John Racham

  Stephen Query had been condemned to serve out his space enlistment on Step Two, the unknown mudball way station. Query had been made a mere technician there at the enclosed domed-in base because he refused to accept automaton status. But Query found that Step Two meant for him at least the freedom of privacy and daydream even though one step outside the Dome without protective clothing could mean death. Or so everyone said ...

  Until Stephen and the admiral who had ordered him to that dark planet were thrown defenseless into the muddy misty world beyond the Dome. There could be no hope of rescue, for Step Two's officers had concealed the crash of the admiral's vessel and no one at the base even knew they were lost.

  They wandered hopeless, starving and thirsty, knowing there was no hope—and then, there was a noise, there were those strange colors, there was something emerging from the dark planet beyond all conception....

  Turn this book over for second complete novel

  JOHN RACKHAM has also written:

  FLOWER OF DORADIL THE DOUBLE INVADERS ALIEN SEA

  THE PROXIMA PROJECT IPOMOEA

  TREASURE OF TAU CETI THE ANYTHING TREE BEYOND CAPELLA

  DARK PLANET

  JOHN RACKHAM

  ACE BOOKS

  A Division of Charter Communications Inc. 1120 Avenue of the Americas New York, N. Y. 10036

  DARK PLANET

  Copyright ©, 1971, by John Rackham All Rights Reserved.

  Cover art by Jack Gaughan.

  THE HEROD MEN

  Copyright ©, 1971, by Ace Books

  Printed in U.S.A.

  HE STOOD UP TO HIS KNEES in hot mud, the wet weight of it pressing the inert plastic of his suit warmly against his legs. Inside the suit he was a trifle more than comfortably warm, aware of beads of sweat that formed and trickled and stung his eyes. The lung-pack on his back labored ceaselessly to keep that level despite the close to boiling, steamy air outside. And that air wasn't just hot and humid, it was alive: a seething soup of microorganisms that were perpetually hungry. The planet surface slow-boiled constantly at the bottom of a hundred-mile blanket of shimmering blue green, voracious air that had its own furtive glow, giving a visibility of something under ten yards, and even that was uncertain as to edge and color. And Stephen Query liked it, felt happy in it, as he was now.

  He knew himself to be odd and was, therefore, sane. Either a man gets to the age of maturity believing everyone else is crazy but him, in which case he is insane, or he realizes that it's everybody else who is normal and he's the odd one, and he stays sane. But alone. Query liked to be alone. Here, if he forgot the thin thread of plastic line that was his clue back to the Dome, he could be alone as never before. Alone in a sea of mud with shimmer green walls and ceiling and the silent yet urgent surge of alien jungle all about him. Alone to think, not so much about this wild environment, but about himself.

  There was enough room in his mind to feel mildly grateful for the "bending" of Dome regulations that allowed him this escape; to recall the words of Sergeant Keast: "Don't see why the hell not, Query, on your own time! It don't cost anything, and you sure as hell aren't going to run off, out there. Where to, huh?" And "run off" was a valid

  5

  point, for service here, on this nameless planet, at this base called, simply, Step Two, was a form of punishment. So Query had room to feel just that small twinge of gratitude. But for everything else to do with Space Service and what it stood for he felt no gratitude whatever. He rejected it with the solid and total stubbornness with which he had rejected each and every other form of regimentation that came with being human. And that itself was a problem he needed to think about, to reach some kind of decision on.

  But thinking, for Query, was more a process of letting his mind run where it wanted to and following after it with interest to see what it turned up, and then to wonder at it. Such as now, in the middle of seething life that he could feel on all sides though it was utterly silent. No birds sang; no insects buzzed; nothing splashed the mud with running feet. But he called back his mind from that and brought it to the question. To be, or not. He knew Hamlet's speech, admired the sonorous phrases, but his problem came to simpler terms and in older language still. "Humanus sum, et nihil humanum a me alienum puto." I am human, and therefore nothing human is alien to me. But he felt alien to it, inescapably. So what to do? The prospect of yielding, allowing himself to be slotted into the structure of society just like everyone else, was terrifying. It had the feel of living death. On the other hand, was the life he had led so far so very wonderful? Was it worth it just for the sake of integrity? Or to refine it right down to the basics "Who am I, that I can expect everybody else to move over to make room for me?"

  That fascinating but unanswerable question went aglim-mering as the smooth surface of the chocolate brown mud right in front of him grew a bump. A ripple, and up came the pale green spike of something that grew with visible speed, thrusting up like a spear, swelling, forming a bulb on a slim stem. He could have reached out and touched it. It shook with urgency, strained and swayed, and even as the fattening head lifted clear of the mud, he saw ravenous decay attacking it, saw the sudden cluster of yellow spots which spread fast and coalesced into a whole, so that the burgeoning head drooped and bent back. And swelled more. And burst to discharge a puff of tiny white

  6 specks that floated on the mud for a breath and were gone, were all swallowed up like their parent.

  There was significance here. He pondered on it. Life was that fast in this hothouse, but the essence was the same anywhere. Fight and die. Eat and be eaten. Emerge for a brief moment then fall back into the vast anonymity . . . that was it Individuality was a temporary illusion in the eternity of life itself. Only the idea itself lives on. Like Space Service itself, even. Conditions changed. Personnel changed, officers and men came and went. Ships were built and flew, served and fell out, or were destroyed. Everything changed except the Space Service idea, the concept itself. "And whatever else I am," he thought, "I am not a concept!"

  Trained caution made him squint aside at the register on his helmet wall. A little under an hour left on the lung-pack, and it would take him half of that to get back to the Dome, trailing back along that line. That plastic link, by itself, was something to wonder at. Without the discovery of that virtually indestructible, totally inert molecule this base would never have been built, would have been out of the question. And this ball of hot, sizzling mud, dark and jungle grown, would never have known the impact of human curiosity. It was just a wild planet of an insignificant sun, halfway between Sigma Draconis and the Alkaid cluster in the Great Bear.

  But then Query rethought it. The plastic had made the base possible, true, but it had been one man's decision that had brought it into reality. And that man symbolized for Query everything he detested about society in general and the Space Service in particular. Gareth Evans . . . even the sound of the archaic given name was somehow typical of the man's impossible arrogance. Old Gravel Guts Evans, general officer commanding the whole Space Service in its glorious hour of emergency. Glorious? Query knew very little of what the Service had been like in peaceful times. Like many another, he had been ruthlessly snatched from civilian anonymity and drilled into some skill he could handle, in his case the repair and maintenance of instruments to do with ships and drives and flight . . . and that was it. And the Service, under the unexpected impact of the full-blown Settlers' Revolt in the Alkaid

  cluster, was a curious hodgepodge. A general officer commanding who called himself an admiral . . . technicians . . . sergeants . . . regulations that came so fast and changed so often that no one man could keep them all in mind. A mess, and all to restrain a group of people who wanted to run their own affairs without interference from Earth. An old and stupid stor
y, repeated in the historical record a thousand times. Glorious?

  Query loathed it with all his being, but he had learned the hard way to at least make the appearance of conforming. And the job had called for very little of his intelligence. So, as so often before, he had carefully wrapped the cloak of camouflage about himself. Until chance had ripped it wide open. Until an inspecting lieutenant had said, offhandedly, "You have those modules upside down, Instrumentman. Correct it."

  "But that's correct as per diagram, sir!"

  As simple as that. And perversely, for Query had drawn a line, as he did occasionally, against being screwed down out of sight He was right, the lieutenant was wrong, and he stuck stubbornly to that. Experimental test and proof would have been simple, but that was no longer the point at issue. Minor insubordination blew itself up into a full-scale court-martial, in itself an index of the general morale of the time, for the rebel Settlers were having things largely their own way then. There was also the awful fact about courts-martial in the military mind: you must be guilty of something, or it would never have got that far!

  And then chance again. It just so happened that old Gravel Guts himself was on Moon Base at the time and decided to sit in. And though the hard-nosed court could find nothing specific, it was he who biased the whole outcome. He, who could think only in terms of discipline, tradition and the rule book, brought his influence to bear. The upshot was that Query had been shipped out from his quiet anonymity among the instrument repair section of Moon Base, and dropped here, on this mud ball. The forgotten men, each and every one of them with cause to remember Evans . . . and not in their prayers. His job was as it had always been, to check out, overhaul, calibrate and test, repair and/or replace all those instruments that enable

  8 ships to fly; a steady, delicate, but noninspiring job, no matter where it was done.

  Except that here, Step Two, was a punishment in itself for the ordinary trooper. Moon Base and all the other bases like it weren't exactly pleasure camps, but they did have amenities. Video, canteen, recreation spaces . . . and women. There was also some kind of hospital-convalescence facility for the repair of men as well as machines. And authority had learned, the hard way, that men need women and vice versa, so the hospitals were staffed accordingly. But not here. Sick men didn't stop off here, only partly disabled ships and those in need of stores, fuel and supplies. And the staff didn't merit kinder consideration. They weren't permanent but serving sentences of greater or lesser duration, and that was all they thought about When do I get away? There was a kind of black psychology about it in that it made men behave, keep their noses clean and their eyes fixed on the goal of eventual return to civilization.

  Of them all, Query was the only one who liked it, who had come to appreciate the alien quality of the place as having something akin to his own nature. Not that it detracted anything from his detestation for Admiral Evans. In his mind, that old man served as focus for his more general detestation of the whole of humanity. For the war itself he felt nothing at all. It was just one more example of society eating out its own guts.

  Query flicked another glance at his register. Ten more minutes. He dragged his mind away from futile thoughts about Evans. The old fool thought he had meted out punishment, whereas, in fact, he had done Query a service. Never in all his life had he imagined such a place as this. A whole world hidden and secret, with a dark and wild beauty all its own. Tangled creeper and stem and root all writhing to survive. And those immense blue black columns that stood straight up into the unknown mist above. Trees of some kind. Enormous and inscrutable. Did they have leaves and fruit, he wondered? What was it all for? Could there properly be a purpose in all this life, if there was no consciousness to understand it? Sometimes he had the acute sense that this dark underworld was as much aware of him as he was of it . . . and that feeling came very strongly now, of something out there on the other side of his helmet transparency, watching him.

  And he saw it. In that instant he froze dead still. Something—just there, beyond that nearest great bole—staring at him. Pale, immobile, but with eyes that had caught a glint of light for just a moment. Eyes. A head, now, as he concentrated on it. He felt no fear at all, just intense curiosity. What was it? He separated shape from shadow, slowly. A head, with the dark shadow of short hair, flat and moist in curls. Nostrils and a chin, a mouth. Neck and shoulder and an arm. All pale, a kind of greeny cream, which could be an effect of the light. But humanoidl He held his breath in amazement, astonishment and delight all at once. Definitely a human shape as far as he could see in the deceptive light. Cowering behind a tree and watching him. Possibly as amazed and astonished as he was. Query itched in his mind with a vast wonder. Not the wonder of how anything humanlike came to be here at all. There the creature was, and that was enough.

  But what kind of creature was it. Human in shape; it moved cautiously now, an arm, elbow and hand coming to rest on the tree bole . . . definitely a humanoid. But what did it think, if anything? What dreams and hopes and fears?

  What must you think of me, in this crazy suit? he thought. I wish you could talk, and I could understand.

  A rivulet of sweat ran into his eyes, blinding him for a moment, and when he was free of tears again—it was gone. Another mind would have sent the idea packing as illusion, but Query never even thought about it.

  I'll be back, he thought, saying it in his mind. I'll be back. We have to meet again, somehow. Tell your friends. And he flicked another glance at his register and swore. He had undercut his time. Now he would have to scramble faster than ever before to get back there before his lung-pack quit on him. It wasn't easy to hurry in this murk. He took the line and reeled it over his left hand and elbow as he followed it back through mud and rioting creeper, around huge boles, crashing through thick shrubs, and in one spot stuck for several minutes while he argued with a snakelike root that had intimately entwined itself around the line. Precious minutes went away. He floundered on, sweat streaming into his eyes and his incoming air growing hot and foul as the lung-pack labored through its last few resources. The filters would be solid now, the power pack feeble. He felt the liquid of his own sweat filling up inside the suit as he shambled on, whooping for breath, half-blind with sweat. And then, suddenly, the mud was less and the ground under his feet had a crust. And there was the Dome, looming grayly out of the mist. He hit the air lock button and leaned against the wall, fumbled at the snap hook on his line as the hatch cycled open and out, staggered inside and waited while it shut again, saw the eye-twisting blue of U.V. come on and heard the air pumps kick in. A minute more, and he could lever his helmet back and breathe gustily, gratefully, and then tear at the Velcro seals of his suit and peel it off.

  "That was close!" he muttered, shivering as the dry air sucked away the sweat from his bare body. "Too close. Sergeant Keast ever got to hear, he might put the ban on." And that was a sobering thought. He turned the suit inside out to clean itself, took his one piece, snug fit, disposable uniform suit from the hook where he'd left it, climbed into it, grabbed the depleted lung-pack, and then leaned on the inner switch to set the door cycling open. This would be the worst time to be forbidden his pleasure jaunts outside, now that he had found humanoids out there. The first thing to come through the doorway at him was noise, above all the noise of Sergeant Keast's file hard voice halfway through a familiar indoctrination speech.

  . . assigned your work details immediately after chow-time, which is five minutes from now and lasts thirty minutes, at which time you will fall in again here, which is known as the assembly area, and I'll give you the rest of the rundown at that time, to which you will pay attention, but hear this. I will be the last to arrive. I better be. Dismissed!"

  New arrivals. Query wasn't curious about them or anything else to do with Sergeant Keast. Just the sound of that voice, with its machinelike monotonous grind, was enough to banish forever any faint imaginings he may have had about telling anybody what he had seen out there. He went away as
inconspicuously as possible, heading for stores. But not furtively enough.

  "Query!" The penetrating squeal made him halt, turn, and pick up his feet to double across to where Keast waited for him.

  "You been outside again!"

  The lung-pack over his shoulder made it obvious and no comment was called for, but Query said, mildly, "I do have your permission, Sergeant, on my own time."

  "Don't remind me. In fact, don't say anything to anybody about it. Return that pack to stores and get on over to the commandant's office right away. The P.A.'s been shouting for you for the past ten minutes!"

  "For me?" Query was jarred out of his usual reserve. "Why me?"

  Keast contorted his leatherlike face into what he probably thought was a smile. "You're shipping out, of course. What else?"

  "Shipping out?" Query was stunned, and Keast's smile died.

  "I don't read you, Query. Sixty-two men on this dump. Sixty-eight, now. And I would have bet every damned one of them, including me, would give a year's pay and an arm just to get off the place. But not you. Trust you to be different! Here, gimme that pack. I'll stow it. Get going, Instrumentman, before you're on a charge for keeping the commandant waiting. Get!"

  Query saluted mechanically and departed at a heavy trot, his mind in chaos over this shocking news. New arrivals meant a ship in, also meant a possible "end of sentence" for some others, so Keast's deduction was legitimate. But Query prayed it was wrong. Especially now. Just suppose, though, that he was right. Wild thoughts crossed his mind. "Permission to refuse the transfer, sir!" "Why?" "I like it here, sir!" Even in the theater of his own mind that dialogue sounded unreal. Commander Eldredge would think him crazy, and he would indeed be shipped out, probably under heavy escort! And there was no more time for miserable apprehension. He reached Eldredge's door, rapped, and went in on the call. Commander Eldredge stood alongside his desk, and someone else sat in the seat of power. Query trod up to the commander glumly, saluted.