Planet of Dread by Murray Leinster Read Free Book Online Page A

know that they could not escape to space whenever matters got too hot for them aground. For a spaceman to trifle with interstellar-traffic laws meant at the least that they were grounded for life. But the probabilities were much worse than that. It was most likely that Burleigh or any of the others would be reported to space-port police instantly they attempted to charter a ship for any kind of illegal activity. Moran made a mental note to warn Burleigh about it.
    By now, though, he was aware of a very deep irritation at the idea of being killed, whether by monsters on this planet or men sent to pick him up for due process of law. When he made the grand gesture of seizing the Nadine , he’d known nothing about the people on board, and he hadn’t really expected to succeed. His real hope was to be killed without preliminary scientific questioning. Modern techniques of interrogation were not torture, but they stripped away all concealments of motive and to a great degree revealed anybody who’d helped one. Moran had killed a man in a fair fight the other man did not want to engage in. If he were caught on Coryus or returned to it, his motivation could be read from his mind. And if that was done the killing—and the sacrifice of his own future and life—would have been useless. But he’d been prepared to be killed. Even now he’d prefer to die here on Tethys than in the strictly painless manner of executions on Coryus. But he was now deeply resistant to the idea of dying at all. There was Carol....
    He thrust such thoughts aside.
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    Morning was well begun when they prepared to transfer the wreck’s treasure to the Nadine . Moran went first. At fifteen-foot intervals he burned holes in the curd-like, elastic ground-cover. Some of the holes went down only four feet to the stone beneath it. Some went down six. But a man who jumped down one of them would be safe against attack except from directly overhead, which was an unlikely direction for attack by an insect. Carol had seen a wasp fly past the day before. She said it was as big as a cow. A sting from such a monster would instantly be fatal. But no wasp would have the intelligence to use its sting on something it had not seized. A man should be safe in such a fox-hole. If a creature did try to investigate the opening, a torch could come into play. It was the most practical possible way for a man to defend himself on this world.
    Moran made more than a dozen such holes of refuge in the line between the Nadine and the wreck. Carol watched with passionate solicitude from a control-room port as he progressed. He entered the wreck through the lock-doors he’d uncovered. Harper followed doggedly, not less than two fox-holes behind. Carol’s voice reassured them, the while, that within the half-mile circle of visibility no monster walked or flew.
    Inside the wreck, Moran placed emergency-lanterns to light the dark interior. He placed them along the particularly inconvenient passageways of a ship lying on its side instead of standing upright. He was at work breaking open a box of bessendium when Harper joined him. Harper said heavily;
    “I’ve brought a bag. It was a pillow. Carol took the foam out.”
    “We’ll fill it,” said Moran. “Not too full. The stuff’s heavy.”
    Harper watched while Moran poured purple crystals into it from his cupped hands.
    “There you are,” said Moran. “Take it away.”
    “Look!” said Harper. “I owe you plenty—.”
    “Then pay me,” said Moran, exasperatedly, “by shutting up! By making Burleigh damned careful about who he tries to hire to come after me! And by getting this cargo-shifting business in operation! The Nadine’s almost due on Loris. You don’t want to have the space-port police get suspicions. Get moving!”
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    Harper clambered over the side of doorways. He disappeared. Moran was alone in the ship. He explored. He found that the crew that had abandoned the Malabar had been guilty of a singular oversight