Doomed Planet

by Lee Sheldon

  Doomed Planet

  by Lee Sheldon

  Singularity&Co.

  18 Bridge St, Brooklyn, NY 11222

  www.savethescifi.com

  www.scifibooks.com

  Doomed Planet

  By Lee Sheldon

  This book was originally published in 1967 by Avalon Books, and is Copyright © 1967 Lee Sheldon, all rights reserved.

  This Edition and Additional Material Copyright © 2012 by Reversity Media, LLC, All Rights Reserved, and May Not Be Reproduced Without Permission.

  Cover Artwork Copyright © 2012 Wesley Allsbrook.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-938536-07-6

  ISBN-10: 193853607X

  Published by Singularity&Co., an imprint of Reversity Media, LLC, in the U.S.A.

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  Chapter I

  It had been a phone call that left Jeff Keene shivering; he was still shivering as he drove rapidly across Mayfield to John Trillingham's house on Willow Street.

  Sue wouldn't be looking for him yet; he wasn't due there for another two hours. But this couldn't wait. In two hours he and Sue were to be at their wedding rehearsal; this phone call would change those plans.

  Sue wasn't going to like that, and neither would her father. Jeff winced as he thought of it but he didn't let up on the accelerator. He had to hurry. If Sue's home wasn't almost directly on the way up to the observatory, he couldn't even take time to stop and tell her what was happening.

  He wheeled the car into Willow Street and brought it to a jarring halt in front of Trillingham's big house. He leaped out of the car, leaving the door open as he dashed up the walk and jammed a finger at the bell. Sue answered the bell almost before its ringing stopped vibrating through the house.

  "Jeff!" she exclaimed. "You're early. And you're not even dressed."

  "I'm dressed for what I have to do," he said.

  She wasn't dressed for the wedding rehearsal, either, but to Jeff, she was still the prettiest girl in Mayfield. She was just over five feet tall, almost a foot shorter than Jeff's six feet, and she had the blackest eyes and hair that Jeff had ever seen. Right now those eyes were sparkling with curiosity and tinted with anger.

  "I mean for the rehearsal," she said sharply. "I'm sorry, Sue, but I haven't got time for anything now except to tell you I may be late for the rehearsal. Or I might not make it at all."

  "What?" There was no mistaking the anger in her voice now.

  "Let me start at the top. I had a phone call from Woody just a few minutes ago."

  "Is he still up at his uncle's observatory?"

  Jeff nodded. "I'd have been there with him if it hadn't been for the rehearsal. We've been sending out those signals, hoping for a response. Tonight we got it."

  "Who said so?"

  "Woody," Jeff said in exasperation. "He just called. He was so excited and he was yelling so loud, I couldn't be sure just what he was saying. But I know he was getting strange signals on the radio, and that radio is tuned to shut out everything except from out there."

  "Do you really believe he's getting signals from outer space?"

  "I'm going up to find out. Woody was too excited to make much sense."

  "What's so unusual about Woody getting excited? He's always working himself into hysteria about little things."

  "If that radio has come alive, this isn't a little thing," Jeff said. "I've got to get up there."

  "I'll get my sweater and come along. I'm interested, too, you know."

  Jeff waited impatiently while Sue ran for her sweater, but he wasn't displeased because she was interested. If she hadn't been interested in this project of his, he wasn't sure there would have been any wedding rehearsal scheduled for tonight.

  He thought of Woody Woodruff alone up there at the observatory and wondered if he was still getting the signals. If so, he must be almost out of his mind by now. Woody was only eighteen but Jeff considered him a good helper—almost a partner in this project. It had been Woody's uncle, Meredith Woodruff, who had owned the observatory. Meredith Woodruff had worked with his chief assistant, Peter Ingram, almost constantly until they had both disappeared.

  Jeff had come to work at the observatory a year before Meredith Woodruff's disappearance. He had become deeply engrossed in Meredith's project of sending radio signals into space and listening for a reply. Meredith had been sure he had received signals in reply to his broadcasting more than once.

  Woody had worked around the observatory a great deal and knew as much as any of the others about what was going on. But, like Jeff, he hadn't been there the night that Meredith Woodruff and Peter Ingram had disappeared. They had gone up to the observatory to work through the evening hours as they usually did and no one had seen them since.

  The police hadn't been able to find a single clue as to what had happened to Meredith and Peter; the two had vanished without leaving a trace. Jeff had a theory, but he knew better than to advance it to the police; they'd call him crazy and lock him up. But Woody had reached the same conclusion and suggested it to Jeff; so the two of them had set to work in the observatory to check out their theory, hoping they might make contact with Meredith and Peter and maybe even bring them back. The signals that Woody was getting tonight might be the first step toward that goal.

  Sue came back, a white knit sweater over her arm, and Jeff realized that she had been gone only a minute, although it seemed more like ten to him. Jeff led the way out to the car on the run. He wheeled the car out from the curb and headed for the street that would take them out to the highway.

  "Just what did Woody say about the signals?" Sue asked.

  "It wasn't so much what he said as the way he said it. Now I know that Woody gets unduly excited sometimes, but this time I think he's got a reason. He is sure he is getting a reply to the signals we're sending out!'

  "Then he'd better turn that radio off," Sue said. "Look what happened to Woody's uncle and Peter Ingram."

  "We don't have any proof that their disappearance had any connection with their work at the observatory."

  "They disappeared while they were broadcasting that signal, didn't they?"

  "We don't know," Jeff said, halting at the stop sign then wheeling onto the highway and heading out of town. "They usually did send out that signal when they were at the observatory, but it was off when we got there. The only thing we found was Meredith's car."

  Sue was silent for a moment. "Dad thinks they might have been kidnapped. Some other country might have wanted Meredith's knowledge. He was a top scientist, you know."

  "That's possible," Jeff admitted. "But if foreign agents took Meredith and Peter, they were mighty slick operators. Didn't leave a trace."

  The car sped along in silence. Jeff thought of the search that had been triggered by the disappearance of the two scientists. But while the others searched the countryside, he and Woody had searched the skies; and maybe now they were getting a clue. Maybe.

  Jeff wheeled the car off the highway onto a small road that wound up the mountainside. At the top was Meredith Woo
druff's observatory with the tall sending antenna and the huge listening saucer aimed at the skies. Inside were powerful telescopes and rooms full of astronomical maps and charts.

  Jeff's car was beginning to heat from the climb when he pulled it into the parking lot and stopped it beside Woody's old jalopy. Everything looked serene and peaceful, with the lights of Mayfield spread out below them. It was too peaceful; for a moment, the thought struck Jeff that maybe Woody had disappeared, too.

  He jumped out of the car without waiting for Sue and dashed into the observatory. Jerking open the door into the radio room, he stared at Woody, bent over the radio, headphones pressed to his ears.

  Woody spun around as Jeff burst into the room. "Boy, am I glad to see you!"

  "I pushed the speed limit all the way," Jeff said.

  "He came by after me," Sue added, coming in just then.

  "What's going on?" Jeff demanded, crossing to Woody.

  Woody handed the headphones to Jeff. "Listen for yourself."

  Jeff pressed one headphone to his ear. There was a strange rhythmic beep coming over the phone loud and clear.

  "What do you make of it?" Jeff asked Woody.

  "It gives me the creeps."

  "This may be the signal we've been looking for," Jeff said. He looked apologetically at Sue. "Maybe I shouldn't have brought you up here. You know that we've been kicking around the idea that this beep Meredith was beaming into space might have aroused some intelligent beings somewhere and that resulted in his disappearance. We think that latching onto that signal again might be our only chance of getting him back. If we're right, and this is the signal, you could be in danger just by being here."

  Sue's black eyes were wide with a mixture of excitement and alarm. "If you're right, I want to see what's going to happen. It will make a great story for Dad's paper. But you be careful. Don't let this... this thing spirit you and Woody away."

  "We don't intend to be spirited away," Jeff said. "We won't be caught by surprise as Meredith and Peter were. We'll be ready."

  "Ready for what?" Sue asked.

  Jeff started to answer then stopped; he didn't know what, and neither did anyone else.

  "Maybe it's just a different kind of space static. Is it steady, Woody?"

  "No," Woody said. "It shuts off once in a while. Sometimes it seems to hold the same power for a few minutes. Then it will get louder fast. It never fades away."

  "Like something moving closer then stopping to check before coming on again," Sue said, her voice almost a whisper.

  Woody nodded. "That's exactly it."

  Jeff looked at Sue. He had no right to expose her to danger, and there was no doubt in his mind now that there was danger here. He and Sue were going to share life together but that didn't mean they had to start by sharing some unknown danger from a foreign world.

  "I'll take you home, Sue," he said, "then I'll come back."

  "Your problems are my problems, Jeff. If you're going to come back here, anyway, we might just as well stay."

  "There's no point in both of us taking chances. Woody and I have been working for two months to get some response to our signals. Now that we've got it, we have to be here to see what it is."

  "You can make it sound almost reasonable that we have to stay here," Woody said. Then suddenly he straightened in his chair. "Listen now, Jeff." He held out the earphones.

  Jeff pressed them to his ears then snatched them away. The signal was much louder now, and there was a whine in it that he hadn't heard before.

  "What do you make of that?" Woody asked.

  "I don't know, but we've got to find out."

  "Maybe it's something homing in on your radio beam," Sue said.

  Jeff nodded. "I'm sure it is."

  "Let's turn the thing off," Woody said.

  Jeff hesitated. "If we do, we may lose the signal."

  "That's exactly the idea. I've heard enough of it for one night."

  "But we may never find out what is making it."

  Woody nodded slowly. "Right now I'd settle for that bit of ignorance."

  "You were as anxious as I was to find out when we started this," Jeff said.

  "Do you really think it's something from another world?" Sue whispered in awe. "Maybe it's just from some other country here on Earth."

  Jeff had already considered both possibilities. If he could believe that it was from some other country on Earth, he wouldn't be quite so alarmed. Bringing in some kind of secret weapon that had fastened its homing device onto their radio beam would be bad; but somehow that didn't quite hold the dread which something from the completely unknown did.

  "It's not from this world," Woody said positively. "If some country were sending out a ship to spy on us, it would be programmed to ignore any radio signals except from its own country. It wouldn't home in on us."

  Jeff nodded. "Good thinking Woody." "Then it has to be something from outer space," Sue said. "Jeff, I'm scared. I wish Dad were here. He's always complaining that nothing ever happens in Mayfield to make a good story."

  "He'd just say we were picking up some particularly loud static from the stars," Jeff said, thinking how unimaginative John Trillingham was. "It's coming closer," Woody whispered. "I'm taking you home, Sue, whether you want to go or not," Jeff declared.

  "If you're leaving, I'm not staying," Woody said, getting up.

  "We'll all leave. Turn off that transmitter." "Maybe the signal will go away if we do," Woody said, suddenly hopeful again. "Let's see."

  He snapped off the transmitter but left the radio on. For just a moment the signal stopped, but then it chattered to life again, louder than ever.

  "Let's get out of here," Woody said, and wheeled toward the door.

  Jeff reached over and snapped off the radio, then turned and followed Woody and Sue out of the radio room. They ran down the hallway and into the yard. Jeff's eyes whipped up to the sky but all he could see were the usual stars; he wasn't sure just what he had expected to see.

  Woody leaped into his car while Sue and Jeff were getting into Jeff's car. Jeff had just turned on his switch when he heard Woody yell. Woody's starter had been whirring like an angry bumblebee.

  "It won't start," Woody yelled and leaped out, running over to Jeff's car. "It's deader than a mackerel."

  Jeff touched his starter and it began spinning, but the motor didn't pop. For a full minute, Jeff ran the starter; then the starter began to slow and he released it.

  "Do you think some prankster has been fooling with our cars?" Woody asked.

  "Not up here. Anyway, I've only been here a few minutes. My car was working all right then."

  Jeff got out and started around to lift the hood. Suddenly he was aware of a whine in the air and he looked up. His heart lodged in his throat. What looked like a small round ball giving off a soft blue light was streaking down from the sky. He wasn't aware that he said a word, but both Woody and Sue sprang out of the car, looking up; the only sound that came from either of them was a gasp.

  Then, almost before any of them could move, the ball grew into a round ship surrounded by a blue glow. It came down swiftly, yet gently, hovering for just a moment above the ground beyond the parking lot before settling down.

  Jeff realized that here was the source of the signals they had been receiving, and he knew that somehow the electric power given off by the ship had rendered both his and Woody's cars useless. But all that seemed unimportant right now.

  The bright glow of the ship dimmed to a very soft glow, then a panel close to the ground opened out. It seemed to Jeff from where he stood that most of the ship was transparent but he wasn't close enough to see anything inside. But now as the door let down, he saw creatures coming out.

  Jeff tried to make them look like some of the horrible pictures he had seen of artists' conceptions of creatures from the far reaches of space. But then he realized that these weren't strange creatures at all; they were men.

  Six of them got out of the ship and came forward
. Jeff saw then that they weren't exactly like the men he saw every day on the streets of Mayfield; these were shorter and there was something strange about their heads.

  They moved with something more like a shuffle than a walk, but they covered the ground quickly—or maybe it just seemed fast to Jeff, standing rooted to the ground next to his car. When the six strangers got into the parking lot, the all-night light in the observatory yard reached out to them.

  It was then that Jeff saw their faces, and he knew that he had never seen anything like that in the flesh before. Suddenly Sue pointed toward them and screamed.

  "It's them!

  Chapter II

  At the instant Sue screamed, Jeff had made the same discovery. Only once in his life had he ever seen anything like the faces of the strangers advancing toward them now; that had been a picture in the newspaper several years ago.

  He would never forget that picture. It had haunted him for weeks. The faces in the picture had been human faces and yet they hadn't looked human; there was something terrible about their expressions, as if all the evil and hate in the world were concentrated in them.

  The six strangers at the edge of the parking lot had the same expressions as those men pictured in the paper years ago. The six had stopped now, watching Jeff and Woody and Sue intently. Jeff tried to think of something to do but he couldn't get his mind off the memory of that picture.

  There had been five men pictured in the newspaper. They had stolen food from a rancher out in the desert and the rancher had called in the law. The sheriff had formed a posse and run the robbers down. There had been a battle and the five robbers had been killed; their pictures had been printed in the paper. But though Jeff had searched the paper every day for a month after that, not another picture or word had been printed about the robbers.

  Now here he was facing six more men exactly like those pictured in the paper years ago. They were all shorter than Jeff although one was a trifle taller than his companions.