Chapter I: Front Matter

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.