Planet of Death

Chapter 8 To Leave or not to Leave

This time, the jungle did not seem so deadly to Crawford. He was getting used to its dangers. He was starting to get familiar with its terrors.

He knew that it was risky to relax too much. You always had to be on your guard in a place like this. But now he was less worried than before. He had already survived some of the worst things the jungle could throw at him. As long as he stayed alert, he would be all right in here.

He still wasn’t exactly happy to be on World Seven. In fact, every minute longer he spent in the jungle of World Seven, the less he liked the planet.

There was something sick about this world. It was an ugly, vicious place. In any jungle, there was always a struggle to stay alive. But here the struggle was too violent. Everything in this jungle seemed to be out to kill and eat. Even the trees were hungry for meat.

They edged forward, inch by inch, through the hot, sticky jungle. Lazenby was very helpful. He kept pointing out things that Crawford, as a scientist, should have noticed. Crawford was amazed at how many things he failed to see.

Luck was with them. They didn’t run across any more man-eating trees. Nor did any of the big jungle beasts come charging out of the underbrush. But Lazenby found other killers, no less deadly.

“Look here,” Lazenby said. He pointed down at a dark pool of water about three feet across. There were tiny blue creatures swimming in it.

“So?” Crawford said. “What’s so special? It’s a puddle with tadpoles in it.”

“Take a good look at the tadpoles,” said Lazenby.

Crawford knelt down and peered into the pool. Lazenby stood guard behind him in case some animal should suddenly appear.

The “tadpoles,” Crawford saw, were small shiny things about an inch long. They had bright little teeth, pointy and sharp. They could move fast, those “tadpoles.” And they were busy.

A snake about two feet long lay on the mud at the bottom of the little pool. It was wriggling slowly. The “tadpoles” were eating it alive. They clustered around, nipping at the snake with their teeth. They were picking away pieces of its flesh.

Maybe the snake had taken a shortcut through the puddle to save a little time as it wandered in the jungle. Or perhaps it had wanted a bath. But the hungry “tadpoles” had been lying in wait.

“It’s the same thing everywhere on this planet,” Crawford said. “The big animals are killers. The little animals are killers. Even the plants and trees are killers.”

“Yes,” Lazenby said. “Life is short and hard here. You have to be fast to survive. And you need a good pair of teeth.”

“It’s a vicious world.”

“No,” said Lazenby. “Nature isn’t vicious or ugly or anything else. Nature is just nature. It’s wrong to see this jungle any other way. That’s just life you see all around you. And on World Seven life is a rough deal.”

“It’s a rough deal anywhere,” Crawford said. “Here it’s just a little rougher than usual.”

“Exactly.”

Crawford looked down at the hungry little beasts in the pool and shuddered. “I wish I could be cool and scientific like you,” he said to Lazenby. “To you, this planet is probably the most interesting place in the universe. To me it’s just a nasty, unpleasant mess.”

Smiling, Lazenby said, “You mustn’t get so worked up. It’s only nature. You’ve got to stay calm if you’re going to be a scientist.”

“I hate this place. I can’t be calm on a world like this. Not where even the trees try to eat you. I’d like to get off this planet in a big hurry. Everything here disgusts me.”

“A scientist doesn’t hate,” said Lazenby quietly. “He doesn’t get disgusted. He studies what he sees. He doesn’t get angry about it.”

“Well, I’m no scientist,” Crawford replied. “I’m just an ordinary guy who didn’t go to college. When I see something dangerous, I don’t feel like studying it. I feel like hauling out a blaster and blazing away.”

“So I noticed. But while you’re with us, you’ll have to act the way a scientist would act.”

“Well, I won’t have to pretend to be a scientist for long,” Crawford grumbled. “Just till Captain Hendrin decides he’s ready to return to civilization. If I’m still alive by then.” Crawford looked at the leaves of a big green fern nearby. He half expected the fern to sprout legs and chase him. “If this planet doesn’t get us all before we have a chance to leave,” Crawford said.

That night, back at the ship, it turned out that not every scientist was as calm as Lazenby. Some of them weren’t calm at all. They hated this planet every bit as much as Crawford did.

It became clear very fast. The men of the Exploration Corps team gathered that evening to compare notes on what they had seen.

Murray, the map-maker, was the first to speak. He was a short, broad-shouldered man with a bristly red beard. He said, “This is the nastiest world I’ve ever seen. I’d like to get out of here fast.”

Crawford chuckled. “You spent your day a thousand feet up in the air. Go take a walk through the jungle if you want to find out how nasty it can really be.”

“I did,” Murray said, tugging nervously at his beard. “Chung, here, wanted to study some rock outcroppings. I brought the copter down and landed it. We weren’t on the ground five minutes before a brawl started. Some big blue and red beast the size of a small mountain came toward us looking mean. But before it got to us, three jag-toothed flying creatures came swooping down. Just like dive-bombers, they came. They sliced its neck open and had themselves a party.”

Chung, the slender Chinese geologist who had flown with Murray, said softly, “I didn’t get to study those rocks. After that, we decided not to stick around.”

“It’s the same all over this place,” said Grover, the botanist. “Everything has fangs or claws or great big teeth. I went out to find that devilish man-eating tree that almost swallowed Lazenby.”

“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.