jekyll-hyde planet
BY JACK LEWIS
Centifor was a paradise planet,
another Garden of Eden. And Leon
Stubbs was the serpent of temptation....
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, February 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
They came in low, decelerating against dense air, while the passengerstalked, and laughed, and pressed their faces against the observationports.
In the ship's lounge, a squawk box crackled ... "Twenty minutes," amechanical voice said ... "We land on Centauri IV in twenty minutes ...Passengers for Orion, Antares, Cygni, and Polaris, have your transfersready."
Everyone laughed. The speaker clicked and went dead. And the boy who'dbeen gripping Claude Marshall's arm looked up.
"What's he mean, Pop? We don't really have to transfer, do we?"
Claude Marshall smiled. "No, Billy. This is as far as we're going—asfar as anyone's going."
"But he said—"
"He was only joking, Billy. Maybe someday people will be going to thoseplaces, but not now." He glanced at his wife, sitting with her handsfolded in her lap.... "I'm glad it's over, Joan," he said. "It's been along trip—a very long trip."
The woman nodded. She had dark hair, and blue eyes, and minutelines of maturity around her eyes and mouth that seemed to soften,rather than age her. She looked almost too young to have mothered anine-year-old boy—but of course that was one of the requirements.
"Is this where we're going to live?" the boy asked.
Claude looked out the port. "Yes, Billy. This is where we're going tolive."
"Why?"
"I've already told you why. Don't you remember when I showed you thepictures, and asked you how you'd like to live where you'd have lots ofroom to play, and wouldn't have to worry about the bombs or anything?"
"Sure, Pop," the boy said. "I remember. But tell me about it again?"
Claude looked at his wife; watched her nod, and answer his smile. "Allright," he said. He raised his arm over the foam-cushion seat-back tillit rested on the boy's shoulder.
"You see, Billy, things back on Earth are pretty bad—have been forover a hundred years now. There's too many cities, too many wars, andtoo many people—it's mostly too many people. They don't have room tomove around any more the way they used to....
"To make it worse there are always some people who figure that someoneelse has a little more room than they have, so they try to take it awayfrom them by starting a war. Not that war ever solves anything. It'sjust that some people think it will."
"That's why we left, huh, Pop?"
"Yes, Billy. That's why we left. The problem was to find some placenew; some place where a man had room to move—room to breathe. Fora long while it didn't look as if there was such a place—not inour solar system anyhow. But one day a few years before you wereborn, a fellow by the name of Vincent Taibi made a trip out here toCentauri.... It was a long trip. Took him thirteen years to get outhere and back. But the important thing is that he came back with somenews.... He came back and reported that there was an uninhabited planetout here, just about the size of the Earth, that was as fresh and newas it was the day God made it."
"That's when we got on this ship. Right, Pop?"
Claude frowned. "Well, not exactly. You see, Son, to begin with this isa long trip—so long, and so expensive, that no one except maybe