Chapter I: Front Matter

CITADEL OF THE GREEN DEATH

BY EMMETT McDOWELL

At the coldly gleaming Experimental Station
they flung this choice in Outlaw Joel Hakkyt's
teeth: "Grinding, endless slavery on Asgard,
that Alpha Centauri hell--or a writhing, screaming
guinea-pig's death here?" He chose Asgard,
naturally. But what was natural--on Asgard?

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1948.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Joel Hakkyt stirred impatiently in the prisoner's chair. His features, homely, strong-boned and intelligent, were inscrutable. But he didn't know how much longer he could bottle up his indignation. It had been accumulating all during his trial. Now this delay!

The machines had been whisked from the chamber. The investigating psychologist should have returned with his verdict minutes ago. What was wrong?

Joel glanced at his parents, at his wife. They were the only spectators, the three of them sitting stiffly in the front row of benches.

Doctor Hakkyt refused to meet his son's eyes. A plump, tall man, the doctor looked stonily out the windows at the park-like grounds surrounding the Hall of Justice. He was president of Clear Springs Community, and his angry red expression said plainly as words that his son had disgraced him.

Mrs. Hakkyt dabbed at cold eyes with a scrap of handkerchief. Joel's glance passed over her swiftly and on to his wife.

She sat next to his mother with a notebook on her knee, a pencil poised in her hand. Joel's wife was a specialist in creative writing, and all through his trial, she had watched him with the same impersonal curiosity she might have bestowed on some animal, jotting down his reactions.

In sudden disgust, Joel wondered why he had consented to marry her. It had been her looks, he supposed. She had a sensual rather pretty face....

A panel behind the bench clicked loudly in the silence. The guard stood up, saying: "Attention, please."

It was a useless formality, because everyone's eyes had jerked instantly to the slowly opening door.

The investigating psychologist bustled in, sat down behind his desk. He arranged his black gown with a tug, rattled the papers in his hand.

"An unusual case," he began. "Unusual in several respects!" He turned his eyes on Joel's father. "The examination reveals that the prisoner is possessed of a high I.Q. Very high. However, he is completely maladjusted. A dangerous anti-social type. He is to be committed to the Experimental Station at once!"

Joel caught his breath. The Experimental Station!

Criminals and the maladjusted were committed to the Experimental Stations where they were used as guinea-pigs by the scientists. They might live for years, surviving experiment after experiment. But inexorably like the early Roman gladiators they met a ghastly fate.

Doctor Hakkyt had risen furiously. "This is preposterous! Think of the notoriety! I'm the president of...."

"That will be sufficient!" the investigating psychologist interrupted. "The prisoner is thirty-four years old. This is the third time he's been up for examination. All the rehabilitative measures have failed!"

Doctor Hakkyt sank back muttering into his seat.

The psychologist rattled his papers again, fixed Joel's wife with a softer glance. "Annulment orders for your marriage, Mrs. Hakkyt, have been forwarded to the capitol. You are free."

"Thank you," said the young woman without glancing up from her notes.

The investigating psychologist wiped his sharp features with a handkerchief and said: "Court dismissed."

Joel watched his father and mother rise. They didn't glance at him. The psychologist cleared his throat.

"If you wish to say goodbye to the prisoner...."

Doctor Hakkyt wheeled angrily. "That won't be necessary. As far as my wife and I are concerned, the prisoner is already dead!"

Pompously, he took Mrs. Hakkyt's arm, steered her to the exit. Joel's wife closed her notebook with a snap, trotted out after them without a backward glance.

Only their scent, that unique volatile compound that was as expressive to Joel Hakkyt's sensitive nostrils as a picture, lingered behind.

It was atavistic, Joel supposed, but his sense of smell was as acute as any hound's!

* * * * *

Joel shrugged, rose from the prisoner's chair. He looked big, burly beside the fragile guard. There was something appealing about his strong homely features--a quizzical directness, an honesty.

"Come along," said the guard.

Joel's nostrils flared as he caught the guard's scent for the first time. It was man-like and yet alien--a curious unrecognizable smell that raised the hair on the back of his neck!

The guard seemed unaware of Joel's scrutiny. He was a thin elderly man in the Republic's blue and yellow uniform. His eyes were hidden behind dark glasses.

"Come along," the guard repeated, and Joel permitted himself to be led into the corridor that ran back to the cells.

The door had scarcely closed on the courtroom, when the guard said in an altered tone, "Keep walking. And don't say a word once we reach the cells. Spy recorders have been installed in all of them!"

Joel came to a dead stop. "Who are you?"

"Keep walking!" The blue uniformed guard tugged in panic at Joel's elbow.

"One of our men'll contact you at the Experimental Station. Don't mention this to anyone!" He gulped slightly. "This is going to hurt some. Don't be startled; it's necessary."

As he talked, he jabbed a needle through Joel's sleeve into his arm.

Joel jumped. "Damn! What are you up to?" He yanked free, swung angrily on the guard.

"Only a tattoo mark. Isn't visible except under black light. Then it fluoresces green."

"But why?"

"Identification. Shows you're a legitimate maladjustment case and not a government spy."

"But what...."

"No time now. Wait until our man contacts you. Explain everything. Remember, not a word when we reach the cell block!"

He pushed aside the panel at the far end of the hall. The opening revealed a second corridor lined with small iron-barred cubicles. None of them were tenanted.

Joel Hakkyt moved into his own familiar cell where he had been lodged during his trial. The gate clanged shut.

The guard removed his glasses, polished them nervously as he gave Joel a warning look.

For the first time Joel could see the guard's eyes.

They had no pupils, no color, only a weird flickering light in their depths that glimmered like candle flame!

Joel could feel his stomach contract like a fist. The alien smell filled his nostrils. He took an involuntary backwards step, his heart hammering against his ribs.

The guard wasn't human!

Before Joel could question him the guard retreated through the door, hastily shutting it with a click. Joel sank to the edge of his bunk.

Where did the guard come from?

A mutation? The Eugenics Board would never have allowed a mutation to survive. Joel himself had escaped their vigilance only because it had been impossible to detect his abnormally heightened vision and sense of smell at birth.

Then what was the creature?

It wasn't a native to Mars or Venus. Their dominant life forms had been exterminated centuries ago. Perhaps it hailed from the Centaurian planetary system. He sat up abruptly at the thought.

A Centaurian?

The Republic had established a colony on Asgard, the second planet of Alpha Centauri A. Joel had seen the three-dimensional reels of its weirdly lovely jungles and grotesque species of plant life.

But so far Asgard's dominant life form had escaped detection!

The Republic's exploring parties had stumbled across strange empty little villages with fires smouldering on clay hearths and the food still hot in clay vessels. Yet not a glimpse of the inhabitants had they ever been able to catch.

By some uncanny means, the natives always eluded them like wraiths.

Anthropologists had been able to reconstruct a theoretical Centaurian though from the evidence that he left behind--artifacts, huts, footprints. He was man-like, they said, and walked upright. He weighed between a hundred and a hundred and twenty pounds, this theoretical creature. He was in a primitive stage of development possessing neither writing nor art.

There was only one thing they couldn't explain. That was why nobody had ever seen one!

Joel grinned sourly. He was letting his imagination run away with him.

* * * * *

At nineteen hours a green panel glowed on the rear wall and letters formed on the glass.

SUPPER--PRESS BUTTON.

Joel pressed the indicated button. The panel folded out like a secretary, revealing sanitary food containers which had been delivered via a slot.

He ate slowly. When he had finished he dropped the empty containers down the disposal chute and stretched out on his bunk.

All at once, he sat up snapping his fingers. Why hadn't that occurred to him earlier?

From the wall above the foot of his bunk, he pulled down a screen about a metre square, dialed a number on the prison intercommunicator.

A pale rose glow spread through the screen. Then the prim starched figure of a girl sprang out in three-dimensional reality.

The girl was working at a desk in the warden's office. Joel felt as if he were looking at her through a window in his cell.

She said, "Yes?"

"May I be connected with the film library?"

The girl opened a file, glanced at a card. After a moment, she said, "That will be all right." She dialed a number and said, "Here's your party."

The screen went agitated like the surface of a pond, then cleared again, disclosing a dry thin woman.

"Clear Springs Public Film Library."

Joel said, "I'd like to see whatever is available on Asgard, second planet of Alpha Centauri A. Travel films, history, exploration records...."

The librarian gave a short brittle laugh. "That's a large order. Roughly there must be several thousand reels."

Joel hesitated. "A good condensed history then."

She said, "Flagg's _Stellar Venture_ is the latest...."

"That'll do."

"One moment, please."

Once more the screen quivered violently. Music, a thin haunting melody, streamed into Joel's cell, through which came the voice of the narrator. The music stopped.

A dull black space ship was forming within the depths of the screen.

* * * * *

Joel lay back on his bunk, staring into the glowing square. Walls, floor and ceiling receded from consciousness. He was free of the prison as if like Alice he had stepped through a mirror into a world beyond.

"Sa Nels, a Martian of Terran descent, discovered the stellar drive in 4471," the narrator was saying. "The Republic organized an expedition to the trinary system of Proxima Centauri, Alpha Centauri A and B, our nearest neighbors; and Sa Nels was put in charge."

The narrator's voice droned on. Joel scarcely heard him.

These were government films of the actual take-off of the Vega, Sa Nels' ship. It lay in its cradle in the midst of the sandy red Martian wastes. The crew were at their posts. Sa Nels waved at the camera, climbed into the Vega. The ports were sealed.

There was a blinding flash from the stern of the ship. It rose slowly, crazily in the rarified Martian atmosphere, gained momentum until it was a thin needle-like streak and dwindled in the flick of an eye and disappeared.

Joel let out his breath with a sigh. He had been clenching his fist until his fingers ached. The first ship to reach the stars!

It had been twenty-one years, he recalled after the Vega passed beyond radio contact before a wondering Earth had heard from them again.

Twenty-one years compressed into as many minutes in the film unreeling before Joel's eyes. He saw the blood red ball that was Proxima Centauri swim into view on the scanner. He sighted the yellow-white star of Alpha Centauri A and its orange twin, Alpha Centauri B.

He landed with the expedition on the second planet of Alpha Centauri A and saw the deserted stone villages of the invisible natives, the thick flesh-like Nigel trees, mobile carnivorous plants that stalked the members of the crew like crawling land octopi....

The rest of the film was taken up with the improvement in stellar travel, the establishment of the first colony on Asgard and its slow growth.

Joel was fascinated. If he had lived during an earlier age, he would have run off to sea.

As it was he had stowed away as a lad aboard a tramp spacer outward bound for Mars. But he had been discovered before the ship cleared.

That was the first time he had been brought up before the examining board.

Joel had wanted to become an astro-geophysicist above all else, but his aptitude tests had revealed a remarkable ability with animals. He had been assigned to the government stock farms instead.

He switched off the telescreen. He had discovered nothing that connected the strange humanoid guard with Centaurus and he had put himself into the mood of despair that engulfed him whenever he contemplated his joyless future.

It was almost dawn before he dropped off into a troubled sleep.