The FORGOTTEN PLANET
By MURRAY LEINSTER
[Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidencethat the copyright had been renewed.]
ACE BOOKS
A Division of A. A. Wyn, Inc.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N. Y.
THE FORGOTTEN PLANET
Copyright, 1954, by Murray Leinster
An Ace Book, by arrangement with Gnome Press, Inc.
The Forgotten Planet is based upon Mad Planet and Red Dust
(copyrighted Amazing Stories 1926, 1927), and Nightmare Planet
(copyrighted 1953 by Gernsback Publications Inc.).
To Joan Patricia Jenkins
NATURE'S MISLEAD MADHOUSE!
Beneath dense gray clouds through which no sun shone lay a forgottenplanet. It was a nightmare world of grotesque and terrifyinganimal-plant life. Gigantic beetles, spiders, bugs and ants filled theputrid, musty earth—ready to kill and devour anything in sight.
There were men amidst this horror—men who cringed and ran from theravening monsters and huddled in the mushroom forests at night.
Burl was one of these creatures. But one day inspiration hit Burl. Hewould find a weapon—he would fight back.
And with this idea the first step was taken in man's most desperateflight for freedom in this most horrible of all worlds. But it was onlya first step.
About the characters in this book:
This is something of an oddity among fiction stories, because some ofits characters may be met in person if you wish. Down at the nearestweed-patch or thicket you are quite likely to see a large and unusuallyperfect spider-web with a zig-zag silk ribbon woven into its center. Itsengineer is the yellow-banded garden spider (Epeira Fasciata) whoseabdomen may be as big as your thumb. I do not name it to impress you,but to suggest a sort of science-fiction experience.
Take a bit of straw and disturb the web. Don't break the cables. Simplytap them a bit. The spider will know by the feel of things that youaren't prey and that it can't eat you. So it will set out frighteningyou away. It will run nimbly to the center of the web and shake itselfviolently. The whole web will vibrate, so that presently the spider maybe swinging through an arc inches in length, and blurred by the speed ofits swing. You are supposed to be scared. When you are alarmed enough,the spider will stop.
That spider, very much magnified, is in this book with crickets andgrasshoppers and divers beetles you may not know personally. But this isnot an insect book, but science-fiction. If the habits of the creaturesin it are authentic, it is because they are much more dramatic andinteresting than things one can invent.
Murray Leinster
PROLOGUE
The Survey-Ship Tethys made the first landing on the planet, which hadno name. It was an admirable planet in many ways. It had an ampleatmosphere and many seas, which the nearby sun warmed so lavishly that aperpetual cloud-bank hid them and most of the solid ground from view. Ithad mountains and continents and islands and high plateaus. It had dayand night and wind and rain, and its mean temperature was within therange to which human beings could readily accommodate. It was rather onthe tropic side, but not unpleasant.
But there was no life on it.
No animals roamed its continents. No vegetation grew from its rocks. Noteven bacteria struggled with its stones to turn them into soil. So there