Robert Silverberg: Planet of Death

Actually, it wasn’t as hard to pretend as he had feared. He had read plenty of stories about the exciting adventures of Exploration Corps men. All he had to do was remember the details of the stories.

That gave him a fair idea of what the normal routine on ship was like.

Of course, he didn’t know a thing about ecology. And he was supposed to be an ecologist. But the ship had a good scientific library. In his free time he made use of it. He took out book-tapes on ecology and played them when no one else was around. That way, he learned some of the words he should know.

The job of the Exploration Corps was to take a look at all the worlds in the universe. It was now known that there were billions of planets. Most of them did not have intelligent people living on them—just wild beasts.

If a planet had no civilization of its own, Earth could plant a colony there. Of course, there could not be a colony on a planet like Velliran, because Velliran was already inhabited. The Earthmen who lived on Velliran were there by permission of the Vellirani people. But if a planet had no civilization, Earth was free to claim it.

The ships of the Exploration Corps went out to study these worlds. The Corpsmen had to file a full report on each planet with the computer known as Central Control. This vast electronic brain kept records of all the worlds in the universe.

What the Exploration Corps had to decide was whether a world was good enough for a colony. Did it have good weather? Would the soil yield rich crops? What kind of animal life was there? Was there a supply of fresh water? Could the air be breathed by Earthmen?

All this had to be learned and reported. Then, if Central Control agreed, a colony could be sent out. Hundreds of men and women would come to the new world to live. These pioneers would build towns and start to farm. In time there would be great cities where the first towns had been.

Crawford’s job, as the expedition’s ecologist, was to study the life of World Seven. He had to see how the plants and animals could best be put to use by the colonists. From what he had read in the tapes, he knew that his job was an important one. His thoughts would help decide whether a colony of Earthmen should come to World Seven or not.

He felt bad because he was not really a scientist. It was unfair to the other men, he knew. Part of the survey job would go undone because the real Paul Markham was not there.

Yet it had also been unfair to find him guilty for a crime he had not done. It had been necessary to get off Velliran or else. There had been no time to argue about the rights and wrongs of it. So here he was. It was too bad that he could not really help the scientists. But he had had to escape.

And maybe he could be of some help after all. He hoped so. His sharp eyes and quick trigger finger might be useful. They were going to a wild, dangerous planet. As a trained hunter, he might be able to protect the real scientists.

It took three weeks to get from Velliran to World Seven. For the first two days the ship traveled on ordinary rocket drive. Then, when it was far enough from Velliran so there would be no danger, it shifted to its special overdrive.

Overdrive allowed a ship to get from star to star quickly. An ordinary rocketship would need many years to make such a journey. A ship going on overdrive could travel billions of miles in a few weeks.

As they neared the Andromeda galaxy, they snapped back into ordinary drive.

Roy Crawford stared out the porthole at the bright sparkling stars.

“The universe is so big,” he murmured. “So big we can’t even imagine what it’s like!”

Out there lay millions of stars. Each star had a few planets circling it. It made him dizzy to think of all those millions and millions of worlds.

Earth could send out Exploration Corps ships from now to the end of time and still not be able to visit all those planets. The sky was full of stars. How far out did they go? How many billions of stars existed?

The ship moved in toward Star System Z-16.

It was a group of eleven planets around a bright yellow star. The yellow star looked very much like Earth’s own sun. The sun and this star were the same size and the same color. It was a little like coming home to Earth to see a yellow star again. The star that was Velliran’s sun gave orange light.

Now the eleven planets of Star System Z-16 were very close. They looked like colored globes spinning in space. Two of them had rings like the planet Saturn. One of the others was so close to the yellow sun that it would be too hot to live on.

“We’re landing first on World Seven,” Captain Hendrin said.

The ship swung into orbit and headed down to land.

The landing was beautiful. The slender ship seemed to float down on its rocket blast. It hung for a moment about ten feet above the ground. Then slowly it touched down.

Before anyone could go outside, the air had to be tested. Not every planet had air that Earthmen could breathe. On some worlds there was no oxygen in the air. On some worlds the air contained poisonous gases. They had to check carefully first.

A small section of the ship opened, and a metal tube poked out. Air was drawn into the tube. Then it was sealed and pulled back into the ship.

Dorwin, the expedition’s chemist, tested the sample of air in his laboratory. He checked it and double-checked it. After an hour he came out of the laboratory.

“It’s fine,” he declared. “It’s about 25% oxygen and 68% nitrogen. Plus small amounts of other gases. We ought to be able to breathe it without any trouble.”

Everyone sighed with relief. If the air had been poisonous, they would have had to do their exploring wearing spacesuits. It was never very comfortable to walk around inside a bulky, hot spacesuit. Now they could go outside without special breathing equipment.

“Okay,” Captain Hendrin said. “Now we pick a man to go outside and take a look.”

Only one man would go out on this first trip. It was too risky to send more than one. If the first man came back alive, the others would go out.

The Captain opened a box of straws. He took out ten straws and tore one so it was shorter than the others. Then he stuck all ten straws in his fist. The way he did it, no one could tell which was the short straw.

“Everybody pick a straw,” he said. “Short straw goes outside.”

Somehow Crawford had a funny feeling that he was the one who was going to pick the short straw. He didn’t know why. It was just his kind of luck.

He pulled a straw from Captain Hendrin’s fist. Sure enough, it was the short one. He stood grining at it foolishly.

“Guess I’m the lucky one,” he said.

The Captain smiled. “Well, it’s good that the ecologist will be the first one out. You can get a head start on your work that way.”

Crawford carried weapons with him when he went outside. He strapped a little blast-gun to each hip and put a needle-gun in a shoulder-holster. Just for good measure he fastened a wicked-looking hunting knife to his belt.

“That ought to do it,” he said. “Anything that starts trouble with me will get plenty of trouble right back.”

He rode the ship’s elevator down to the airlock in the tail. The airlock opened. The other Earthmen would be watching him from the portholes. But he was strictly on his own.

He took a look at the world outside the ship.

He saw purplish grass all around. The ship had come down in a little grassy clearing. About a hundred yards away, the jungle began. It looked thick and strange. The trees were very tall and were woven together by a network of vines.

Crawford took his first step outside the airlock. He looked carefully around. It was very warm here. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead. Sweat dribbled down into his eyebrows. He flicked it away, annoyed.