Planet of Dread Read Free

finality.
    Moran said bitingly;
    “That ain’t no hillock, that’s my home!”
    Then, instantly he’d said it, he recognized that it could be true. The mound was not a fold in the ground. It was not an up-cropping of the ash-covered stone on which the Nadine rested. The enigmatic, dirty-yellow-dirty-red-dirty-blue-and-dirty-black ground-cover hid something. It blurred the shape it covered, very much as enormous cobwebs made solid and opaque would have done. But when one looked carefully at the mound, there was a landing-fin sticking up toward the leaden skies. It was attached to a large cylindrical object of which the fore part was crushed in. The other landing-fins could be traced.
    “It’s a ship,” said Moran curtly. “It crash-landed and its crew set up a signal to call for help. None came, or they’d have turned the beacon off. Maybe they got the lifeboats to work and got away. Maybe they lived as I’m expected to live until they died as I’m expected to die.”
    Burleigh said angrily;
    “You’d do what we are doing if you were in our shoes!”
    “Sure,” said Moran, “but a man can gripe, can’t he?”
    “You won’t have to live here,” said Burleigh. “We’ll take you somewhere up by the ice-cap. As Carol said, we’ll give you everything we can spare. And meanwhile we’ll take a look at that wreck yonder. There might be an indication in it of what solar system this is. There could be something in it of use to you, too. You’d better come along when we explore.”
    “Aye, aye, sir,” said Moran with irony. “Very kind of you, sir. You’ll go armed, sir?”
    Burleigh growled;
    “Naturally!”
    “Then since I can’t be trusted with a weapon,” said Moran, “I suggest that I take a torch. We may have to burn through that loathesome stuff to get in the ship.”
    “Right,” growled Burleigh again. “Brawn and Carol, you’ll keep ship. The rest of us wear suits. We don’t know what that stuff is outside.”
----
    Moran silently went to the space-suit rack and began to get into a suit. Modern space-suits weren’t like the ancient crudities with bulging metal casings and enormous globular helmets. Non-stretch fabrics took the place of metal, and constant-volume joints were really practical nowadays. A man could move about in a late-model space-suit almost as easily as in ship-clothing. The others of the landing-party donned their special garments with the brisk absence of fumbling that these people displayed in every action.
    “If there’s a lifeboat left,” said Carol suddenly, “Moran might be able to do something with it.”
    “Ah, yes!” said Moran. “It’s very likely that the ship hit hard enough to kill everybody aboard, but not smash the boats!”
    “Somebody survived the crash,” said Burleigh, “because they set up a beacon. I wouldn’t count on a boat, Moran.”
    “I don’t!” snapped Moran.
    He flipped the fastener of his suit. He felt all the openings catch. He saw the others complete their equipment. They took arms. So far they had seen no moving thing outside, but arms were simple sanity on an unknown world. Moran, though, would not be permitted a weapon. He picked up a torch. They filed into the airlock. The inner door closed. The outer door opened. It was not necessary to check the air specifically. The suits would take care of that. Anyhow the ice-cap said there were no water-soluble gases in the atmosphere, and a gas can’t be an active poison if it can’t dissolve.
    They filed out of the airlock. They stood on ash-covered stone, only slightly eroded by the processes which made life possible on this planet. They looked dubiously at the scorched, indefinite substance which had been ground before the Nadine landed. Moran moved scornfully forward. He kicked at the burnt stuff. His foot went through the char. The hole exposed a cheesy mass of soft matter which seemed riddled with small holes.
    Something black came squirming frantically out of one of the