The Best of Planet Stories, No. 1

by Leigh Brackett, editor

  "Back off the trail! Form a wide circle around the cart, but stay under cover! Fight ‘em on their own ground!" Clark was yelling, and the men clustered about the cart faded into forest corridors.

  Hague and Sewell, left alone, dragged Bormann's limp length beneath the metal cart. Hague leaped erect again, manhandled the pneumatic gun off the cart and onto the trail, spun the charger crank, and lay down in firing position. Behind him, Sewell grunted, "He's gone. Arrow poison must have paralyzed his chest muscles."

  "Okay. Get up here and handle the ammunition." Hague's face was savage as the medical technician crawled into position beside him and opened an ammunition carrier.

  "Watch the trail behind me," Hague continued, slamming up the top cover plate and jerking a belt through the pneumatic breech. "When I yell charge, spin the charger crank; and when I yell off a number, set the meter arrow at that number." He snapped the cover plate shut and locked it.

  "The other way! They're coming the other way!" Sewell lumbered to his knees, and the two heaved the gun around. A blowgun arrow rattled off the cart body above them, and gobbling yells filtered among the trees with an answering crack of explosive cartridges. A screaming knot of grey figures came sprinting down on the cart. Hague squeezed the pneumatics trigger, the gun coughed, and blue-fire-limned lizard men crumpled in the trail mud.

  "Okay, give ‘em a few the other way."

  The two men horsed the gun around and sent a buzzing flock of explosive loads down the forest corridor opening ahead of the cart. They began firing carefully down other corridors opening off the trail, aiming delicately less their missiles explode too close and the concussion kill their own men; but they worked a blasting circle of destruction that smashed the great trees back in the forest and made openings in the forest roof. Blue fire flashed in the shadows and froze weird tableaus of screaming lizard-men and hurtling mud, branches, and great splinters of wood.

  An exulting yell burst behind them. Hague saw Sewell stare over his shoulder, face contorted, then the big medical technician sprang to his feet. Hague rolled hard, pulling his belt knife, and saw Sewell and a grey man-shape locked in combat above him, saw leathery grey claws drive a bronze knife into the medic's unarmored throat; and then the gunnery officer was on his feet, knife slashing, and the lizard-man fell across the prone Sewell. An almost audible silence fell over the forest, and Hague saw Rocketeers filtering back onto the cart trail, rifles cautiously extended at ready.

  "Where's Clark?" he asked Lenkranz. The grey-haired metals man gazed back dully.

  "I haven't seen him since we left the trail. I was with Swenson."

  The others moved in, and Hague listed the casualties. Sewell, Bormann, and Lieutenant Clark. Gunnery Officer Clarence Hague was now in command. That the Junior Lieutenant now commanded Ground Expeditionary Patrol Number One trickled into his still numb brain; and he wondered for a moment what the Base Commander would think of their chances if he knew. Then he took stock of his little command.

  There was young Crosse, his face twitching nervously. There was Blake, the tall, quiet bacteriologist; Lenkranz, the metals man; Hirooka, the Nisei; Balistierri; Whitcomb, the photographer, with a battered Hasselbladt still dangling by its neck cord against his armored chest. Swenson was still there, the big Swede crewman; and imperturable Sergeant Brian, who was now calmly cleaning the pneumatic gun's loading mechanism. And Helen, Bormann's skin bird, fluttering over the ration cart, beneath which Bormann and Sewell lay in the mud.. "Crosse, Lenkranz, burial detail. Get going." It was Hague's first order as Commander. He thought the two looked most woebegone of the party, and figured digging might loosen their nerves.

  Crosse stared at him, and then sat suddenly against a tree bole.

  "I'm not going to dig. I'm not going to march. This is crazy. We're going to get killed. I'll wait for it right here. Why do we keep walking and walking when we're going to die anyway?" His rising voice cracked, and he burst into hysterical laughter. Sergeant Brian rose quietly from his gun-cleaning, jerked Crosse to his feet, and slapped him into quiet. Then he turned to Hague.

  "Shall I take charge of the burial detail, sir?"

  Hague nodded; and suddenly his long dislike of the iron-hard Sergeant melted into warm liking and admiration. Brian was the man who'd get them all through.

  The Sergeant knotted his dark brows truculently at Hague. "And I don't believe Crosse meant what he said. He's a very brave man. We all get a little jumpy. But he's a good man, a good Rocketeer."

  * * * *

  Three markers beside the trail, and a pile of dumped equipment marked the battleground when the cart swung forward again. Hague had dropped all the recording instruments, saving only Whitcomb's exposed films, the rations, rifle ammunition, and logbooks that had been kept, by different members of the science section. At his command, Sergeant Brian reluctantly smashed the pneumatic gun's firing mechanism, and left the gun squatting on its tripod beside charger and shell belts. With the lightened load, Hague figured three men could handle the cart, and he took his place with Brian and Crosse in the harness. The others no longer walked in the trail, but filtered between great root-flanges and tree boles on either side, guiding themselves by the Sonar's hum.

  They left no more trail markers, and Hague cautioned them against making any unnecessary noise.

  "No trail markers behind us. This mud is watery enough to hide footprints in a few minutes. We're making no noise, and we'll drop no more refuse. All they can hear will be the Sonar, and that won't carry far."

  On the seventy-first day of the march, Hague squatted, fell almost to the ground, and grunted, "Take ten."

  He stared at the stained, ragged scarecrows hunkered about him in forest mud.

  "Why do we do it?" he asked no one in particular. "Why do we keep going, and going, and going? Why don't we just lie down and die? That would be the easiest thing I could think of right now." He knew that Rocket Service officers didn't talk that way, but he didn't feel like an officer, just a tired, feverish, bone-weary man.

  "Have we got a great glowing tradition to inspire us?" he snarled. "No, we're just the lousy Rocketeers that every other service arm plans to absorb. We haven't a Grant or a John Paul Jones to provide an example in a tough spot. The U.S. Rocket Service has nothing but the memory of some ships that went out and never came back and you can't make a legend out of men who just plain vanish."

  There was silence, and it looked as if the muddy figures were too exhausted to reply. Then Sergeant Brian spoke.

  "The Rocketeers have a legend, sir."

  "What legend, Brian?" Hague snorted.

  "Here is the legend, sir. ‘George Easy Peter One'."

  Hague laughed hollowly, but the Sergeant continued as if he hadn't heard.

  "Ground Expeditionary Patrol One — the outfit a plant couldn't lick. Venus threw her grab bag at us, animals, swamps, poison plants, starvation, fever, and we kept right on coming. She just made us smarter, and tougher, and harder to beat. And we'll blast through these lizard-men and the jungle, and march into Base like the whole U.S. Armed Forces on review."

  "Let's go," Hague called, and they staggered up again, nine gaunt bundles of sodden, muddy rags, capped in trim black steel helmets with cheek guards down. The others slipped off the trail and Hague, Brian, and Crosse pulled on the cart harness and lurched forward. The cart wheel-hub jammed against a tree bole, and as they strained blindly ahead to free it, a horn note drifted from afar.

  "Here they come again," Crosse groaned.

  "They-won't be-up-with us-for days." Hague grunted, while he threw his weight in jerks against the tow line. The cart lurched free with a lunge, and all three shot forward and sprawled raging in the muddy trail.

  They sat wiping mud from their faces, when Brian stopped suddenly, ripped off his helmet and threw it aside, then sat tensely forward in an attitude of strained listening. Hague had time to wonder dully if the man's brain had snapped, before he crawled to his feet.

  "Shut up, and list
en" Brian was snarling. "Hear it! Hear it! It's a klaxon! Way off, about every two seconds!"

  Hague tugged off his heavy helmet, and strained every nerve to listen. Over the forest silence it came with pulse-like regularity, a tiny whisper of sound.

  He and Brian stared bright-eyed at each other, not quiet daring to say what they were thinking. Crosse got up and leaned like an empty sack against the cartwheel with an inane questioning look.

  "What is it?" They stared at him without speaking, still listening intently. "It's the Base. That's it, it's the Base!"

  Something choked Hague's throat, then he was yelling and firing his rifle. The rest came scuttling out of the forest shadow, faces breaking into wild grins, and they joined Hague, the forest rocking with gunfire. They moved forward, and Hirooka took up a thin chant:

  "Oooooooh, the Rocketeers

  have shaggy ears.

  They're dirty-"

  The rest of their lyrics wouldn't look well in print; but where the Rocketeers have gone, on every frontier of space, the ribald song is sung. The little file moved down the trail toward the klaxon sound. Behind them, something moved in the gloom, resolved itself into a reptile-headed, man-like thing that reared a small wood trumpet to fit its mouth; a soft horn note floated clear; and other shapes became visible, sprinting forward, flitting through the gloom...

  * * * *

  When a red light flashed over Chapman's desk, he flung down a sheaf of papers and hurried down steel-walled corridors to the number one shaft. A tiny elevator swept him to Odysseus’ upper side, where a shallow pit had been set in the ship's scarred skin, and a pneumatic gun installed. Chapman hurried past the gun and crew to stand beside a listening device. The four huge cones loomed dark against the clouds, the operator in their center was a blob of shadow in the dawn-light, where he huddled listening to a chanting murmur that came from his headset. Blake came running onto the gundeck; Bjornson and the staff officers were all there.

  "Cut it into the Address system," Chapman told the Listener operator excitedly; and the faint sounds were amplified through the whole ship. From humming Address amplifiers, the ribald words, broke in a hoarse melody.

  "The rocketeers have shaggy ears,

  They're dirty-"

  The rest described in vivid detail the prowess of racketeers in general.

  "How far are they?" Chapman demanded.

  The operator pointed at a dial, fingered a knob that altered his receiving cones split-seconds of angle. "They're about twenty-five miles, sir."

  Chapman turned to the officers gathered in an exultant circle behind him.

  "Branch, here's your chance for action. Take thirty men, our whippet tank, and go out to them. Bjornson, get the ‘copters aloft for air cover."

  Twenty minutes later, Chapman watched a column assemble beneath the Odysseus’ gleaming side and march into the jungle, with the ‘copters buzzing west a moment later, like vindictive dragon flies.

  Breakfast was brought to the men clustered at Warnings equipment, and to Chapman at his post on the gundeck. The day ticked away, the parade ground vanished in thickening clots of night; and a second dawn found the watchers still at their posts, listening to queer sounds that trickled from the speakers. The singing had stopped; but once they heard a note that a horn might make, and several times gobbling yells that didn't sound human. George One was fighting, they knew now. The listeners picked up crackling of rifle fire, and when that died there was silence.

  The watchers heard a short cheer that died suddenly, as the relief column and George One met; and they waited and watched. Branch, who headed the relief column, communicated with the mother ship by the simple expedient of yelling, the sound being picked up by the listeners.

  "They're coming in, Chapman. I'm coming behind to guard their rear. They've been attacked by some kind of lizard-men. I'm not saying a thing — see for yourself when they arrive."

  Hours rolled past, while they speculated in low tones, the hush that held the ship growing taut and strained.

  "Surely Branch would have told us if anything was wrong, or if the records were lost," Chapman barked angrily. "Why did he have to be so damned melodramatic?"

  "Look, there — through the trees. A helmet glinted!"

  The laconic Bjornson had thrown dignity to the winds, and capered like a drunken goat, as Rindell described it later.

  Chapman stared down at the jungle edging the parade ground and caught a movement.

  A man with a rifle came through the fringe and stood eyeing the ship in silence, and then came walking forward across the long, cindered expanse. From this height, he looked to Chapman like a child's lead soldier, a ragged, muddy, midget scarecrow. Another stir in the trees, and one more man, skulking like an infantry Ranker with rifle at ready. He, too, straightened and came walking quietly forward, A file of three men came next, leaning into the harness of a little metal cart that bumped drunkenly as they dragged it forward. An instant of waiting, and two more men stole from the jungle, more like attacking infantry than returning heroes. Chapman waited, and no more came. This was all.

  "My God, no wonder Branch wouldn't tell us. There were thirty-two of them." Rindell's voice was choked.

  "Yes, only seven." Chapman remembered his field glasses and focused them on the seven approaching men. "Lieutenant Hague is the only officer. And they're handing us the future of the U.S. Rocket Service on that little metal cart."

  The quiet shattered and a yelling horde of men poured from Odysseus’ hull and engulfed the tattered seven, sweeping around them, yelling, cheering, and carrying them toward the mother ship.

  Chapman looked a little awed as he turned to the officers behind him. "Well, they did it. We forward these records, and we've proven that we can do the job." He broke into a grin. "What am I talking about? Of course we did the job. We'll always do the job. We're the Rocketeers, aren't we?"

  ---

  THE DIVERSIFAL

  Ross Rocklynne

  Side by side they would live, year after year, hating each other more fiercely each day. And in the end, if their mission succeeded, the creature would die and the man would find insanity.

  "No," said the shadowy man who sat high above the floor on the chair of the time-machine, "you can't do that."

  "Can't, eh?"

  "No!"

  "Sorry."

  For a second, Bryan was shaken with indecision. This is intolerable, he thought. I'll turn the doorknob. After all, he has no real jurisdiction over any actions. Nor has he, in spite of the stakes involved, any right to meddle in my life the way he has.

  His rebel thoughts endured for only that second. His grip loosened on the doorknob, his gloved hand fell away. He actually took a few steps backward, as if he would negate that action which led toward disaster. Then he turned quickly, urged his undernourished body back up the threadbare hall, into his equally threadbare room. Off came his shapeless hat, and overcoat which was ripped at seams and pockets, and he sat down, brain numb, the sensations of his stomach forgotten in the greater hunger.

  Where is she? Who is she!

  He did not have the courage to meet the cold eyes of the man who sat in shadowy outline amongst nebulous, self-suspended machinery, although that being watched him with merciless inflexibility of purpose. He had only the courage to speak, while his eyes fixed dully on the gingerbreaded metal bed with its sagging mattress.

  "The Alpha Group?"

  "The Alpha Group," the shadowy man spoke coldly, in agreement, "Punctus four. You would have met her."

  "I thought so. I felt it."

  "You felt nothing of the sort. You have an exaggerated notion of the perceptive qualities of your psyche."

  "I named the Alpha Group," said Bryan wearily.

  "Because for the first three or four years of our association, the Alpha Group will predominate. And because you have come to associate certain of my facial expressions and tonal qualities with the group. There was no telepathic pick-up from the girl. She is not aware that
you exist. Nor will she ever be aware, as long as you choose to work in close collaboration with me-and as a humanitarian yourself, you will not refuse to collaborate."

  Bryan leaned back in the worn armchair, grinning twistedly, though his heart was lead in his breast. He held the long-lashed eyes of the god-like creature with a flickering sidewise glance. "Perhaps you will choose to stop collaborating with me."

  The nostrils of the being flared. "No. Never. We will continue-we must continue to work together until the Alpha, Delta, and Gamma groups are exhausted-"

  "Or until-"

  "Or until I commit suicide as you suggested."

  "Yes."

  Bryan lost his fear that he could not bear it, might disobey a command from this creature. Suddenly, he was amused. Bryan was chained to this creature, but no less than this creature was chained to him; chained to him for ten long years, or until he might take his own life.

  Creature? Yes'. For certainly any animal that is not homo sapien is a creature. Even if he be homo superior, of the year Eight-hundred thousand A.D., and has invented a time-machine, and has but one powerful, compelling thought in mind-to save the human race. Or that race of creatures which had stemmed from the human race. That was it. After fighting and imagining, aspiring and succeeding, for a good many millions of years, man was about to be snuffed out. So the shadowy being-homo superior-had told Bryan on that day a week ago when he had appeared in this room. The human race, far in the future, would destroy itself unless-unless Bryan Barret did not do something that he had done; did not become something that he had become.

  The thoughts of the creature had impinged on his brain clearly after the first moments of fright. Bryan had listened, and believed.

  "So I'm a diversifal," he had muttered. "Bryan Barret, liberal, radical, diversifal."

  "You are a diversifal. I can coin no other word for it."

  "And she is a diversifal."

  "Yes!"

  "And, our child would be a mutant."

  "Yes.

  "I, thought," Bryan had said, his thoughts sinking heavily into a morass of intangibles, "I thought, if one wants to follow the theory to its logical conclusion, that there are an infinite number of probable worlds."