Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Nightmare Planet
    Nightmare Planet
    Nightmare Planet
    Ebook59 pages57 minutes

    Nightmare Planet

    By Murray Leinster

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview

    About this ebook

    The Directory-ship Tethys made the first landing on the planet, L21612. It was a goodly world, with an ample atmosphere and many seas, which the nearby sun warmed so lavishly that a perpetual cloud-bank hid them and all the solid ground from view. It had mountains and islands and high plateaus. It had day and night and rain. It had an equable climate, rather on the tropical side. But it possessed no life.

    No animals roamed its solid surface. No vegetation grew from its rocks. Not even bacteria struggled with the stones to turn them into soil. No living thing, however small, swam in its oceans. It was one of that disappointing vast majority of otherwise admirable worlds which was unsuited for colonization solely because it had not been colonized before. It could be used for biological experiments in a completely germ-free environment, or ships could land upon it for water and supplies of air. The water was pure and the air breathable, but it had no other present utility. Such was the case with an overwhelming number of Earth-type planets when first discovered in the exploration of the galaxy. Life simply hadn't started there.

    So the ship which first landed upon it made due note for the Galactic Directory and went away, and no other ship came near the planet for eight hundred years.

    But nearly a millennium later, the Seed-Ship Orana arrived. It landed and carefully seeded the useless world. It circled endlessly above the clouds, dribbling out a fine dust comprised of the spores of every conceivable microorganism that could break down rock to powder and turn the powder to organic matter. It also seeded with moulds and fungi and lichens, and everything that could turn powdery primitive soil into stuff on which higher forms of life could grow. The Orana seeded the seas with plankton. Then it, too, went away.

    Centuries passed. Then the Ecological Preparation Ship Ludred swam to the planet from space. It was a gigantic ship of highly improbable construction and purpose. It found the previous seeding successful. Now there was soil which swarmed with minute living things. There were fungi which throve monstrously. The seas stank of teeming minuscule life-forms. There were even some novelties on land, developed by strictly local conditions. There were, for example, paramecium as big as grapes, and yeasts had increased in size so that they bore flowers visible to the naked eye. The life on the planet was not aboriginal, though. It had all been planted by the seed-ship of centuries before.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherEndymion Press
    Release dateAug 27, 2016
    ISBN9781531295905
    Author

    Murray Leinster

    Murray Leinster was the pen name of William Fitzgerald Jenkins (June 16, 1896 – June 8, 1975), an American science fiction and alternate history writer. He was a prolific author with a career spanning several decades, during which he made significant contributions to the science fiction genre.

    Read more from Murray Leinster

    Related to Nightmare Planet

    Related ebooks

    Science Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      A Worm’s-eye View

      Mar 18, 2020

      ARCHAEOLOGICAL evidence suggests that worms have been around for 600 million years, but Japanese religious lore offers a charming alternative. Certain of the Shinto gods decided to create the world’s creatures from living clay; formulating, in turn,

      4 min read

    • Article

      Rescue At Sea

      Oct 9, 2021

      Rescue At Sea
      10 min read

    • Article

      Ten Sights (I Wish I’d Seen)

      Sep 3, 2019

      Ten Sights (I Wish I’d Seen)
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Day The Dinosaurs Died

      May 11, 2022

      The Day The Dinosaurs Died
      6 min read

    • Article

      Breaking The Silence

      May 1, 2023

      Breaking The Silence
      5 min read

    • Article

      'The Rise And Fall Of The Dinosaurs' Covers Millennia Of Dinosaur Dominance

      May 4, 2018

      University of Edinburgh paleontologist Steve Brusatte transforms great piles of geological and paleontological data into an absorbing historical saga.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Muse News

      Apr 1, 2024

      Muse News
      3 min read

    • Article

      Life As We Know It

      Jun 8, 2022

      Life As We Know It
      6 min read

    • Article

      Why We’re Drawn Into Darkness

      Oct 10, 2019

      Robert Macfarlane grew up obsessed twith climbing mountains and nearly died on several occasions as he scaled some of the world’s high peaks. He found a safer way to indulge his alpine passions, writing about the mystique of mountains. As someone dra

      6 min read

    • Article

      Ruddy Apes And Cannibals

      Apr 10, 2021

      Does the rain remember vapor? Does vapor remember rain? Yet both were the other in their past lives. If you told their stories to each other, would they even comprehend? And, does that mean their stories are unnecessary, unimportant and implausible?

      15 min read

    • Article

      Nosy News

      Jul 1, 2019

      If humans ever want to live on the Moon, we’ll have to figure out how to grow plants there. That’s a big challenge. The Moon has no soil or water—just rock and dust. It’s cold. And gravity is just one-sixth as strong as Earth’s. Even inside a shelter

      1 min read

    • Article

      Of a Fire on The Marsh

      Mar 5, 2018

      Of a Fire on The Marsh
      20 min read

    • Article

      Animals Of The Future

      Nov 9, 2021

      Animals Of The Future
      9 min read

    • Article

      Extraterrestrial

      Dec 1, 2019

      Extraterrestrial
      7 min read

    • Article

      Octomom

      Jun 4, 2021

      Octomom
      2 min read

    • Article

      Mammoth Task

      Dec 16, 2021

      Mammoth Task
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Mother of All Accidents

      Apr 21, 2021

      In 2001, Seth MacFarlane was the 27-year-old executive producer and creator of the not-yet-hit animated show Family Guy. Having broken into the entertainment big leagues at such a young age, MacFarlane was invited back in September to address his alm

      7 min read

    • Article

      March Of The Ants

      Nov 11, 2020

      March Of The Ants
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Anthropocene Is a Joke

      Aug 13, 2019

      The Anthropocene Is a Joke
      13 min read

    • Article

      Braindump

      Jun 8, 2023

      Braindump
      7 min read

    • Article

      Survivors How Did These Animals Escape Extinction?

      Mar 1, 2020

      Survivors How Did These Animals Escape Extinction?
      3 min read

    • Article

      Paradox Formation

      May 25, 2017

      Paradox Formation
      11 min read

    • Article

      Downward spiral

      Sep 28, 2022

      Downward spiral
      13 min read

    • Article

      Q&A

      May 7, 2020

      Charles Darwin travelled the world, but also spent countless hours observing nature in Britain (see p12). One common wildflower in his garden and local woods long perplexed him. Why did primroses appear in two quite different forms? So-called ‘pin’ t

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Kraken's True Form

      Jan 1, 2020

      The Kraken's True Form
      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Nightmare Planet

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Nightmare Planet - Murray Leinster

      NIGHTMARE PLANET

      Murray Leinster

      ENDYMION PRESS

      Thank you for reading. If you enjoy this book, please leave a review.

      All rights reserved. Aside from brief quotations for media coverage and reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the author’s permission. Thank you for supporting authors and a diverse, creative culture by purchasing this book and complying with copyright laws.

      Copyright © 2016 by Murray Leinster

      Published by Endymion Press

      Interior design by Pronoun

      Distribution by Pronoun

      ISBN: 9781531295905

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      Nightmare Planet

      NIGHTMARE PLANET

      ~

      THE DIRECTORY-SHIP TETHYS MADE THE first landing on the planet, L216¹². It was a goodly world, with an ample atmosphere and many seas, which the nearby sun warmed so lavishly that a perpetual cloud-bank hid them and all the solid ground from view. It had mountains and islands and high plateaus. It had day and night and rain. It had an equable climate, rather on the tropical side. But it possessed no life.

      No animals roamed its solid surface. No vegetation grew from its rocks. Not even bacteria struggled with the stones to turn them into soil. No living thing, however small, swam in its oceans. It was one of that disappointing vast majority of otherwise admirable worlds which was unsuited for colonization solely because it had not been colonized before. It could be used for biological experiments in a completely germ-free environment, or ships could land upon it for water and supplies of air. The water was pure and the air breathable, but it had no other present utility. Such was the case with an overwhelming number of Earth-type planets when first discovered in the exploration of the galaxy. Life simply hadn’t started there.

      So the ship which first landed upon it made due note for the Galactic Directory and went away, and no other ship came near the planet for eight hundred years.

      But nearly a millennium later, the Seed-Ship Orana arrived. It landed and carefully seeded the useless world. It circled endlessly above the clouds, dribbling out a fine dust comprised of the spores of every conceivable microorganism that could break down rock to powder and turn the powder to organic matter. It also seeded with moulds and fungi and lichens, and everything that could turn powdery primitive soil into stuff on which higher forms of life could grow. TheOrana seeded the seas with plankton. Then it, too, went away.

      Centuries passed. Then the Ecological Preparation Ship Ludred swam to the planet from space. It was a gigantic ship of highly improbable construction and purpose. It found the previous seeding successful. Now there was soil which swarmed with minute living things. There were fungi which throve monstrously. The seas stank of teeming minuscule life-forms. There were even some novelties on land, developed by strictly local conditions. There were, for example,paramecium as big as grapes, and yeasts had increased in size so that they bore flowers visible to the naked eye. The life on the planet was not aboriginal, though. It had all been planted by the seed-ship of centuries before.

      The Ludred released insects, it dumped fish into the seas. It scattered plant-seeds over the continents. It treated the planet to a sort of Russell’s Mixture of living things. The real Russell’s Mixture is that blend of simple elements in the proportions found in suns. This was a blend of living creatures, of whom some should certainly survive by consuming the now habituated flora, and others which should survive by preying on the first. The planet was stocked, in effect, with everything it could be hoped might live there.

      But at the time of the Ludred’s visit of course no creature needing parental care had any chance of survival. Everything had to be able to care for itself the instant it burst its egg. So there were no birds or mammals. Trees and plants of divers sorts, and fish and crustaceans and insects could be planted. Nothing else.

      The Ludred swam away through emptiness.

      There should have been another planting, centuries later still, but it was never made. When the Ecological Preparation Service was moved to Algol IV, a file was upset. The cards in it were picked up and replaced, but one was missed. So that planet was forgotten. It circled its sun in emptiness. Cloud-banks covered it from pole to pole. There were hazy markings in certain places, where high plateaus penetrated the clouds. But from space the planet was featureless. Seen from afar, it was merely a round white ball—white from its cloud-banks and nothing else.

      But on its surface, in its lowlands it was nightmare.

      Especially was it nightmare—after some centuries—for

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1