Planet of Dread by Murray Leinster

Author:Murray Leinster
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Endymion Press
Published: 2016-08-28T04:00:00+00:00

* * *

Burleigh said painfully;

“There’s this bessendium. If there’s more—especially if there’s more—we can leave you here with part of it. When we get far enough away, 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 away from the space-port and not be on board at all. Then you’re picked up and landed using his name.”

“If,” said Moran ironically, “I am alive when the ship gets here. If I’m not, the crew of the chartered ship will be in trouble, short one man on return 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 will finance the underground work that will presently make a success of our revolution. We’re grateful! We’re trying to help you!”

“So you maroon me,” said Moran. Then he said; “But you’ve skipped the real problem! If anything goes wrong, Carol’s in it! There’s no way to do anything without risk for her! That’s the problem! I could kill all you characters, land somewhere on a colonized planet exactly as you landed here, and be gone from the yacht on foot before anybody could find me! But I have a slight aversion to getting a girl killed or killing her just for my own convenience. It’s settled. I stay here. You can try to arrange the other business if you like. But it’s a bad gamble.”

Carol was very pale. Burleigh stood up.

“You said that, I didn’t. But I don’t think we should leave you here. Up near the ice-cap should be infinitely better for you. We’ll load the rest 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 a very noble sort of character himself. He proposes to leave me with treasure that he could take. Even more remarkably, he proposes to divide up what you take, instead of applying it all to further his political ideals. Most men like him would take it all for the revolution!”

“But—but—.”

Carol’s expression was pure misery. Moran walked deliberately across the control-room. He glanced out of a port. A face looked in. It filled the transparent opening. It was unthinkable. It was furry. There were glistening chitinous areas. There was a proboscis like an elephant’s trunk, curled horribly. The eyes were multiple and mad.

It looked in, drawn and hypnotized by the light shining out on this nightmare world from the control-room ports.

Moran touched the button that closed the shutters.

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