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

for a crew abandoning ship. But, of course, they’d been distracted not only by their predicament but by the decision to carry part of the ship’s precious cargo with them, so they could make it a profitable enterprise to rescue them. They hadn’t taken the trouble to follow all the rules laid down for a crew taking to the boats.
    Moran made good their omission. He was back in the cargo-hold when Brawn arrived. Burleigh came next. Then Harper again. Hallet came last of the four men of the yacht. They did not make a continuous chain of men moving back and forth between the two ships. Three men came, and loaded up, and went back. Then three men came again, one by one. There could never be a moment when a single refuge-hole in the soil could be needed by two men at the same time.
    Within the first hour of work at transferring treasure, the bolt-holes came into use. Carol called anxiously that a gigantic beetle neared the ship and would apparently pass between it and the yacht. At the time, Brawn and Harper were moving from the Malabar toward the Nadine , and Hallet was about to leave the wreck’s lock.
    He watched with wide eyes. The beetle was truly a monster, the size of a hippopotamus as pictured in the culture-books about early human history. Its jaws, pronged like antlers, projected two yards before its huge, faceted eyes. It seemed to drag itself effortfully over the elastic surface of the ground. It passed a place where red, foleated fungus grew in a fantastic absence of pattern on the surface of the ground. It went through a streak of dusty-blue mould, which it stirred into a cloud of spores as it passed. It crawled on and on. Harper popped down into the nearest bolt-hole, his torch held ready. Brawn stood beside another refuge, sixty feet away.
    Carol’s voice came to their helmet-phones, anxious and exact. Hallet, in the lock-door, heard her tell Harper that the beetle would pass very close to him and to stay still. It moved on and on. It would be very close indeed. Carol gasped in horror.
    The monster passed partly over the hole in which Harper crouched. One of its clawed feet slipped down into the opening. But the beetle went on, unaware of Harper. It crawled toward the encircling mist upon some errand of its own. It was mindless. It was like a complex and highly decorated piece of machinery which did what it was wound up to do, and nothing else.
    Harper came out of the bolt-hole when Carol, her voice shaky with relief, told him it was safe. He went doggedly on to the Nadine , carrying his bag of purple crystals. Brawn followed, moodily.
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    Hallet, with a singularly exultant look upon his face, ventured out of the airlock and moved across the fungoid world. He carried a king’s ransom to be added to the riches already transferred to the yacht.
    Moving the bessendium was a tedious task. One plastic box in the cargo-hold held a quantity of crystals that three men took two trips each to carry. In mid-morning the bag in Hallet’s hand seemed to slip just when Moran completed filling it. It toppled and spilled half its contents on the cargo-hold floor, which had been a sidewall. He began painstakingly to gather up the precious stuff and get it back in the bag. The others went on to the Nadine . Hallet turned off his helmet-phone and gestured to Moran to remove his helmet. Moran, his eyebrows raised, obeyed the suggestion.
    “How anxious,” asked Hallet abruptly, gathering up the dropped crystals, “how anxious are you to be left behind here?”
    “I’m not anxious at all,” said Moran.
    “Would you like to make a deal to go along when the Nadine lifts?— If there’s a way to get past the space-port police?”
    “Probably,” said Moran. “Certainly! But there’s no way to do it.”
    “There is,” said Hallet. “I know it. Is it a deal?”
    “What is the deal?”
    “You do as I say,” said Hallet significantly. “Just as I say! Then ...”
    The lock-door opened, some distance away. Hallet stood