Part 1

As a galactic reporter Jane Crowley knew she had hold of the biggest story of the year; thousands of people were soon to die on this--

Planet Of Doom

By C. H. Thames

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy June 1956 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Less than an hour after the last spaceship made touchdown on Mandmoora, Jane Crowley stood before a scowling, head shaking public Information Officer.

"My company sent me fifty light years from its nearest base in the Denebian system, Colonel," Jane said. "I'm sorry, but it's impossible for me to return to Deneb without my story."

"This office has issued press releases, my dear Miss Crowley, which--"

"Press releases!" The way Jane uttered those two words made the Colonel wince. "I didn't come fifty light years for press releases. I came...." She watched the Colonel's face and let her voice trail off. This approach was having absolutely no effect. But Jane Crowley was a woman, young and quite pretty and it was likely, she thought, that where the straightforward, man-to-man approach might fail, the ways of a woman might succeed. "But Colonel," she pouted, then let her composed face fall apart as if she were going to cry. "But Colonel, my job depends on this story. My ... my whole career ... you see ..." she sniffled.

"There now, Miss Crowley," the Colonel said, looking very uncomfortable. "There now, miss. Please."

"Then you'll let me go out there among the Mandmoora?"

"I'm sorry, miss. Out of the question. Definitely out. We've evacuated all the Mandmoora who want to go. What remains is a hard core of Mandmooranian fanatics who refuse to leave their native planet under any circumstances. They've got an island just off shore here, you see. They're sun-worshippers. Ironical, isn't it? Sun-worshippers. Their sun about to go nova on them, boiling all the oceans of this waterworld and killing every speck of life on Mandmoora, and they're sun-worshippers. They just won't go. They want to stay. They say we can't make them go and they're right, we can't. Poor devils. They'll be boiled and broiled alive, all three thousands of 'em. But this headquarters can't send men out to their island after them. They'd resist and it would mean bloodshed, on both sides. We won't have it."

The Colonel's haggard face brightened, and he went on: "There's your story, Miss Crowley. Three thousand die-hard sun-worshippers, facing certain death at the altar of the very deity they adore. File _that_ story from Deneb, Miss Crowley."

"It's been filed a hundred times already," Jane said, shaking her head. "You know it has."

The Colonel shrugged. "I refuse to authorize your going out to Mandmoora Island. Be reasonable, miss, can't you? We have evacuated a hundred million Mandmoorans in history's greatest mass exodus. Three thousand fanatics don't want out. Three thousand fanatics will broil with their world, then. That's all."

"But if they could be led to understand."

"I thought you wanted a story. A human interest story, wasn't it?"

"I was only thinking out loud."

"I've given you the only story you'll get here. Why should your video service expect more than the others?"

"No reason, I guess," Jane knew now that the answer was definitely no. She was hardly listening to the Colonel as he went on. There had to be another way, somewhere, somehow. It was the story of the century--and there wasn't another newsman on Mandmoora with a chance to scoop her. Which also meant that if Jane didn't get the story, the rest of the civilized galaxy wouldn't, either, except for watered-down public information releases.

"... otherwise," the Colonel was saying. "The press people have said we were more than fair, miss. We let them set up a headquarters beyond the Mandmooranian sun's eighth planet: our experts said the nova won't explode that far, you know. Headquarters will be safe there. We've even agreed to let the last ship out stop at press headquarters for an interview before it goes subspace for the dash to Deneb. What could be fairer?"

"Nothing, I guess," Jane said. "Well, thank you for your time, Colonel."

"Not at all, young lady." The Colonel touched something on his desk and a door at the other end of the office opened, irising with a faint hissing sound. Through it Jane could hear the sounds of office machinery, think-writers and duplics and a subspace ticker coming in with the news from the rest of the galaxy.

A woman, thought Jane. Maybe if I was a man it would have been different, but they wanted a woman's viewpoint because it's a heartstring-plucking story. She recalled the Colonel's first incredulous outburst. "But I can't send a _woman_ out there, Miss Crowley. A woman!"

* * * * *

As she reached the door, impulse became idea and idea came to the surface for execution. "Thank you very much, Colonel," she said in a clear, loud voice. "Interstellar News Alliance knew it could count on you."

"What's that?" demanded the Colonel in a voice barely audible across the large room. He was busy now with a mountain of last minute paperwork and was listening only with one ear, the rest of him already hard at work.

"Thanks again, Colonel," Jane said, and stepped through the irised shutter of a door. She turned to show her best smile to the sergeant-major at the desk immediately outside the door. "There, sergeant," she said, smiling. "You see? I told you the Colonel would give me an unlimited pass."

"I never would of believed it," the sergeant said, looking at the smile and daring a glance at the rest of Jane Crowley, which was every bit as delightful as the pretty way she showed her teeth.

"An unlimited pass, sergeant. Make one out for me, please."

The sergeant-major nodded and took a book of forms from a drawer in his desk. He wrote for a while, then said, "That's C-r-o-w-l-e-y, ma'am?"

"Right."

"Any time limit on the pass?"

"None at all," Jane said, still amazed that her ruse, her show of elation had actually worked.

The sergeant-major applied the finishing touches to the pass with an ink-stamp duplicate of the Colonel's signature and handed the stiff plastic rectangle to Jane. "There you are, ma'am," he said. "But watch your step, Miz Crowley. The last ship's blasting off in twenty hours, with or without the Mandmoorans. Twenty hours, ma'am. So please don't get lost."

Jane thanked him, smiled again, and got out of there.

Five minutes later, the Colonel buzzed for his sergeant-major. "Yes, sir?" the sergeant asked, poking his head in through the irising door.

"Well, I see the lady reporter didn't give much trouble after I made it clear the answer was no. Now, about that Sbogan file. Sbogan, that is the name?"

"Yeah, Sbogan. Fomalhautian name. What did you ... did you say, sir?"

"The Sbogan file should--"

"No. About the reporter. You told her no? Your answer was no, sir?"

"Naturally. We couldn't let her put her pretty head in the lion's mouth."

"Oh, Lord, sir," the sergeant-major said. "I gave her an unlimited pass."

"Sergeant!"

"She said you had ... sir...."

"An unlimited pass--sergeant! Send out an alarm for that girl. We're all right as long as she doesn't leave the mainland. But if she goes to the Mandmooran Island, where those hold-out sun-worshippers are...."

"She'll make tracks for there, all right," the sergeant-major predicted.

"Stop her. Stop her before she gets that far! Because once she crosses to the island, there isn't a thing we can do about it. You can't tell a nova to wait, sergeant!"

"I'll try to stop her, sir."

"Make it a general alarm, sergeant. You've _got_ to stop her."

Moments later, Jane Crowley's description was being radio'd to every martial checkpoint in the city of Northport.

* * * * *

It was very hot and sultry on the tarry streets of Northport. It had been an exotic city, really exotic, Jane thought. You could tell by the out-of-this world architecture, but oddly--with nothing but the uniformed figures of the interstellar rescue organization to be seen on the streets--Northport lost most of its charm. For the charm of any alien place, of any exotic world, lies in its people. Jane had once made a broadcast to that effect, and it had been very well received. It would be nothing though, absolutely nothing, compared to what Jane almost had in her grasp now. A final interview with the die-hards, with the Mandmoorans who refused to leave their planet because they had faith in the sun which would soon, in hardly more than hours, destroy them.

The docks were crowded, littered with the worldly belongings of a few score Mandmoorans who had changed their mind and had paddled over from the island. A squad of soldiers was busy processing them and the Mandmoorans, big muscular purple-skinned men with shocks of stiff lemon-yellow hair and smaller women, brittle-looking women with strange, wasp-waisted figures, glanced up frequently at the sky. Their sun, a faintly bluish white star, seemed somehow swollen. It actually seemed larger to Jane than it had been when she had landed several hours ago. Probably, she told herself, that's imagination. On the other hand, the Mandmoorans would certainly have been able to see a change in solar size by this time. For the Mandmooranian sun had doubled its apparent size in the past ten days, Jane had been told at the P.I. office.

The only result so far was the sweltering heat on Mandmoora. The heat, though, was not lethal. There had been hot summers before, the die-hard sun-worshippers had said. So they had told Jane at the P.I.O. The natives said nothing, could be made to say nothing, about the swollen appearance of the sun they worshipped.

In twenty hours their last chance for rescue would be gone. In thirty hours, Mandmoora's sun would go nova, bursting to a million times its former luminosity in micro-seconds, sending out a shell of intensely hot gases which, when it reached Mandmoora, would instantly destroy all life on the planet. Including three thousand sun-worshippers waiting devoutly for their deity to prove the interstellar interlopers wrong....

"Hey, Miss!" someone cried suddenly. It was an Army corporal running toward her, bulling his way through a knot of Mandmooran refugees. "You're Jane Crowley, ain't you?" He was only a dozen strides away now, and shouting. "Because I got orders to...."

Jane didn't hear the rest of it. She turned and ran down the length of the deserted quay adjacent to the one strewn with Mandmooran belongings. She reached the end of the quay and whirled. The corporal was trotting confidently toward her, in no great hurry now. For she had trapped herself on the quay. She was very angry with herself. A fine newshen you are, she thought. First chance you have, you let yourself get caught. A fine....

Something gave her a raucous razzing, something out over the water. She whirled and faced it. A runabout whizzed in across the blue water toward her. Someone was waving.

She waved back frantically, suddenly recognizing him. It was Sid Masters. She had met Sid on the ship which had taken both of them to Mandmoora. Sid was with the electronics outfit setting up camera equipment on Mandmoora, equipment which would transmit through subspace the pictures of a sun going nova seen from the surface of its only inhabited planet. She had struck up a quick friendship with Sid on the space-liner.

Making up her mind suddenly, Jane didn't wait for the running corporal to reach her. Instead, she turned and jumped off the quay.

She came up sputtering. The water was tepid, was typical harbor-water, fouled with gasoline and debris. Masters' gas-turbine driven boat was very close now. The sound of its motor almost drowned out the corporal's shouts as Jane treaded water.

"Going to the island," Masters shouted. "You?"

"They don't want me to, Sid!"

He smiled. She couldn't hear all of what he said, but she got the last part of it. "... want me to, either. Hop in, beautiful."

There was a splash behind her. Jane turned and saw the corporal break surface, yelling and waving his arms. She stroked for Sid Masters' runabout. The electronics technician shouted his encouragement, but as she got one hand on the gunwale of the idling runabout, Jane felt something grab and tug at her leg.

She lashed out with her free leg, churning water. But the corporal clung grimly to her ankle. Then an old, half-rotted oar appeared alongside Jane's heel, and with it--guiding it--Sid Masters' arms. The oar went out over the water and probed and a moment later the corporal shouted and Jane felt the pressure leave her ankle.

"Hop aboard and be quick about it," Masters yelled.

Jane needed no urging. She scrambled ungracefully over the gunwale. She was dripping wet and thought she looked a mess. But Masters merely said, "Pleasure to have you aboard, beautiful," and the runabout roared and headed out across the harbor to the island, to the last redoubt of the three thousand sun-worshipping Mandmoorans who waited for a miracle which would not come to save them.

* * * * *

"Simple," Sid Masters said in answer to Jane's question half an hour later. "I thought it would be a good idea to set up camera equipment on the island itself, to show the galaxy the last sun-worshipping rites of the Mandmoorans--before their god killed them. Maybe it's heartless, but it's good journalism. Besides, it isn't up to me to get the Mandmoorans off their island. I'd gladly film their exodus instead, and first-hand, not with automatic equipment. Anyhow, Colonel, what's his name at P.I.O. said no."

"And you didn't take no for an answer?"

"I didn't take no for an answer. Hell, all I have to do is set up the equipment so the Mandmoorans don't see it and get off the island. It shouldn't be hard."

"I want to get a final impression of the Mandmooran sun-worshippers as they wait for the end," Jane said. "As you said, Sid, it isn't pretty but it's good journalism. Sure, I'd rather not get my story and see them saved--"

"But if they're going to die you want the story. Right?"

"Yes," Jane said. Then: "I want to thank you, Sid--"

He grinned. "You looked so helpless there on the end of the quay. You were wringing your hands, did you know it?"

"What a sight that must have been. Sid!" Jane cried abruptly. "Sid! We're being followed. That boat--"

"Of course we're being followed. But this runabout's got good speed. They won't catch us before we reach the island. And once we reach it, they probably have orders not to land under any circumstances. They--hey wait a minute! Look behind them."

At first Jane didn't get it. She looked ahead and saw the green smear of the sun-worshippers' island, expanding out from the horizon toward them. They'd be beaching the light-weight, lithium-alloy runabout in a matter of minutes, she thought. Then, after that....

"No Jane. I said behind them. Behind the boat following us."

At first she saw nothing but the dazzling suntrack across the water back there. Then, dancing on the suntrack as if belonging to it, scores of silver midges. But a while ago, the single boat pursuing them had looked like a silver midge.

"Boats," Jane said.

"Boats. A whole fleet of them."

"What can it mean, Sid?"

"Beats me. I can guess, though. Jane, maybe we're going to be in on the kind of ending we'd rather see."

"I don't understand."

"It's a fleet of evacuation craft, probably. Making a last attempt to get the Mandmoorans off their island. Maybe they had some word from the sun-worshipping chief out there, I don't know."

"Should we wait until they land?"

"Not on your life," Sid said. "We've broken a law, Jane. They'd take us into custody until the whole operation was over. We'll beach this boat like we planned, and then my equipment--"

"And my pad and pencil," Jane said.

"--go to work."

Moments later they could see a throng of the Mandmoorans waiting on the beach for them, the brilliant purple of their bodies gleaming metallically against the dead white sands.

* * * * *

The Mandmooran chief was a big fellow six and a half feet tall. He was old: the shock of stiff yellow hair had faded to a corn-silk color, the purple skin was wrinkle-creased and had lost some of its sheen. But he carried himself straight and tall and he looked every inch a chieftain.

"We stay here," he told Sid in English. "Lord Sun no kills worship people. You tell soldiers?"

"They're coming," Sid said. "See? We have nothing to do with that."

"You not with them?"

"Not us," Sid said.

"What then you want?"

Sid looked at Jane, who shrugged. Words and phrases were already forming in her mind. The sad proud look on the old chief's face. The gleaming, healthy, royal purple Mandmoorans. The dried, withered vegetation all around them, scorched by the swollen sun. The angry, resentful look on some of the Mandmooran faces behind the chief. The distant wailing chant of the sun-worshipping priests.

"... cameras," Sid was saying. "As for the lady, she only wants to talk with you and look around some. All right?"

"Twice," the chief said slowly, "your soldiers try to trick us. Third time now."

Sid shrugged. "We're not soldiers."

"You have nothing to do with them?"

"We have nothing to do with them."

"Third trick make people angry."

"If there's a third trick, we're no part of it."

The chief nodded solemnly and turned to face the water. Ahead of the flotilla, a single runabout was quite close to land now. Jane recognized the corporal who had chased her out on the quay. With him were two other soldiers.

"Halloa!" the corporal shouted. "Hallo, Miz Crowley. Won't do you no good to try and hide. We got orders to take you back. Mr. Masters with you, ma'am. You'll come peacefully?"

"We won't come any way at all," Sid said defiantly. "Not until we're good and ready."

The chief suddenly strode forward, to the edge of the water and then ankle deep in the surf. "Wait," he said, lifting both hands solemnly. "You and these two--you know one another?"

"They're Miz Crowley and Mr. Masters," the corporal shouted back.

"And you know they come here?"

"Heck, yes," said the corporal. "It's why we came. Following them."

"Otherwise you no have come?"

"That's right."

"Then you go," the chief said in a strong, solemn voice. "Tell others. Go! You come close, we hurt these two people. You try to land, take us off--we kill them. We stay here. Our right is to stay. Our Lord Sun no hurt Mandmoorans. Lord Sun for life and growing of crops, not for death. You go."

"You can't keep them for hostages," the corporal shouted across the water. "You can't do that."

* * * * *

The chief let his right hand fall. A line of spearmen trotted up behind him and let fly with a fusillade of long-shafted spears. The spears fell around the military runabout, but none of them touched it.

"They stay," the chief said, "You take hundred million Mandmoorans off Mandmoora, we keep two earth people here to see nothing happens to Lord Sun. Now go!"

"Sid," Jane said. "Sid, did you hear him? They--they're going to keep us here, and--Sid, is there any chance the sun won't go nova?"

Sid shook his head. His face looked suddenly bleak. "No chance at all, kid. I guess we should have listened."

"Sid, I'm scared."

There was a roaring sound as the runabout, instead of retreating, came bucketing toward the beach. "Come on down to the water!" the corporal bawled at the top of his voice. "We'll get you!"

The Chief raised his hand. Another line of spearmen came trotting forward. "Go back," Sid shouted. "They'll kill you!"

But the runabout came toward them on the heaving surf. Before the chief could raise his hand a second time, the corporal stood up in the prow of the runabout and fired a blaster toward the beach. He had fired it high and he waited for it to disperse the spearmen. When it did not, he fired again, lower. The chief lifted his hand and brought it down. A volley of spears leaped from muscular arms, arching in the sunlight, dropping toward the runabout....

The corporal fired again and a figure near the chief slumped to the sand. Then the runabout, riddled by fifty spears at the water-line, began to sink.

"Take them," the chief said.

A score of Mandmoorans swarmed out through the surf toward the sinking boat. Jane watched as they surrounded it and brought the three soldiers back with them quickly. By then the runabout had gone under, but the flotilla of rescue craft was now only a few hundred yards offshore and coming fast.

"Five hostages," the chief said. "Tell them go."

Voices shouted back and forth across the water, but Jane saw that the chief wasn't listening. Instead, he went to the man who had fallen before the corporal's blaster. He knelt and took the yellow shocked head on his knee and murmured to it. The young Mandmoora's right arm had been all but blasted off at the elbow. Blood was gushing and pumping from severed arteries. The chief raised his head and wailed:

"Grower, healer, Lord Sun! Save the Princeling of your people. Grower, healer, Lord Sun!" he chanted, repeating it. "Grower...."

"Princeling?" Sid said. "The old boy's son, you think?"

"If they just keep chanting and leave him like that, the poor boy'll bleed to death. Can't we do something?"

Just then an amplified voice came across the water toward them, metallic and somehow unreal. "Masters! Miss Crowley. We'll stay here. We won't budge until--until it's too late. Until we have to leave. But we can't come after you. The Mandmoorans would fight. There would be death on both sides and--I'm sorry, Masters, Miss Crowley. We are positively forbidden to use force of arms here. You understand?"

It was a rhetorical question. It did not matter if they understood or not. The flotilla would wait--hopelessly. The flotilla would leave when it had to. And the corporal and his companions, along with Sid Masters and Jane, would be left with the Sun-trusting Mandmoorans.

* * * * *

The Mandmooran prince's face was ashen with pain and loss of blood. The chief cradled his head, and mumbled, and chanted. And the blood pumped from the severed arteries.

A ring of Mandmooran guards surrounded Jane, Sid Masters and the three soldiers, but when Jane walked through the ring, quite close to two of the spearmen, they did not try to stop her. It was because of the Mandmooran women, she decided: the Mandmooran women were so small and fragile-looking that their men would never take the guarding of a woman seriously.

Jane went over to where the chief was kneeling by his stricken son. "Unless you stop the bleeding," she said quietly, "he's going to die. Don't you know that?"

"Healer sun stop bleeding. Lord Sun."

Jane shook her head. "The sun is a slow healer. The sun can't perform medical miracles. I have no argument with your religion, chief--but we can save your boy's life if you let us."

At first Jane thought she had failed. The Chief continued chanting over his son, not looking at the Earthgirl. Then, slowly, he looked up. Not at Jane, not immediately at Jane: he let his gaze come to rest on the Mandmooran sun, faintly bluish and clearly swollen now, egg-shaped almost as its internal forces gathered themselves for the final cataclysmic explosion which, in hours, would all but tear the star apart. Even a fanatic sun-worshipper would know now that something was wrong with their deity. On the other hand, a fanatic sun-worshipper might regard the change, Jane realized, as a manifestation of displeasure. Hadn't all but an infinitesimal fraction of the Mandmoorans deserted their god? Wasn't that reason enough for the wrath of the Lord Sun?