Nightmare Planet Read online

  Produced by Greg Weeks, Denny Lien, Mary Meehan and theOnline Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

  Nightmare Planet

  _by_ MURRAY LEINSTER

  (_Illustrations by Tom O'Reilly_)

  [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Science Fiction Plus June 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

  * * * * *

  _In science-fiction, as in all categories of fiction, there are stories that are so outstanding from the standpoint of characterization, concept, and background development that they remain popular for decades. Two such stories were Murray Leinster's_ The Mad Planet _and_ Red Dust. _Originally published in 1923, they have been reprinted frequently both here and abroad. They are now scheduled for book publication. Especially for this magazine, Murray Leinster has written the final story in the series. It is not necessary to have read the previous stories to enjoy this one. Once again, Burl experiences magnificent adventures against a colorful background, but to the whole the author has added philosophical and psychological observations that give this story a flavor seldom achieved in science-fiction._

  Under his real name of Will Fitzgerald Jenkins, the author has sold to _The Saturday Evening Post_, _Colliers'_, _Today's Woman_, in fact every important publication in America. He has had over 1200 stories published, 15 books and 35 science-fiction stories anthologized. His writing earned him a listing in _Who's Who in America_.

  * * * * *

  The Directory-ship _Tethys_ made the first landing on the planet,L216^{12}. It was a goodly world, with an ample atmosphere and manyseas, which the nearby sun warmed so lavishly that a perpetualcloud-bank hid them and all the solid ground from view. It had mountainsand islands and high plateaus. It had day and night and rain. It had anequable climate, rather on the tropical side. But it possessed no life.

  No animals roamed its solid surface. No vegetation grew from its rocks.Not even bacteria struggled with the stones to turn them into soil. Noliving thing, however small, swam in its oceans. It was one of thatdisappointing vast majority of otherwise admirable worlds which wasunsuited for colonization solely because it had not been colonizedbefore. It could be used for biological experiments in a completelygerm-free environment, or ships could land upon it for water andsupplies of air. The water was pure and the air breathable, but it hadno other present utility. Such was the case with an overwhelming numberof Earth-type planets when first discovered in the exploration of thegalaxy. Life simply hadn't started there.

  So the ship which first landed upon it made due note for the GalacticDirectory and went away, and no other ship came near the planet foreight hundred years.

  But nearly a millennium later, the Seed-Ship _Orana_ arrived. It landedand carefully seeded the useless world. It circled endlessly above theclouds, dribbling out a fine dust comprised of the spores of everyconceivable microorganism that could break down rock to powder and turnthe powder to organic matter. It also seeded with moulds and fungi andlichens, and everything that could turn powdery primitive soil intostuff on which higher forms of life could grow. The _Orana_ seeded theseas with plankton. Then it, too, went away.

  Centuries passed. Then the Ecological Preparation Ship _Ludred_ swam tothe planet from space. It was a gigantic ship of highly improbableconstruction and purpose. It found the previous seeding successful. Nowthere was soil which swarmed with minute living things. There were fungiwhich throve monstrously. The seas stank of teeming minusculelife-forms. There were even some novelties on land, developed bystrictly local conditions. There were, for example, _paramecium_ as bigas grapes, and yeasts had increased in size so that they bore flowersvisible to the naked eye. The life on the planet was not aboriginal,though. It had all been planted by the seed-ship of centuries before.

  The _Ludred_ released insects, it dumped fish into the seas. Itscattered plant-seeds over the continents. It treated the planet to asort of Russell's Mixture of living things. The real Russell's Mixtureis that blend of simple elements in the proportions found in suns. Thiswas a blend of living creatures, of whom some should certainly surviveby consuming the now habituated flora, and others which should surviveby preying on the first. The planet was stocked, in effect, witheverything it could be hoped might live there.

  But at the time of the _Ludred's_ visit of course no creature needingparental care had any chance of survival. Everything had to be able tocare for itself the instant it burst its egg. So there were no birds ormammals. Trees and plants of divers sorts, and fish and crustaceans andinsects could be planted. Nothing else.

  The _Ludred_ swam away through emptiness.

  There should have been another planting, centuries later still, but itwas never made. When the Ecological Preparation Service was moved toAlgol IV, a file was upset. The cards in it were picked up and replaced,but one was missed. So that planet was forgotten. It circled its sun inemptiness. Cloud-banks covered it from pole to pole. There were hazymarkings in certain places, where high plateaus penetrated the clouds.But from space the planet was featureless. Seen from afar, it was merelya round white ball--white from its cloud-banks and nothing else.

  But on its surface, in its lowlands it was nightmare.

  Especially was it nightmare--after some centuries--for the descendantsof the human beings from the space-liner _Icarus_, wrecked there someforty-odd generations ago. Naturally, nobody anywhere else thought ofthe _Icarus_ any more. It was not even remembered by the descendants ofits human cargo, who now inhabited the planet. The wreckage of the shipwas long since hidden under the seething, furiously striving fungi ofthe boil. The human beings on the planet had forgotten not only the shipbut very nearly everything--how they came to this world, the use ofmetals, the existence of fire, and even the fact that there was such athing as sunlight. They lived in the lowlands, deep under thecloud-bank, amid surroundings which were riotous, swarming, frenziedhorror. They had become savages. They were less than savages. They hadforgotten their high destiny as men.

  * * * * *

  Dawn came. Grayness appeared overhead and increased. That was all. Thesky was a blank, colorless pall, merely mottled where the cloudsclustered a little thicker or a little thinner, as clouds do. But thelandscape was variegated enough! Where the little group of peoplehuddled together, there was a wide valley. Its walls rose up and up intothe very clouds. The people had never climbed those hillsides.

  They had not even traditions of what might lie above them, and theirlives had been much too occupied to allow of speculations on cosmology.By day they were utterly absorbed in two problems which filled everywaking minute. One was the securing of food to eat, under the conditionsof the second problem, which was that of merely staying alive.

  There was only one of their number who sometimes thought of othermatters, and he did so because he had become lost from his group ofhumans once, and had found his way back to it. His name was Burl, andhis becoming lost was pure fantastic accident, and his utilization of afully inherited power to think was the result of extraordinary events.But he still had not the actual habit of thinking. This morning he waslike his fellows.

  All of them were soaked with wetness. During the night--every night--thesky dripped slow, spaced, solemn water-drops during the whole of thedark hours. This was customary. But normally the humans hid in themushroom-forests, sheltered by the toadstools which now grew to threeman-heights. They denned in small openings in the tangled mass ofparasitic growths which flourished in such thickets. But this last nightthey had camped in the open. They had
no proper habitations of theirown. Caves would have been desirable, but insects made use of caves, andthe descendants of insects introduced untold centuries before had sharedin the size-increase of _paramecium_ and yeasts and the few true plantswhich had been able to hold their own. Mining-wasps were two yards long,and bumble-bees were nearly as huge, and there were other armoredmonstrosities which also preferred caves for their own purposes. And ofcourse the humans could not build habitations, because anything menbuilt to serve the purpose of a cave would instantly be preempted bycreatures who would automatically destroy any previous occupants.

  The humans had no fixed dens at any time. Now they had not even shelter.They lacked other things, also. They had no tools save salvaged scrapsof insect-armor--great sawtoothed mandibles or razor-pointedleg-shells--which they used to pry apart the edible fungi on which theylived, or to get at the morsels of meat left behind when the brainlesslords of this planet devoured each other. They had not even any usefulknowledge, except