Collected Short Fiction, page 263
“Who else feels this way?” Hendrin demanded. He glared around the cabin. “Chung? Grover? Lazenby?”
“I’m not so happy here,” Fernandez admitted quietly. But none of the rest of us spoke up. At length Hendrin said, “You seem to be in the minority, Bartlett. We’ll stay here and do it the way the Corps always does it. This planet will need at least a month’s intensive work.” Bartlett smothered down his anger. It required a visible effort.
“Let’s have no more talk of leaving,” Hendrin said. “Is that understood?”
IT was. But it wasn’t understood or accepted gracefully, I could see. After Hendrin left, Bartlett and Fernandez had a conversation of low whispers in one corner of the room, and after a while they called Grover over. I didn’t know what was going on, but I could guess they were planning some way of getting Hendrin to change his mind.
In a way I was a little disillusioned. Only Hendrin and Lazenby, of all these men, was a Corpsman in the sense I was accustomed to from reading the adventure stories. The rest of were ordinary people like me—scientifically trained, but not particularly anxious to martyr themselves in the name of scientific investigation. This was a bitch of a world: they recognized the fact, and they wanted out, just the same as I did.
That night, the forest howled and hooted at us from sundown to sunup. I spent a good chunk of the night staring out the viewplate at the waiting jungle outside. World Seven had two moons, but they weren’t attractive golden spheres like the three of Velliran; they were jagged little rocks that cast a pale white light, old and baleful. In their glimmer I saw strange wolf-like animals range themselves around the ship and bay their anger, and slinking cat-beasts that slipped among them and fought in the World Seven; the others didn’t last long at all.
The next two days saw the pattern spread out and intensify. I learned more about World Seven, and the more I learned the more anxious I was to get offworld fast—and most of my shipmates seemed to feel the same way.
Lazenby and I turned up sights on our rambles through the forest that sickened me—and once even bent the slim biologist’s scientific poise. That was the little incident where we came upon a bloated black-and-gray striped mammal lying on its side in a swamp—her side, I should say, because the creature was plainly a female.
She looked something like a wart-hog, something like a Minervan brolla, and something indescribable. She was perhaps eight feet long, and had recently given birth. A little cluster of offspring, small enough to be cute if they weren’t so hideous, jostled and pushed at each other in order to suckle.
Seven of the little ones managed to get in on the food supply. Two more were left out in the cold—and, when the seven had fed, mama calmly lifted her massive head and snapped up the two weaklings in a mouthful apiece.
I looked at Lazenby. He hadn’t enjoyed that.
“Survival of the fittest,” I said acidly. “Mother Nature in action.”
He glanced at me for a second, then back at the choplicking beast in the swamp. “I’ve never seen a world like this,” he said curtly, and began to scribble notes.
That was what World Seven was like. We slogged through the mud and slime and heat, and the more I saw of it the less happy I was about the eventual report I’d be expected to file. The planet was an ecologist’s nightmare, an interlocking series of biological dependencies that seemed to have no end. Even with Lazenby’s help, I’d never be able to bluff my way through and fool Hendrin.
Somehow we avoided the carnivorous trees and the various toothy killers long enough to make a fairly complete survey of our sector. Work was proceeding on other fronts, too. Murray was preparing his aerial maps, and Chung, flying with him, had given the geology of the planet a thoroughgoing job. Since there was no intelligent life here, anthropologist Bartlett could not function in his speciality, so he teamed with Dorwin the chemist and served as lab assistant. The report was shaping up.
Then Evans, who doubled as radioman and assistant chemist, came back from his hike carrying what was left of botanist Grover.
I didn’t get a good look at Grover. I only got half a look, and that was enough. Fernandez, who’s a medic and who doesn’t get bothered by such sights easily, grabbed up a plastic tarpaulin and wrapped it around the body in a double hurry.
Captain Hendrin appeared, looking grimmer than usual, and glanced around.
“What happened to Grover?”
“He—fell, Captain,” Evans said. The radioman licked his lips nervously. “He saw a plant he wanted to examine, and took a couple of steps off the beaten road. Then he yelled and slipped out of sight. It was some sort of trap—it looked like solid ground, but it wasn’t. It—I don’t know what it was. Whether it was a plant or an animal or what. He screamed a couple of times. I saw something yellow frothing around, and thin little tentacles waving.
He held out his hands. They were red, raw, blistered. “I reached in and yanked him out.
Some of the stuff spilled on my hands. It was like acid, sir. Like acid.”
Hendrin was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Bartlett, Murray—get a grave dug outside the ship. And make it deep, this planet may have a few ghouls along with its other forms of life.”
They shambled off to do the job. We were all pretty stunned at Grover’s death—not so much the fact that a man had died, as the way he had died. He’d been eaten alive by—what? A pool of protozoa? Who knew?
He was the first human victim of World Seven. The planet’s deadly spell was extending to us, now.
Grover’s death cast a shadow over the rest of that day. No one went out of the ship after sundown; the moons had risen, and their cold light glittered on the crude grave outside. We spent our time filing reports, transcribing notes, doing anything at all to keep our minds busy.
LATER that night, Fernandez came over to where I sat in the ship’s study, and tapped me gently on the shoulder. I looked up, startled.
“Markham?”
“What is it?”
“Can you come to my cabin for a minute? I want to talk to you.”
I didn’t object. I followed the hulking medic up the narrow companionway to his private cabin and we went inside. He clicked the lock closed.
“What’s this all about, Fernandez?”
He held up one beefy hand. “Patience, friend. All in good time.” Going to his closet, he drew forth a drinkflask containing an unmistakably sparkling liquid, and handed it to me, grinning. “Have a drink first.”
The stuff was Vellirani whiskey, one of the finest beverages known to the universe. I had missed it. “Where’d you get this?” I asked, as I punctured the drinkflask seal and took a sip. “Is it allowed on board?”
“Medicinal purposes,” Fernandez said blandly. “A little privilege of my position. Have another drink.”
I had another, and two or three more. Then I said, “You didn’t invite me here to drink your liquor. What’s on your mind, Doc?”
“Hendrin.”
“Eh?”
“Grover’s death this afternoon could have been avoided—if we’d left this planet yesterday. I don’t know how you feel about this, Markham. You’re new to the crew. The rest of us have been together a long time, and Grover’s death hurt. Hurt hard. You want me to stop talking, or should we go on?”
“Go on,” I said.
“Okay. You may or may not know the clause in the Corps charter that refers to replacement of superior officer when he no longer is capable of commanding ship.”
“I’m familiar with it. I saw now what Fernandez was driving at. “I’m with you so far,” I said. “Keep talking.”
“Some of us—Bartlett, Murray, myself, mainly—have come to the conclusion that remaining here is not in the best interest of the group’s common safety. We’re not equipped for a world like this, and it’s suicide to keep wandering around on foot in that jungle. This ought to be a three-ship team, with land-crawlers and heavy artillery. You were the first one of us to be attacked by native wildlife. You know what it’s like.
“In my position as medic, I can issue an opinion that Hendrin is temporarily insane. It’ll stand up anywhere in the galaxy. We’ll remove him from command, put him down below where he can’t interfere, and get off World Seven. But I won’t issue the opinion unless I have a majority behind me. That’s why I have to know where you stand, Markham.”
I frowned. “You’re proposing mutiny, in other words?”
“No. Legal removal of a temporarily insane commander is not mutiny. And it’ll mean the deaths of all of us if we stay here the full period. Well, Markham? Are you with us?”
Grinning, I said, “What do you think? I like to stay alive just as much as the next man.”
I had a few more drinks and left Fernandez’ cabin, and so far as I knew the mutiny remained in abeyance for the next day or two. Perhaps Fernandez was waiting until he had a unanimous backing behind him; I didn’t know. So far as I knew four of the eight crewmen were in favor of deposing Hendrin—Fernandez, Murray, Bartlett, and myself. Only one—Lazenby—seemed to prefer remaining on World Seven to complete the observations. The other three, Chung, Evans, and Dorwin, had made no definite statement, at least not to me, but I was fairly certain where their sympathies lay. None of them was the deep-down dedicated type that would vote to remain on a suicide world like this one.
But nothing happened, during the next day. I saw little of Captain Hendrin, and what little I did see I didn’t like: he was dour, grim, and stern, as if he expected what was brewing and was determined to squash it the moment it started.
For some reason, the field pairings were switched around the next day. It seemed that Chung wanted to investigate the geology of our region more closely, and had requested that he be teamed with someone who had been working in the area. I was paired with him; Lazenby was shifted over to work with Bartlett, and Murray did his stint in the copter with Dorwin. With the death of Grover the balance of the teams was disrupted; we had always had four-two-man teams out and two men guarding the ship, but now the breakdown was three two-man outfits and three men back at ship.
Chung and I set out on a parallel track to finecomb the area, and Lazenby and Bartlett roamed out somewhere near us. The forest was so thick there was no way of seeing anyone nearby.
Chung devoted most of his time to rocks and ridges, while I, feeling a little lost without Lazenby, bluffed my way through an ecology tour. Luckily, Chung didn’t say much, and I wasn’t forced to reveal just how ignorant of my speciality I really was.
We were gone about half an hour when I heard a very human yell echo from the left.
Chung was bent over, studying a quartz outcropping. I said, “You hear that?”
“Sorry, no. Some animal?”
“Animal hell! That sounded like Lazenby, and I’ll bet he’s in trouble!”
As if to punctuate my mark with an exclamation point, another yell came from the adjoining glade.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s see what’s going on.”
WE cut our way blindly through the infuriatingly thick overhang of vines, slashing madly in the direction of the noise. I yelled, “Lazenby! Bartlett! Is there any trouble?”
After a moment Bartlett’s voice, quite close, said, “No, no trouble at all.”
I hesitated—but then I saw Bartlett dimly veiled by close-packed fern fronds, and decided to see what was up anyway. I stepped through the ferns, followed by Chang.
Bartlett stood there, looking down at the ground. At Lazenby.
The little biologist was lying sprawled grotesquely on his stomach, rigid, corpselike. I felt chilled. That Lazenby, who of all of us had the most vivid interest in searching the forest for its secrets, should meet death this way—
“What happened?” I asked.
Bartlett was very pale. The anthropologist said, “I didn’t know. Something sprang at him from the tree up there, and he fell over. I couldn’t see what it was.”
There was a moment of silence. Then I went white, as the “corpse” wriggled, painfully flopped over, and stared at us. I could see the knifewound in his chest.
“That’s a lie,” Lazenby said in a half-whisper. “It wasn’t any animal. Bartlett knifed me . . . the way he did the Vellirani native . . . because I was going to tell you. . . .”
He slumped, caught at his millie, tensed. His face was a mask of agony. I looked up from him to Bartlett, and now I saw the bloody knife clutched in the anthropologist’s powerful hand.
“You had to be nearby?” Bartlett asked bitterly. “You had to get here before he died? You had to hear everything?”
I saw Chung backing away, frightened. “What is this, Bartlett?” I asked in a voice I didn’t recognize.
“I killed him. Sure, I killed him. Like I killed a blues-kin on Velliran.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t mean to. Never meant to. The native wouldn’t answer questions; threatened to report me for unethical practices. Lazenby . . . gave me a dreg. I used it on you. It stepped your time-perception; I killed the native, put the knife in your hand, left you standing there.”
My mouth sagged open. I heard the chittering of the million insects on the forest floor. “You—”
“Me. It didn’t have to be you. It could have been anyone; it just happened to be you that came along. And then I saw you join the crew as Markham. Why did it have to be you?”
So Bartlett had killed the Vellirani, and planted the weapon on a total stranger—me. Only I had followed him to World Seven. That was the “funny story” Lazenby had enigmatically promised to tell me, someday . . . and now, never would.
I stared at Bartlett across Lazenby’s stiffening body. And then Bartlett leaped.
The knife went high, but my hands were quick. I slapped his wrist, deflecting the aim outward, and clamped my other hand down before he could compensate. I twisted; the knife fell.
“Get help, Chung! He’s out of his mind!” I managed to yell. Bartlett, weaponless, pummelled me back against a tree. I caught a freezing glimpse of some forest creature crawling out to feed on Lazenby’s body. I blocked Bartlett’s fists as well as I could, landed a cross to the chin, followed up my advantage with a heavy smash to his stomach.
He reeled back, stunned. I hit him again. I wanted to knock him out, to bring him back to the ship and eventually back to Velliran to clear my name. But it wasn’t going to be that way.
He staggered, off balance. I landed another blow and he took three awkward wide falling steps backward—
And the ground gave way.
He sank down with a little terrified gasp, and I saw something yellow and slimy in the ground, and fifty shiny transparent tentacles twine up and wrap around him. Within seconds he was below the surface, and out of sight. The yellow liquid swirled satedly, and then the trap began to close over again.
I stood staring at it, feeling sick. The trap was simple: the fluid at the surface congealed, forming a sticky, fragile surface to which leaves would adhere, creating a seemingly-innocent patch of ground that gave way when a foot touched it. And then . . . it fed.
I shuddered and turned away. Chasing a small striped feeder from Lazenby’s body, I shouldered the corpse and sadly made my way back to the ship to announce that World Seven had claimed two more human victims.
AS I drew near the ship, I heard a strange sound: the high sucking whine of a blaster being fired. I moved faster, despite the burden on my back.
Then I stepped into the clearing, and saw the ship. Chung lay dead some twenty yards from the ship’s elevator, a blaster-hole where his chest should be. A little closer to the ship was Dorwin, his face a crust of ash. The sound of shouting, struggles came from the ship.
Somehow my mind found time to tally the score as I ran toward the ship. Five members of the team were dead; I, the sixth, was out here. That left Hendrin, inside, holding off Fernandez, Evans, and Murray. Damn this world anyway, I thought.
I looked up. The hatch opened, and someone tumbled down. Murray. A second later Fernandez’ head poked out. “Markham! Where’s Bartlett?”
“Dead. What’s going on?”
“We sprang the mutiny on Hendrin, but he’s holed up in the front now with a blaster. Just Evans and me left inside. You have a gun?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Come on up here. But be careful.”
I heard a blaster-shot, and Evans came staggering out to fall almost at my feet. That made seven corpses for World Seven, I thought. Nice and neat.
I edged my way toward the fore cabin. The sound of struggle reached me: a fist-fight, it seemed like. But I wasn’t going to risk anything foolishly. I clung to the cold metal skin of the wall, and went forward step by step.
Then I saw them in the cabin—Hendrin and Fernandez, looking like two wildmen, slugging it out with bare fists. Hendrin’s blaster lay discarded, on the floor; out of charge most likely. Fernandez turned his head a second and yelled, “Markham! He’s unarmed! Help me!”
Hendrin’s captain’s uniform hung in tatters. I crept around behind him, snaked an arm around his throat, and yanked back. I holstered my blaster and pinioned him with my other arm.
“Hold still, Captain,” I said warningly. “I’ve got a blaster here.”
Hendrin held still. But suddenly, before I knew what was happening, Fernandez grabbed the blaster from my hip and felled Hendrin with a single shot. I let the Captain’s body drop, jumped forward, and damped Fernandez’ wrist.
But I didn’t need to. The gun dropped of its own accord, and Fernandez stood there, a giant of a man, brooding foolishly like a small boy over Hendrin’s body.
I picked up the gun. “Why’d you kill him? He was under control. Why’d you kill him, Fernandez?”
He looked into my face, and I saw sheer horror in his eyes. “I don’t know,” he said quietly. “I . . . was out of my head. It’s all over now.” He was shaking convulsively. He found a seat and took it, head in his hands.
“They’re all dead,” I said. “Every last one but you and me. Some expedition.”
