PLANET OF SAND
By Murray Leinster
Tossed into the trackless Cosmos by his
mortal enemy, shipwrecked on an unfriendly
star, he determined to defy the dangers of
numberless nights, and, hunted turned
hunter, keep a tryst with Hate....
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Famous Fantastic Mysteries, February 1948.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
He debated straggling farther under the shelter of the monstrous roof....
There was bright, pitiless light in the prison corridor of theStallifer. There was the hum of the air-renewal system. Once in everyso often there was a cushioned thud as some item of the space ship'smachinery operated some relay somewhere. But it was very tedious to bein a confinement cell. Stan Buckley—Lieutenant, J.G., Space Guard,under charges and under restraint—found it rather more than tedious.
He should have been upheld, perhaps, by the fact that he was innocentof the charges made against him by Rob Torren, formerly his immediatesuperior officer. But the feeling of innocence did not help. He sat inhis cell, holding himself still with a grim resolution. But a deep, asavage, a corrosive anger grew and grew and grew within him. It hadbeen growing in just this manner for weeks.
The Stallifer bored on through space. From her ports the cosmoswas not that hostile, immobile curtain of unwinking stars the earlyinterstellar travelers knew. At twelve hundred light-speeds, with theBowdoin-Hall field collapsing forty times per second for velocitycontrol, the stars moved visibly. Forty glimpses of the galaxy aboutthe ship in every second made it seem that the universe was always inview.
And the stars moved. The nearer ones moved swiftly and the farther onesmore slowly, but all moved. And habit made motion give the feeling ofperspective, so that the stars appeared to be distributed in threedimensions and from the ship seemed very small, like fireflies. All thecosmos seemed small and almost cosy. The Rim itself appeared no morethan a few miles away. But the Stallifer headed for Earth from RhesiII, and she had been days upon her journey, and she had come a distancewhich it would stagger the imagination to compute.
In his cell, though, Stan Buckley could see only four walls. There wasno variation of light; no sign of morning or night or afternoon. Atintervals, a guard brought him food. That was all—except that his deepand fierce and terrible anger grew until it seemed that he would go madwith it.
He had no idea of the hour or the day when, quite suddenly, thepitiless light in the corridor dimmed. Then the door he had not seensince his entrance into the prison corridor clanked open. Footstepscame toward his cell. It was not the guard who fed him. He knew thatmuch. It was a variation of routine which should not have varied untilhis arrival on Earth.
He sat still, his hands clenched. A figure loomed outside the celldoor. He looked up coldly. Then fury so great as almost to be frenzyfilled him. Rob Torren looked in at him.
There was silence. Stan Buckley's muscles tensed until it seemed thatthe bones of his body creaked. Then Rob Torren said caustically:
"It's lucky there are bars, or there'd be no chance to talk! Eitheryou'd kill me and be beamed for murder, or I'd kill you and Estherwould think me a murderer. I've come to get you out of this