The green planet j hun.., p.1
the green planet - j. hunter holly, page 1
20-03-2023
ALIEN PLANET
There was a blood-curdling scream, followed by a thunderous flop-flap and a whirr of beaten air-A giant bird wheeled into sight, with great leathery wings stretching the breadth of eight trees, a scaled body and a long whip of a tail.
Jason raised his gun and fired several shots. The bullets bit the scaly body and bounced off. The massive bird. its yellow eyes gleaming maliciously, shifted abruptly and headed for the spaceship landing.
Under the trees lay the shredded, bloody body of Ben Traub. The right arm was exposed—a hand devoid of flesh, picked clean by the monster’s snapping beak.
Immediately Jason and his friends asked themselves how many more of the dreaded airborne monsters peopled this strange alien planet to i which they had been cruelly exiled from Earth.
AUTHOR’S PROFILE
J. Hunter Holly is the pseudonym of Joan C. Holly who was born in Lansing Michigant and graduated from Michigan State University in 1954 with a B.A. degree in psychology, Her affiliations at the university were Phi Kappa Phi, state university national honor society; Tau Sigma, honorary society of the school of science ami arts; ami Psi Chi, psychology honorary society. She was recipient of the Hinnian superior student scholarship.
Miss Holly’s major interests, aside from science fiction and psychology, lie in the study of American Indian lore, anthropology, philosophy and the arts.
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_____________________________________________________________
A Science Fiction Novel
THE GREEN PLANET
J. Hunter Holly
MONARCH BOOKS, INC.
Derby, Connecticut
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
A Monarch Science Fiction Novel
Published in September, 1961, by Special Arrangement
with Thomas Bouregy & Company
© Copyright, 1960, by J. Hunter Holly
In memory of my father, Arthur Hunter Holly
— the world is a lesser place —
Cover Painting by Jack Schoenherr
Monarch Books are published by MONARCH BOOKS, INC.,
Capital Building, Derby, Connecticut, and represent the works
of outstanding novelists and writers of non-fiction especially
chosen for their literary merit and reading entertainment.
Printed in the United States of America
All Rights Reserved
CHAPTER ONE
Klorath waited, within sight, but they were blind. Hard metal shut their eyes and they couldn’t see. They could only wait and tremble. Past and future flowed together in Klorath’s rounded face—both misty—one with forgetting and one with mystery. But for them, there was only the present.
Then, the call came. The voice spoke through the ship’s intercom and their door was unlocked for the first time in three months. They moved through it, headed for the forward air-lock and the shuttle entrance, thirteen of them, closer together now than they had ever been before, anxious and excited.
Jason Tolliver walked with Kathy. He held tightly to her slender hand, trying to quiet the tremor in it, wishing he could give her some of the certainty he felt. But that came from the knowledge that his father would be waiting on Klorath. She had nothing to help her.
“It will be over soon,” he whispered. “Just hold on.”
She glanced up at his tall, lean figure, gathering strength from him. “I’m not really afraid, Jason. We’re together, and we can manage.”
A curve in the metal hall brought them before the
Captain. He stood beside the shadowed door of the shuttle entrance, his attention buried in the papers he held. His gray head bobbed as he called the names, his voice too loud for the quiet hall. “Jason Tolliver?”
“Here,” Jason answered, then waited nervously through the other names. John Bentol, a pale, fidgety man; Randy and Karen Solder with young Chip beside them, his face eagerly anxious; Anna and Frank Keller, old and confused; Ben Traub, still a mystery; Helen and Gus Rantel with seven-year-old Beth, whose fingers were crushed in her mother’s grip; Hager Crutz, the one who was sure to be self-sufficient; and Kathy Carpenter, her smooth hand carefully entwined with Jason’s.
. “Well, we’ve all survived, haven’t we?” the Captain said with an awkward smile. He was embarrassed, and Jason sensed that he didn’t quite like his job of ferrying exiles. “You men and women have spent three months on my ship, and yet I hardly know you. You understand why you had to be kept in quarantine …”
“Because we might contaminate some of your boys,” Hager Crutz broke in.
“Exactly,” the Captain answered. “And, certain precautions have been taken with the shuttle—for the same reason.” He stepped stiffly to the shuttle, feeling their inquiring eyes on him. “The scanners have been removed so that no pictures can come back from the surface of Klorath. We don’t want to know what is going on down there.” He slipped out of the prescribed speech for a moment, and Jason saw rebellion in him. “Maybe your friends have managed to build their grand, new world and maybe they haven’t—but we don’t want to know. For that same reason, you’ll have no pilot on this trip. The shuttle is a robot.”
“No pilot?” Ben Traub asked. “Is that safe?”
“The shuttle has landed in the same spot over and over again for years—ever since your kind started coming out here.”
“Then, we’re really going alone.” Jason’s words were not a question.
“Alone,” the Captain repeated. “We can’t risk exposing our men to your people. There is a story that some years ago crewmen were so completely taken in by the people who met the shuttle that they needed months of intensive reconditioning to bring them back to sense. We can’t let it happen again.”
“I can hardly believe that,” Jason scoffed.
“That’s the story.”
“To get back to the point,” Hager Crutz interrupted again, “you’re sure this landing is safe?”
“Perfectly safe,” the Captain assured him. “We’ve never lost a man. Your safety and comfort is dearly guarded by The League. Anyone would think you were the ‘chosen people’ instead of what you are.” He looked away, then finally let the question come out. “What I can’t understand is, why? Why did you do it? What made you go against The League?”
“The League is corrupt,” Jason stated flatly, and heads nodded agreement around him. “It owes its existence to propaganda and manipulation, not to any inher
The Captain’s face fell, oddly dejected. “I’ve heard that answer before—almost the same words. You’ve deluded yourselves into believing it.” He smiled wisely, settling back into sureness. “You can be thankful that this ‘corrupt’ government decided your penalty. Before The League, you would have been killed —as traitors! Instead, you’ve been given the chance to begin again, any way you want. Why The League should pamper its enemies, I’ll never understand, but there are things about The League too great for any man to understand.”
“Only if you don’t look for reasons,” Jason said. “Your name is Tolliver, isn’t it?” The Captain eyed him, speculating. “There was another Tolliver aboard my ship …”
“Yes, one year ago. He was my father.”
“I remember him. I was sorry at the time that such a man should have turned traitor. He could have been a man to be proud of. I wonder what he’s made of himself on Klorath?”
“We’re waiting to find out,” Hager’s voice came in gratingly.
“Of course.” The Captain swung from thought to action. “I won’t keep you back any longer. Now— once you’re down, please leave the shuttle immediately. We bring it right back. I expect if you wait at the landing point, you’ll be met and taken to the settlement. Your friends know the schedule by now.” He motioned toward the shuttle and they stepped inside, taking their places around the oval wall, sitting on cushioned seats. They fastened their safety belts and waited.
“Well,” the Captain mumbled, “I wish you good luck . . He shook his head and with a sigh closed the door. It shut with a metal clank, closing silence in on them.
The shuttle was halfway to contact with Klorath before anyone spoke. The tension was tight and suffocating. They couldn’t see, and yet they knew a world was rushing up to meet them.
Chip Solder finally broke the silence, his question holding all of their fears. “Will it be green?”
His father took him by the hand, “Of course, son. It will be just like Earth. It’s a beautiful world.”
“Will there be other children?” Beth Rantel added her high child’s voice, her long curls jiggling with each movement of her head. Helen Rantel turned away, but Gus forced himself to sound confident. “A lot of children, Bethy.” He circled her with a strong arm. He was a plodder, an average man with average convictions, but he could find extra strength when it came to his child.
Frank Keller added, attempting to convince himself, “It will be fine. We’ll all be working together. We can start new.”
Start new, Jason thought. What a strange group of people to start with. In the three months they were together on the ship, he had gotten to know them— their thoughts, their motives, their souls. Each one had joined the Rebels for a different reason—the
Kellers because they were intellectuals and intellectuals can’t live under iron rule; John Bentol because he was a misfit and enjoyed the feeling of being important; Ben Traub, who needed a group to fill his neurotic loneliness; Hager Crutz, who liked power. How many of them had really believed in what they were doing? How many of them would would have done it if the penalty had been death?
Gus Rantel might have, but not Helen. She was afraid, and too wrapped up in Beth. Karen and Randy Solder would have joined; and Kathy. Jason had never known a more inherently decent person than Kathy. For himself, he would have joined just as his father before him. But what a core for a new world. Five out of thirteen who really knew what it vas about. How could Klorath ever build anything worthwhile with such a percentage?
He turned to Kathy, but she was withdrawn, only seeing the pictures in her own mind. Kathy—all shiny black hair and silken skin—she didn’t belong in a wilderness. She was young and vibrant and belonged to furs and satins. Her slender legs should be sheathed in silk and there should be diamonds at her throat. But she’d had no choice, just as he’d had no choice.
He asked her quietly, “What are you thinking about?”
“About your father. He must have been waiting, Jason—just waiting—and knowing all the time that one day you would come. We all finally get caught, don’t we?”
“That’s part of the plan. The League wants us— that’s why the penalty is so attractive. It’s much easier to catch people who can be careless because they have little to lose. One after another they take us, and send us off where we can’t harm them.”
“But maybe that’s why we fight,” she said. “Maybe we really want Klorath and the chance to make something better.” She switched the subject quickly, pleading for something strong to cling to. “What is your father like, Jason?”
“How can I answer a question like that? He’s a good man—a gentle man—and yet, he’s strong.” He didn’t want to talk about it, because it didn’t give him reassurance. Instead, it sent doubts flooding over him again—doubts that he had thought were long buried. He had to shake them; he had to convince himself that the fight had been right and wise.
He drew on his father’s strength, as he had done all of his life, hoping that would work to drown the uncertainty. “My father never had any doubts about what he was doing,” he told Kathy. “He couldn’t watch The League smother everything that is innately human without fighting, so he fought.”
He could remember his father standing tall and dignified above him. At first, it might have been just a child’s point of view, but as the years passed and the hair grayed, the love and respect didn’t change. And the motives were still the same and still true as he told Jason about The League, and how the old hopes of a better life were dying in its grasp.
Everything was for The League, wholly and simply, yet they cried, “The League Is Always With You,” and “One Idea—One Will—One People,” and “Everything for Everyone.” Under the cover of slogans, the true goal was to get rid of the sub-normals and the super-normals until there was a stable population of nothings.
“Corruption!” Jason was damning. “My father saw it and hated it and fought it. But he couldn’t do much. The League spy system is too vast. We’re all sitting ducks.” His brown eyes sparked with frustration. “We have our chance, anyway. We can make Klorath into whatever we want it to be. It’s a virgin world—empty and uncorrupted by ideas that have gone sour. One thing I know—if my father is there, we’ll make it into something good.”
“Your father will be a big man to live up to, Jason,” Kathy said hesitantly. “I hope I can manage it.” “You have nothing to worry about there.” He took her hand again. “There’s nothing wrong with you, Kathy. He’ll know it—the first time he looks at you.” “I hope so. But I wish I could have met him before. This way, he has little choice. I’m rather forced on him.”
He couldn’t tell if Kathy was serious or not. It was the first time she had ever expressed doubt about their coming marriage and their life together.
“I said he’d like you,” Jason, chided. “And even if he didn’t, would it really matter? Aren’t I enough?” She laughed shortly and softly, “Quite enough.” Then an almost imperceptible settling quivered through the shuttle. The red light sprang to life, pulsing with urgency. They were down!
The thirteen people stiffened and stared at each other, frozen in their places, totally unable to take the first and last step away from everything they had known.
Jason slipped the catch on his safety belt and got to his feet, taking the lead out of necessity. “The Captain said we had to get out immediately. Let’s have it done with.”
He grabbed for the air-lock door, not allowing himself to think, and pressed the green lever. The door swung wide, and he waited, on the brink of a moment too big for experience.
