* * * * *
It hit the yacht, a quarter-ton of night-flying beetle. The air seemedfilled with flying things. There were moths with twenty-foot wings andeyes which glowed like rubies in the torch's light. There were beetlesof all sizes from tiny six-inch things to monsters in whom Moran did notbelieve even when he saw them. All were drawn by the light which shouldnot exist under the cloud-bank. They droned and fluttered and performedlunatic evolutions, coming always closer to the flame.
Moran cut off the torch and closed the lock-door from the inside.
"We don't load bessendium tonight," he said with some grimness. "To haveno light, with what crawls about in the darkness, would be suicide. Butto use lights would be worse. If you people are going to salvage thestuff in that wreck, you'll have to wait for daylight. At least then youcan see what's coming after you."
They went into the yacht proper. There was no longer any question aboutthe planet's air. If insects which were descendents of terrestrial formscould breathe it, so could men. When the first insect-eggs were broughthere, the air had to be fit for them if they were to survive. It wouldnot have changed.
Burleigh sat in the control-room with a double handful of purplecrystals before him.
"This," he said when Moran and Carol reentered, "this is bessendium pastquestion. I've been thinking what it means."
"Money," said Moran drily. "You'll all be rich. You'll probably retirefrom politics."
"That wasn't exactly what I had in mind," said Burleigh distastefully."You've gotten us into the devil of a mess, Moran!"
"For which," said Moran with ironic politeness, "there is a perfectsolution. You kill me, either directly or by leaving me marooned here."
Burleigh scowled.
"We have to land at space-ports for supplies. We can't hope to hide you,it's required that landed ships be sterilized against infections fromoff-planet. We can't pass you as a normal passenger. You're not on theship's papers and they're alteration-proof. Nobody's ever been able tochange a ship's papers and not be caught! We could land and tell thetruth, that you hijacked the ship and we finally overpowered you. Butthere are reasons against that."
"Naturally!" agreed Moran. "I'd be killed anyhow and you'd be subject tointensive investigation. And you're fugitives as much as I am."
"Just so," admitted Burleigh.
Moran shrugged.
"Which leaves just one answer. You maroon me and go on your way."
* * * * *
Burleigh said painfully;
"There's this bessendium. If there's more--especially if there'smore--we can leave you here with part of it. When we get far enoughaway, we charter a ship to come and get you. It'll be arranged.Somebody will be listed as of that ship's company, but he'll slip awayfrom the space-port and not be on board at all. Then you're picked upand landed using his name."
"If," said Moran ironically, "I am alive when the ship gets here. If I'mnot, the crew of the chartered ship will be in trouble, short one man onreturn to port. You'll have trouble getting anybody to run that risk!"
"We're trying to work out a way to save you!" insisted Burleigh angrily."Harper would have been killed but for you. And--this bessendium willfinance the underground work that will presently make a success of ourrevolution. We're grateful! We're trying to help you!"
"So you maroon me," said Moran. Then he said; "But you've skipped thereal problem! If anything goes wrong, Carol's in it! There's no way todo anything without risk for her! That's the problem! I could kill allyou characters, land somewhere on a colonized planet exactly as youlanded here, and be gone from the yacht on foot before anybody couldfind me! But I have a slight aversion to getting a girl killed orkilling her just for my own convenience. It's settled. I stay here. Youcan try to arrange the other business if you like. But it's a badgamble."
Carol was very pale. Burleigh stood up.
"You said that, I didn't. But I don't think we should leave you here. Upnear the ice-cap should be infinitely better for you. We'll load therest of the bessendium tomorrow, find you a place, leave you a beacon,and go."
He went out. Carol turned a white face to Moran.
"Is that--is that the real trouble? Do you really--"
Moran looked at her stonily.
"I like to make heroic gestures," he told her. "Actually, Burleigh's avery noble sort of character himself. He proposes to leave me withtreasure that he could take. Even more remarkably, he proposes to divideup what you take, instead of applying it all to further his politicalideals. Most men like him would take it all for the revolution!"
"But--but--."
Carol's expression was pure misery. Moran walked deliberately across thecontrol-room. He glanced out of a port. A face looked in. It filled thetransparent opening. It was unthinkable. It was furry. There wereglistening chitinous areas. There was a proboscis like an elephant'strunk, curled horribly. The eyes were multiple and mad.
It looked in, drawn and hypnotized by the light shining out on thisnightmare world from the control-room ports.
Moran touched the button that closed the shutters.
III.
When morning came, its arrival was the exact reversal of the coming ofnight. In the beginning there was darkness, and in the darkness therewas horror.
The creatures of the night untiringly filled the air with sound, and thesounds were discordant and gruesome and revolting. The creatures of thisplanet were gigantic. They should have adopted new customs appropriateto the dignity of their increased size. But they hadn't. The manners andcustoms of insects are immutable. They feed upon specific prey--spidersare an exception, but they are not insects at all--and they lay theireggs in specific fashion in specific places, and they behave accordingto instincts which are so detailed as to leave them no choice at all intheir actions. They move blindly about, reacting like automata ofinfinite complexity which are capable of nothing not built into themfrom the beginning. Centuries and millenia do not change them. Travelacross star-clusters leaves them with exactly the capacities forreaction that their remotest ancestors had, before men lifted offancient Earth's green surface.
The first sign of dawn was deep, deep, deepest red in the cloud-bank nomore than fifteen hundred feet overhead. The red became brighter, andpresently was as brilliant as dried blood. Again presently it wascrimson over all the half-mile circle that human eyes could penetrate.Later still--but briefly--it was pink. Then the sky became gray. Fromthat color it did not change again.
Moran joined Burleigh in a survey of the landscape from thecontrol-room. The battlefield was empty now. Of the thousands uponthousands of stinking combatants who'd rent and torn each other theevening before, there remained hardly a trace. Here and there, to besure, a severed saw-toothed leg remained. There were perhaps as many asfour relatively intact corpses not yet salvaged. But something was beingdone about them.
There were tiny, brightly-banded beetles hardly a foot long whichlabored industriously over such frayed objects. They worked agitatedlyin the yeasty stuff which on this world took the place of soil. Theyexcavated, beneath the bodies of the dead ants, hollows into which thosecarcasses could descend. They pushed the yeasty, curdy stuff up andaround the sides of those to-be-desired objects. The dead warriors sanklittle by little toward oblivion as the process went on. The up-thrust,dug-out material collapsed upon them as they descended. In a verylittle while they would be buried where no larger carrion-eater woulddiscover them, and then the brightly-colored sexton beetles would begina banquet to last until only fragments of chitinous armor remained.
* * * * *
But Moran and Burleigh, in the _Nadine's_ control-room, could hardlynote such details.
"You saw the cargo," said Burleigh, frowning. "How's it packed? Thebessendium, I mean."
"It's in small boxes too heavy to be handled easily," said Moran."Anyhow the _Malabar's_ crew broke some of them open to load the stuffon their lifeboats."
"The lifeboats are
all gone?"
"Naturally," said Moran. "At a guess they'd have used all of them evenif they didn't need them for the crew. They could carry extra food andweapons and such."
"How much bessendium is left?"
"Probably twenty boxes unopened," said Moran. "I can't guess at theweight, but it's a lot. They opened six boxes." He paused. "I have asuggestion."
"What?"
"When you've supplied yourselves," said Moran, "leave some space-portsomewhere with papers saying you're going to hunt for minerals on
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