temper under tight control. “I take it you weren’t around a little earlier. Markham, here, had the same idea. Didn’t you hear what I told him then?”

  “I heard it. I still think it’s suicide to stay here, Captain.”

  “Who else feels this way?” Hendrin demanded, frowning. He glared around the cabin. “Chung? Grover? You, Lazenby? Dorwin?”

  Fernandez spoke up. “As long as you ask, I’m not so happy here,” the doctor said. “I’d like to blast off too.”

  But none of the others said anything.

  After a long silence Captain Hendrin said, “It doesn’t look like you’ve got many followers, Bartlett. Most of the men are willing to stay here. So we’ll stay. We’ll do things the way the Exploration Corps always does things. This planet is going to take at least a month of hard work. Will you go along with that, Bartlett?”

  Bartlett cracked his knuckles to show how angry he was. He looked up slowly.

  “All right,” he said, “I’ll go along. What else can I do, if the others are crazy enough to want to stay?”

  “Good,” said the Captain. “Let’s have no more talk of leaving, now. We’ve got a job to do here. Is that understood?”

  It was.

  But it wasn’t understood happily. Some of the men were upset about staying here longer. Bartlett and Fernandez had been the only ones who had dared to speak out against the Captain. But Crawford knew that some of the others felt the same way Bartlett and Fernandez did.

  After the Captain left the room, Bartlett called Fernandez aside. They sat in the corner, talking in low whispers. Five minutes went by. Then they asked Grover to come over and join them.

  Crawford didn’t know what was going on. But he could guess that they were planning some way of getting Hendrin to change his mind.

  Lazenby said to Crawford, “I don’t understand these men. They’re veterans of the Exploration Corps. They shouldn’t be such cowards!”

  “They’ve never run up against a planet like this one,” Crawford said. “Maybe they want to stay alive long enough to explore somewhere else.”

  Lazenby shook his head. “It’s not the right idea at all! They’ve got work to do here!”

  Crawford was a little surprised himself. In the books he had read, Exploration Corps men were always perfect heroes. They never were afraid of anything. They endured all kinds of hardships without complaining.

  But those were the storybooks. This was real life.

  And in real life, even Exploration Corps men could get scared. This world was something special, so brutal and ugly that it could scare anyone. This was such a terrifying jungle that it seemed to threaten every man here with death. And so the corpsmen wanted to leave, though usually nothing could frighten them on any planet.

  Of all this bunch, only Lazenby and Captain Hendrin really wanted to stay here any longer. The rest would be glad to get away from this grisly place. They were scientists, yes. But they didn’t want to die for science.

  Crawford felt the same way about World Seven. It was a planet out of a nightmare. He wanted to leave here as fast as he could.

  CHAPTER 9

  THE FIRST VICTIM

  Crawford didn’t sleep well that night. All night long, the animals of the forest hooted and howled and screamed. The noise was so loud that it came right through the metal walls of the spaceship.

  He spent a good part of the night staring out the viewscreen, looking at the dark jungle. Moonlight helped him see what was happening. World Seven had two small moons. They weren’t lovely orange-golden moons like the moons of Velliran. They were ugly little ones that cast a cold, pale white light.

  By that hard white light Crawford saw strange wolf-like animals creep out of the jungle. They ringed themselves around the ship and barked at it. They tried to find some way to get inside. It was as if they knew there was food inside.

  Then slinking cat-beasts slipped among the wolves and fought with them. There were screeches and high whines. When the battle was over, half a dozen animals were dead on each side. Their bodies didn’t last long. Scavengers crawled through the grass to feast on the dead.

  Death never rested on World Seven. The struggle went on, day and night.

  Late that evening, just before Crawford was about to go to sleep, Lazenby came to talk to him. The biologist was in a serious mood. He closed the hatch of the cabin and locked it.

  Then he said to Crawford, “I’m still trying to pick up information on that murder you’re involved in.”

  “How can you possibly learn anything out here, millions of miles from Velliran?”

  “It’s possible,” said Lazenby. “Because one of the men on this ship is the real murderer.”

  “What?”

  “Shh! Not so loud!”

  “How could that be? I don’t get it!” Crawford whispered.

  “This ship was on Velliran when the murder happened, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “And you say that you blanked out strangely just before the crime was committed. Tell me, was there any strange taste or smell that you noticed when you came to?”

  “A sweet taste in my mouth,” said Crawford.

  “That’s it! That’s it!” Lazenby slammed his fist into his palm. “There’s a Vellirani drug that could cause a sudden blackout that way. It leav
es a sweet taste afterward. I was studying it while we were on Velliran. I told three or four of the team about it. One of them must have got hold of some — and used it on you!”

  “But what makes you think some member of this team framed me? It could have been anyone on Velliran,” Crawford objected.

  “There aren’t many there who know of the drug. It’s rare and expensive. And it seems odd to me that right after I found out about the drug, someone would use it on you.”

  “What motive would any of these men have?”

  “That’s what I don’t know yet,” said Lazenby. “I’m working on it, though. First I have to find out which of the men knew about the drug, and which might have had reason to kill a native. I’ll take it from there.”

  “Is there anything I can do to help?” Crawford asked.

  “Yes. Keep out of it, and keep your mouth shut. If you started asking questions, you’d get in trouble right away. I’ll find out who the man is. Just give me a little time.”

  A powerful surge of excitement ran through Crawford. The real murderer right on this ship! One of these nine men! It was all up to Lazenby, now. He would be the detective.

  I hope he finds him fast, Crawford thought. I’d like to get my hands on him!

  * * * *

  The next day, the exploration teams went out again. Although most of the men really wanted to leave, they were afraid to speak up. Captain Hendrin wanted to stay here. And Captain Hendrin was the boss of this outfit.

  Crawford learned more about World Seven on the second day of exploration. The more he learned, the more he wanted to get off this world in a great hurry.

  He was teamed with Lazenby again. They sliced through the jungle, collecting specimens and taking photographs. Lazenby seemed fascinated by everything. Crawford was simply disgusted.

  And once they found something that even got Lazenby upset.

  It happened when they came upon a huge, fat, black-and-gray animal lying on its side in a swamp. The animal looked something like a pig, except that a pig was much prettier. This animal was about eight feet long, with big, curling tusks and tiny, squinting eyes. Its skin was wrinkled and folded. Its ears were long and droopy and covered with stiff hairs. It gave off a smell that made Crawford want to hold his breath.

  The animal was a mother. It had just given birth. A litter of nine baby beasts was trying to feed. They were about a foot long, and they might have been cute if they weren’t so ugly. They still looked wet and soggy, the way animals often do right after they are born.

  There were nine babies, but there was room for the mother to nurse only seven at a time. Each of the seven was getting milk. The other two were left out in the cold. They lay a few feet away, making angry squealing noises.

  Crawford had seen mother cats deal with this problem. First they fed some of their kittens, and then they fed the other ones.

  But this beast was no cat. And she had a different way of fixing things.

  She waited until the seven little ones had had their meal. Then she calmly lifted her big head and opened her huge mouth.

  Snap! and one of the babies who hadn’t eaten was gone.

  Snap! and the other one was gone.

  Then she stretched out on her side again. The seven lucky little ones came close to her once more. They nestled against her warm belly.

  Crawford looked at Lazenby. The biologist hadn’t enjoyed watching that.

  “You see?” said Crawford sarcastically. “It’s survival of the fittest. Those two extra babies couldn’t find their way to the milk fast enough. So they were gobbled up. You ever see a mother act like that anywhere else?”

  Lazenby stared at the big animal in the swamp. She was licking her chops.

  “I’ve never seen a world like this,” he whispered. “Not anywhere.”

  Crawford was glad to see that his friend was disturbed. Lazenby couldn’t be scientific all the time. Maybe he thought that this planet was “remarkable” and “fascinating” even now. But to see a mother eat two of her newborn babies just because they were weaklings — that was a chilling sight. And even Lazenby was chilled by it.

  They tramped on through the jungle.

  Crawford’s mind was on the scientific report he was supposed to file. How could he possibly fake it? This was a very complicated world. Even if Lazenby helped him, he wouldn’t be able to draw up a convincing report. Lazenby wasn’t an ecologist, either. Captain Hendrin would take one look at Crawford’s findings and know that he was a phony.

  It began to occur to Crawford that he might get punished for coming on this journey. Captain Hendrin was a man who took everything extremely seriously. Maybe there were laws against posing as an Exploration Corps man. Maybe Crawford had escaped from one jail term only to get another.

  He didn’t like to think about that.

  Somehow he and Lazenby avoided the man-eating trees and the other toothy killers that day. They managed to make a fairly complete survey of their part of the jungle. Work was going well for the other teams, too. Murray was out flying again, collecting pictures for the maps he would draw. Chung, the geologist, had gone with him once more. Chung was studying the shape of this planet’s surface — its mountains and valleys and plains.

  Dorwin, the chemist, was working on his part of the study. He was bringing samples of plants, animals, and soil to the ship’s laboratory. There, he ran tests to see what they were made of. Bartlett, the anthropologist, was helping him. There was no intelligent civilization here, so Bartlett could not perform his own job.

  Everybody was working hard. Crawford hoped that they’d get the planet explored fast, so they could leave.

  Then World Seven claimed its first human victim.

  It happened late in the afternoon. Grover, the botanist, had gone out to study some jungle flowers. He had taken the radio operator, Evans, with him.

  Suddenly there came a loud shout. “Help! Help me!”

  It was Evans. He ran from the jungle. Something was in his arms.

  He was carrying what was left of Grover.

  Crawford didn’t get a good look at the dead man. He only got half a look, and that was enough. Grover was a frightening sight.

  Fernandez, the doctor, jumped forward. A medical man doesn’t get bothered by such sights as easily as other people. But even Fernandez was shaken by the way Grover looked. He grabbed up a sheet of plastic and wrapped it around the body, fast, to cover it and hide it from view.

  Captain Hendrin appeared. His lean face was grim and tense. He looked at Evans and said, “What happened to Grover?”

  Evans ran his tongue nervously around his lips. He was so frightened he could hardly talk. “He — he —”

  “Pull yourself together, man!” the Captain ordered.

  The radio operator took a deep breath. “He — he fell, Captain,” Evans finally said. “Grover fell.”

  “Fell where?”

  Evans was calmer now. He said, “Grover saw a plant he wanted to examine. Something unusual. It was about three feet to the side of our path. Grover walked over to it. Then he yelled and slipped out of sight. He went right into a big hole in the ground.”

  “A trap, you mean?” Hendrin asked.

  “I think so. He thought he was stepping on solid ground. But it wasn’t solid. He went right through. It was about five feet deep. There was something in the hole, sir. I don’t know what it was. Whether it was a plant or an animal or what. Grover screamed a couple of times. I saw something yellow in the pit — like foam. And little thin arms waving around, a million of them!”

  Evans held out his hands. They were covered with dozens of small red blisters.

  He said, “I reached in and yanked Grover out. Some of the stuff spilled on my hands. It was like acid, sir. Like acid. He must have died right away.”

  The Captain was silent for a moment. He looked down at the brown plastic sheet covering what was left of Grover. Then he said, “Bartlett, Murray, Markham — get a grave dug in the clearing here. And
make it deep.”

  Crawford and the other two got spades from the ship. They began to dig. It was hot, sweaty work. Lazenby and Chung stood by as guards, in case any animal attacked them while they dug. In an hour, there was a grave. Grover’s body, still wrapped in plastic, was lowered into it. Captain Hendrin said a few words in Grover’s memory.

  Then the surviving Earthmen went into the ship and shut it tight for the night.

  No one spoke much that evening. Everybody was stunned by Grover’s death. The worst part was not that he was dead, but the way he had died. It was one thing to be killed by a wild animal. It was something else again to be eaten alive by a pool of acid. What kind of creature lived in that pool? No one knew. No one felt like finding out.

  The two moons had risen. Their cold white light glittered on Grover’s grave. The men spent their time filing reports and doing other scientific work, just to keep their minds off what had happened to Grover.

  Crawford pretended to be hard at work on his report, too. But actually he did not know what to write. So he simply wrote down his descriptions of the animals he had seen in the jungle. At least that way he looked busy.

  He had not given up trying to guess which man aboard was the murderer. But he didn’t have a clue. And Lazenby hadn’t found out anything, either.

  Crawford was starting to think Lazenby’s idea was wrong. If the murderer was aboard this ship, Crawford asked himself, wouldn’t he have attacked me long ago? He’d want to get me out of the way in case I might recognize him. Unless he doesn’t know who I am, that is. Maybe he didn’t get a clear look at me in the street, the day of the frameup. It would come as a big surprise to him if he knew that his framed victim was on this very ship!

  But Crawford couldn’t imagine why any of these men might have wanted to frame him. Chung? Dorwin? Evans? Who could tell? It didn’t make any sense.

  Late that night Fernandez came over to where Crawford was typing. The doctor tapped gently on his shoulder. Crawford looked up, surprised.

  “Markham?”

  “What is it?”