Part 1

CHIMERA WORLD

By WILBUR S. PEACOCK

Don Denton had walked into the weirdest enigma he had ever encountered. Dead men _lived_, and ships vanished without sound. And to top everything, when he tried to unravel the puzzle--he found that _he_ had been dead for more than a week.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1944. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Don Denton, trouble shooter for the Inter-World Mining Corporation, watched the sailors stowing the supplies aboard his small scout rocket, checking the items from the manifest sheet as they were packed in the storage compartments.

"That takes care of that," he said finally, signing the sheet with his thumbprint. "Now, I'll be on my way."

The Skipper nodded, scratched his chin thoughtfully. "I suppose so," he agreed. "Are you sure you won't stay to dinner? I've got a cargo of Martian _panyanox_ that should taste plenty good to you after two months of spacing on vitamins."

Don Denton grinned, scrubbed a heavy hand through the reddish, curly mop of hair that flamed above his craggy face. He shrugged, the leather jacket growing taut across his deceptively wide shoulders.

"Nothing I'd like better," he said, "but I've got orders to get to Venus and find out why the _Lanka_ shipments haven't been coming through on schedule."

"Trouble?" Interest flared in the Skipper's eyes.

Don Denton laughed. "I doubt it," he said. "Probably some space tramp landed and sold the men some Martian _Ganto_ seeds. They're probably nursing such large hangovers that they can't work. I'll just take the supplies on, give the boys a pep talk, then head back for Earth."

"All loaded, Captain," a sailor's voice came from the televisor screen.

Don Denton lounged to his feet. "So long, Captain," he said, "I'll remember that _Panyanox_ invitation, the next time I run into you on Mars."

"Sure, sure, of course!" The Skipper flushed. "Er, ah--, Denton?"

"Yes?" Don Denton turned from the door.

"I've got a passenger I want to transship to Venus."

Don Denton grinned, shook his head. "Sorry, Captain," he said, "but no can do; company rules, you know."

"But this passenger--?"

"No," Denton said decisively. "In the first place, I can't carry passengers on the scouter; and in the second place, I haven't the slightest desire to be holed up with anybody. Sorry, but your passenger will have to get a charter job for the trip."

"What I'm trying to tell you," the Skipper said, "is that Miss Palmer has a Company pass to ride with you."

"Miss Palmer!" The trouble shooter frowned belligerently. "Any relation to Palmer who is the manager on Venus?"

"Daughter, I think."

"Well, you can tell Miss Palmer for me that she's out of luck. Hell, I'll make a bet she's one of two kinds of dames: Either she's the flighty kind who thinks it's just too too divine to explore another planet, or she's the needle-nosed kind who'd drive me nuts with her complaints in half a clock-around!"

"I can assure you that she fits neither of those descriptions," the Skipper said, smiled. "In fact, she's about the nicest bit of meteor fluff that's crossed my rockets in many a day."

"Thank you, Captain," Jean Palmer said amusedly from behind Don Denton. She walked past the trouble shooter, turned to face him squarely. "Woman hater?" she finished quizzically.

Don Denton flushed, his tan deepening, his startlingly blue eyes evading the mocking, brown eyes of the girl. He shifted nervously from foot to foot, his collar suddenly tight and constricting.

"Er--no!" he said defensively, "I--er, well, just don't want any company on my ship."

He felt the flush deepening beneath the level glance of the girl, and hot blood was suddenly pounding at his temples.

The Captain had been right; certainly she didn't fit either of the descriptions Don Denton had given. She was tall, her softly waved crown of hair almost even with the trouble shooter's mouth. And the mannish cut of her plastic dress only served to emphasize the femininity of her body.

* * * * *

But Don Denton was not noticing such minor details; he was conscious only of the incredible redness and smoothness of her lips and of the level appraisal of her eyes. He shivered suddenly, vaguely aware that he was unshaven, gangly, with too prominent teeth and ears.

"I have a pass to ride with you," the girl said mockingly. "Do you think you can get around it?" Her tone changed, became suddenly, subtly, frightened and bewildered. "Please," she finished, "I must go with you! I haven't heard from my father in three months; I know that something has happened to him!"

"Well," Don Denton frowned, was suddenly aware of the dim perfume of her hair. "I guess, if you've got a pass, there's nothing I can do but take you along."

"That's fine!" the Skipper said heartily, a trifle relievedly. "I told Miss Palmer you'd probably be glad to give her a lift."

"I knew Mr. Denton wouldn't let me down," the girl said quietly, "I've heard too many stories of his bravery and gallantry."

Don Denton grinned sheepishly, not absolutely certain as to whether the girl was being ironical or not. He searched her face, felt a distinct shock to his nerves when his gaze met with hers.

"Just routine," he countered deprecatingly.

He shrugged, shook hands quickly with the Skipper. "I'll see you in a couple of months. Thanks for bringing the supplies out of your regular lane; it saved me several weeks of spacing to Earth and back."

"That's all right, Denton," the Captain said, "I still remember the fight you put up when those Gillies attacked my ship off--"

"Sure, sure!" Don Denton cut the flow of the other's words, swung to face the girl. "I'll have a man put your duffle aboard, Miss Palmer."

She smiled, her teeth flashing whitely. "Thank you, but I had them taken aboard half an hour ago."

Don Denton blinked in surprise, and the corners of his mobile lips twitched in a wry smile. "All right, then," he said, "let's be getting on; if we miss connections, we'll have to chase Venus halfway round the sun."

He led the way down the corridor, his thoughts a maelstrom in his mind. He was not a woman hater, nor did he care for them especially, but there was something about the level-eyed slender girl at his back that stirred him deeply. He shook his head slightly, wished that he had not stopped to pick up the supplies from the freighter. He had a vague premonition that the even tenor of his life was destined to be rudely shattered by an indefinable something that he could not fight with the strength of his rangy body nor the solidness of his fists.

* * * * *

The _Comet_ sped in a long parabola from the side of the freighter, a long skid-mark of flaming rocket gas in the darkness behind, and headed obliquely toward Venus which gleamed greenly far ahead.

Don Denton pressed the last of a series of studs on the control panel, cut in the robot-pilot, then grinned admiringly at Jean Palmer.

"Sorry I was rude back there," he apologized.

The girl's answering smile was like a ray of light in the cabin. She stretched lazily in the padded seat, brushed a vagrant lock of hair from her eyes.

"I guess it was my fault," she admitted. "I never stopped to think that you might not like the job of playing space taxi with me. But," her eyes were suddenly serious, "I simply have to see if anything is wrong with my father."

Don Denton grinned. "There's nothing to be afraid of on Venus," he said confidently. "I've been there half a dozen times, and all I've found was a water world, with very little land. About the only life on the planet is of a fish type, which lives deep in the oceans."

"That's what my father told me."

"Well, he was exactly right; it's about the deadest world I've seen. There are nine patches of land, probably mountain tops, and each of them are covered with _Lanka_ plants. I suppose you know that that is what your father is doing there--that is, he's cutting and rendering the plants for their oil?"

Jean nodded. "Yes, he told me. But after all--"

She screamed suddenly, clutched wildly at the arms of her seat. And the motion sent her flying into the air, where she struggled for a balance that wasn't there.

"Easy," Don Denton said, reached out, drew her back to her seat. "It's that blasted gravity rotor again!"

* * * * *

He went sideways from his seat, catching a flashlight from a wall-clip as he did so, then pulled himself by the wall hand rail toward the rear of the cabin.

"I'm going to be ill," Jean said weakly.

"Chin up," Don Denton said sharply. "I'll have everything all right in a moment. The clutch on the gravity rotor is about shot, and it quits on me every now and then. When the gravity gets back to normal, you'll feel all right again."

He turned on his back, wedged himself beneath a small metal box clamped to the rear wall, swinging the light of the hand flash into the interior of the box. He made a one-handed adjustment, and normal gravity grasped them again.

The light of his flash faded, went out, as the gravity became stabilized, then flashed on again the moment the trouble shooter edged from beneath the gravity rotor.

Jean Palmer gasped, and slowly color came back to her white face. Don Denton nodded to himself, strode back to the pilot's seat, slumped indolently into its padded depths. He flicked the switch on the flashlight, pushed it into its wall-clip.

"What made the light go out?" Jean asked curiously.

Don Denton shrugged. "The rotor creates some sort of an energy shield," he said, "that blankets out all electrical energy." He gazed solicitously at the girl. "Feel better now?"

She nodded. "I think so," she said. "I just felt so funny--as though everything in me was upside down."

Don Denton grinned. "I know," he said, "I started spacing when a man rode a ship with the seat of his pants; I've been plenty sick from lack of gravity. Hah! this new crop of spacers don't know what it is to live without gravity for months, then find they can't walk the minute they land on some planet--because of gravity pull."

"You've done that?" Jean's eyes were wide with wonder.

Don Denton grinned self-consciously. "Without bragging," he said, "I think I've just about done everything and seen everything. There's very little that would surprise me."

Jean laughed, and the sound was a tinkling overtone above the dim roar of the rockets. "You know," she said, "you're a rather remarkable person!"

Don Denton flushed, dry-washed his hands in embarrassment. "Aw," he said self-consciously, "I'm just doing a job."

"Well, I like you."

Don Denton became very busy with the compact integrator, his hands suddenly all thumbs.

Jean Palmer leaned over, touched his arm with a slender hand. "I'm glad you're the one taking me to my father," she said. "If there is anything wrong, I'm certain you can straighten it out."

"I'll try." Don Denton met the girl's eyes squarely. "Now you'd better take a dose of sleep rays; after all, it will be about eighty hours before we land."

"Sleep rays on a space ship!"

"Yes!" Don Denton paused with one hand on a control stud. "You see, a scouter isn't like a pleasure craft or a freighter. Nine-tenths of the time aboard is spent sleeping--conserves food and oxygen."

"All right, Don," Jean said, relaxed comfortably in the cushions.

* * * * *

Don Denton pressed the stud, sighed deeply as the purple ray coned down from the overhead bulb and bathed the girl in its nimbus. He straightened the girl's arms a trifle, careful not to permit his head to be touched by the rays, then swung back to the integrator. Jean slept peacefully, a slight smile skidding a dimple into sight, the curves of her breasts rising and falling in a gentle rhythm.

Don Denton shrugged, bent again over the integrator. He set up the combination he desired, pressed keys, glanced absently at the answer. Nodding, he set the course on the robot-pilot, sighed gustily, sank tiredly into the heavy cushions of his seat.

He sat quietly for moments, the smile going from his eyes, a slight frown thinning his mobile mouth. He was more worried than he would have admitted. For this was the first time in eighteen months that the _Lanka_ shipments had not come through on schedule from Venus.

The fern-like _Lanka_ plants were of incalculable value to the inhabited worlds, for the oil rendered from the plants was the only perfect cure for cancer and numerous other diseases. Its curative powers had been discovered accidentally by two wrecked spacers on Venus three years before when one of the spacers had been cured of space-tuberculosis by an enforced diet of cooked plants and Venusian fish.

Don Denton remembered the regularity with which the shipments had been coming through and the worry the head office had felt when the oil had failed to arrive on time two months before. He had been called in as a last resort, because he knew the planet from past experience, and because of his reputation as a trouble shooter who always got results.

He was worried now. For despite his assurances to Jean Palmer, he knew that there were dangers on Venus. In the depths of its oceans, great, foul, nightmarish creatures lived sluggish lives, and if some accident should rouse them to action, they might well wipe out an entire camp in a few moments. Then again, because of the incredible value of the oil, space pirates might have raided the base camp, murdered the men, then escaped with the oil already rendered.

"Damn!" Don Denton said thoughtfully.

He glanced at the sleeping girl, smiled slightly. He felt a sudden protective instinct in his heart that had never been there before, and his hands clenched unconsciously at the thought of what disappointments and heartaches might lie ahead for her.

He shrugged then, grinned wryly into space. Well, there was nothing he could do now but wait. If there was some sort of trouble on Venus, he would have enough trouble then in trying to cope with it; there was no sense in worrying himself stiff about it now. He'd know soon enough.

He clicked on the automatic mechanism of the sleep ray, drifted into dreamless slumber as the purple rays erased all conscious thought from his mind.

II

Venus was no longer a green planet; it loomed ahead like some woolly ball spinning in space. The _Comet_ circled it warily, Don Denton's fingers resting lightly on the control studs of the instrument panel, his lips pursed a bit as he drove the ship closer to the clouds.

"It will probably be several hours before we land," he explained to the wide-eyed Jean at his side, "Trying to find the _Lanka_ camp in that soup down there is quite a job in itself, even after I get the _Comet_ through fifteen miles of cloud banks."

Jean was a trifle pale, but there was a spark of confidence in her eyes. "I think," she said quietly, "I feel like you must have felt the first time you landed here."

Don Denton smiled. "There's no feeling like it," he admitted. "I felt it first on the Earth's Moon, and I knew then that I'd never be able to settle down into some routine job. I suppose I'll end my life still feeling that thrill, still seeking out hidden places in the universe."

He pressed a firing stud, and the _Comet_ flashed down toward Venus. For the first time, there was a sense of movement, as the spinning clouds rushed to meet the ship. Always before, with nothing relative to compare their speed with, and because the inertia-field sent all molecules of ship and contents ahead at the same rate of speed, there had been the sensation of staying at rest in the blackness of space. Now, there was something breathtaking in the way that the ship seemed to be dropping.

Then the first tendrils of cloud whipped lazily about the _Comet_. There was the thrum of the rockets rising to a higher crescendo, and the force screen's voltemeter leaped higher to combat the friction of the tenuous air. Another second, and the great cottony batts of cloud pressed with invisible force against the ship.

And then there was only a grey darkness outside, all light from the sun nullified by the thicknesses of clouds.

Don Denton drifted the ship lower, his fingers flying over the control studs, handling the ship's weight as a horseman controls his mount by a light touch of the reins.

There seemed to be no mental passage of time while the ship was sinking. Moments flowed into each other, and always the clouds seemed to be pressing with a tenuous strength at the quartzite ports.

Then they were through the clouds, and a thousand feet below the ocean tossed and tumbled with a majestic silence that was thrilling and menacing.

Don Denton's breath escaped with a tiny sigh of relief, and his eyes flashed to the girl's face, then back again to the window. He was conscious of the close scrutiny she had given him during those tense moments, and he wondered, irrelevantly, if he measured up to her standards.

"Where's all of the light coming from?" she asked curiously.

"From some sort of minute animal life in the oceans. The water is so filled with tiny worm-like forms of life that I doubt if you could find one cupful of clear water anywhere. They glow like fireflies, and the light generated is reflected back from the low clouds." Don Denton grinned. "I used to call Venus the 'Light bulb planet'!"

"It's beautiful!" Jean breathed in rapture.

Don Denton nodded, swung the _Comet_ directly North. Beneath them, the ocean was a shifting, white-capped wash of silvery light, gleaming with a phosphorescent sheen, its turbulence a shifting kaleidoscope of shattered colors.

And then the water was broken, and a scaly, blunt something darted out of the water, fell crashing in a spray of light.

"What was that?" Jean whispered.

Don Denton swallowed heavily. "I don't know," he said slowly. "Probably some deep sea monster; and he must have been fully three hundred feet long!"

He sent the _Comet_ flashing ahead, the memory of the scaly monster tensing his broad shoulders in a shiver of disquiet. Jean sat silently at his side, quiet for once, and he felt a quick stab of emotion when he read the worry that lay deep in her eyes.

They cruised for almost an hour before Don Denton located the base camp. It had moved from island One to island Three, and its earthly regularity in the green of the _Lanka_ jungle was pleasant to see.

"Five minutes," Don Denton said cheerfully, "and you can surprise your dad."

"Oh, hurry!" Jean said, bent close to the port-window.

* * * * *

Don Denton nodded silently, but there was suddenly a great fear in him. For nowhere in the camp below was there a sign of life.

Smoke was not bulging from the short stack of the rendering plant, and men did not dart from the small shacks to greet the landing ship. The camp appeared to be deserted.

"I don't see anyone?" Jean said puzzledly, fearfully.

Don Denton forced a confident laugh, but his eyes were entirely serious. "They're all probably out in the jungle grubbing up the best grade of plants. Don't worry, when they hear the rockets, they'll come stringing in plenty fast."

He set the _Comet_ down squarely in the middle of the clearing, touched studs, and there was an immediate cessation of noise and vibration.

"This is it," Don Denton said quietly. "Slip on an oxy-helmet, and we'll take a look around."

He smiled away some of the growing fear in the girl's eyes, but there was a growing panic in him that he could not quell.

He could see no one; there was not the slightest sign of life. Yet there should be fifteen men working here. Don Denton shrugged, and there was suddenly a steely gleam in his eyes. He slipped the light helmet over his head, fastened the air-tight cloth beneath his chin.

"Let's go, Jean," he said into the tiny transmitter of his helmet. "Be careful not to dislodge your helmet; the air will make you ill unless you are acclimated to it."

He could see the tiny tremulous smile on her lips, and he held her hand tightly for a moment. Then he spun the cogs of the port-door, felt the slight breeze about his body as the higher compressed air of the ship soughed into the heavy air of Venus.

He helped the girl to the muddy ground, lifted the ati-gun from his belt, paced slowly toward the main hut, his eyes flashing everywhere for the slightest sign of danger, absolutely certain now that things here were even worse than he had conceived them to be.

There was an indefinable threat of danger in the stillness of the great clearing that tightened Don Denton's nerves. Far away, could be heard the dull rumble of the eternal waves on the island's edge, and closer could be heard the soft hissing of the air through the green _Lanka_ fronds.

The clearing had been baked brick-hard with an ati-cannon; now its surface was spotted with soupy puddles of green mud where the every-day rains had seeped into some hollow.

Two freighters squatted near the North edge of the clearing, their dulled sides scabrous with great patches of growing rust, their empty ports like great blank staring eyes watching the two terrestrials slowly approach the main hut.

"Don," Jean pressed close to the trouble shooter's tall body, "where is everybody?"

Don Denton shook his head, a furry spider of apprehension crawling up his spine, his eyes piercing and searching as he held the ati-gun in a tremorless hand. He walked slowly forward, the eeriness of the silver-lighted scene touching his sensibilities.

He fired the moment the slug-like creature came from the hut's door, the wailing hiss of the gun strangely loud. There was a silent scream that crescendoed and titillated in diminishing waves, then the creature collapsed into a protoplasmic mass that quivered horribly for a moment and then was still.

"Don!" Jean said fearfully.

The trouble shooter's face was like chiselled granite, and he stepped to the door of the hut and rayed the stinking mass of bubbly flesh out of existence. He handed the twin ati-gun to the girl, nodded toward the hut's interior.

"Stay here," he snapped, "while I take a look inside. Shoot at anything that moves."

He smiled then for the first time, seeing the determination in the lines of the girl's chin. Then he whirled, stepped within the doorway, his nerves icy cold, the flat muscles of his body ready for instant darting action.

He stopped, his breathing a startled gasp. Eight men were within the hut, eight men lying in the stillness of death.

"Good God!" he said, paced swiftly across the floor to the tiers of bunks along the far wall.

He went from man to man, feeling for a pulse on each man, the cold sweat of terror breaking on his forehead when he was finally convinced that all eight of the hut's occupants were dead.

He shivered, backed to the door, his eyes darting about the cabin, a sharp prodding prescience within him that every movement of his was being watched. He closed the door, stood speechlessly beside the girl for a moment.

"What is it, Don; what did you find?" Jean's fingers tightened on his biceps.

* * * * *

Don Denton swallowed heavily, avoided the girl's eyes. "Let's take a look at the other sleeping hut," he said tonelessly, tried to keep the horror he felt from his expression.

"There is something wrong; I know it!" Jean went rigid, her breath catching in her throat. "My father's in there!"

Don Denton shook his head. "No," he said sharply, "he isn't in there; he's probably in the other hut." He caught the girl's arm. "Let's take a look, before something happens that's too big for me to handle."