This is a fan translation of Return to Deathworld (Возвращение в Мир Смерти) by the Russian science fiction author Ant Skalandis. This is an authorized sequel to Harry Harrison's Deathworld series, although it has never been published in English.
I claim no rights to the contents herein.
Note: The book contains two stories. I have chosen to split them up into separate works.
Chapter 1
The disgustingly shrill signal of the long-range comms cut through the silence of the traffic control room, where Jason dinAlt was the closest person to the controls. The sound was so piercing that it was reminiscent of the desperate cry of a shot but still attacking stingwing, and all the present Pyrrans immediately aimed their guns at the main screen that was displaying the complete information on the Welf Spaceport. Incredibly, all four of them thought the soulless buzzer was being was relaying the irritation with which the passenger of the ship in Pyrrus's orbit was pressing the call button. Clearly, the patrol ship's crew had already explained to them that only specially prepared ships were allowed to land on the planet, but the newly-arrived guest wasn't satisfied by that and was demanding to speak with the highest leadership.
They'd gotten lucky that it was Jason on the line, the steadiest person in the group.
The insistent owner of the ship introduced himself as Riverd Berwick and claimed that the matter brooked no delay, and he would only speak with the leaders of Pyrrus, therefore they had to immediately allow him to land. After all, Riverd Berwick himself had no intention of speaking with some random traffic controller.
"Listen, sir," Jason gently interrupted his emotional stream. "Riverd is a very strange name, or are you just trying to underscore the necessity of respect for your persona?"
Berwick didn't have time to say anything in reply, as he was literally gasping in indignation, so Jason went on, "We respect all the people in the galaxy, but we also demand the same towards us. Yes, I'm currently performing the role of a traffic controller, but my name is Jason dinAlt, if that name means anything to you. You have to understand, there are very few people living on Pyrrus, and the planet's leaders rarely have time to sit around in their offices, which aren't particularly comfortable, by the way. More often we're busy dealing with day-to-day problems: security, construction, supplies. All right. Now I'm listening, what is your problem, Riverd Berwick?"
"My name really is Riverd," the uninvited guest was clearly hitting the brakes. "Maybe one day I will tell you the story of my birth, but right now, trust me, we need to immediately meet and speak in person, not over radio. Note that as proof of this extreme urgency I have already transferred two million credits onto your account in the Interstellar Bank."
"Black space! Then you should've led with that! A moment, Berwick."
Jason quickly contacted the bank and saw the confirmation of the strange guest's words on the screen the money really had been deposited in the morning.
"Excellent," Jason summarized. "We're going to deliver you here immediately, but only on our ship. Forgive me, but we have to follow instructions on this world."
Riverd Berwick accepted his offer without any argument and ended the call.
"Are you sure you're not being hasty, Jason, by inviting an unfamiliar man here?"
The question was asked by Kerk Pyrrus, one of the oldest and most respected inhabitants of the planet. The Pyrrans had never had a strict centralized authority, the small population of a single large city and several mining settlements was led by a group of people that was more like a war council than a government. But when, thanks to Jason, Pyrrus became a full member of the League of Worlds, Kerk had to accept the title of Premier and play the role of the head of state in official meetings. But even active participation in interstellar politics couldn't rid Kerk of the old Pyrran habit of treating any outsider with caution. Even though his now-best friend Jason dinAlt had spent years re-educating him. Formerly a well-known gambler, cardsharp/psychic numero uno in the galaxy, now performed the duties of a minister of economics, finances, justice, culture, and education on the revitalized Pyrrus. At least that was what he sometimes liked to introduce himself as.
"Think about it," Kerk said. "Wouldn't it be better for us to go into orbit and speak with that arrogant man ourselves?"
"I don't think so," Jason smiled. "We've already tried that. Although no one transferred money onto Pyrrus's account that time…"
Kerk remembered the old story with Jason's kidnapping and agreed to receive the guest. After all, it really was calmer on one's own territory.
"Fine," Kerk said as if reluctantly. "Let Meta greet him."
Meta was the first Pyrran in history to fall in love with an off-worlder. Many years ago, she'd saved Jason's life by stopping the merciless hand of another angry Pyrran. In the end, it turned out that she'd been saving her own planet. Like any woman, Meta trusted the voice of her heart more than the arguments of her mind, but as a Pyrran she had a lot of trouble overcoming the harsh ingrained instructions of a warrior's code of honor that placed the interest of Pyrrus and the Pyrrans far above the life of any single person, especially an off-worlder. That was why, while saving Jason from certain death over and over, it took her a while to realize that she was being driven by true love. She was the first woman of Pyrrus who'd felt this great and ancient feeling that had been forgotten on many worlds.
Less than five minutes later, Meta lifted off in her new light cruiser Temuchin. The ship was fully capable of crossing the entire galaxy in jump mode. For ordinary orbital speeds, she was considered to be the most economical in her type, so she was regularly used as a shuttle.
Berwick turned out to be frightened to the core by what he saw on the surface of Pyrrus. A multitude of vile creatures, flying, jumping, and crawling, attacked the landed ship with a particular frenzy that was being more and more frequently observed with the local fauna after the use of long-range comms and calls to ships in orbit. Ever since the Pyrrans built a new city, one that was no longer defended from the entire planet by an unassailable Perimeter and bearing the proud name Open, the unexpected center of aggression became the spaceport, named after Kerk's last surviving son, who'd died saving Jason's life. And new mutations of the frightening Pyrran organisms suddenly started to react with incredible hatred to powerful radio transmissions. Not even the best specialists studying the local lifeforms have yet figured out why. But measures to bolster the security of arriving and departing ships had been taken right away. Moreover, in order to isolate Open from the telepathic waves of hatred as much as possible, Pyrrans built an underground highway that served as the primary transportation artery between the city and the port. The planet's airspace was used only in extreme cases.
Meta shut off the planetary drive and, closing the airlock's inner door, offered Berwick to put on a spacesuit if he was too scared, while also warning him that they'd only have to walk for several meters. Berwick refused proudly, immediately regretting it. In order for the two of them to cross from the ship to the armored vehicle and then from the vehicle to the traffic control center, Meta had to engage in a genuine battle that plunged Berwick into despondency and terror. The warlike Pyrran deliberately didn't make use of telescopic ramps, wanting to let their guest breathe the air of a real Deathworld for a few seconds, so that, as the saying went, life didn't feel like a bed of roses.
Then again, it seemed that life hadn't seemed like something cheerful and sweet for this Berwick or a long time. He was constantly serious, gloomy even, and now frightened as well, making him extremely irritated. He looked to be in his early forties, tall, broad-shouldered, finely dressed, almost projecting importance with his very being. This man was clearly used to a fairly high position in society, and, as the saying went, noblesse oblige. Surprisingly quickly for an off-worlder, Berwick managed to suppress the shaking of his hands and the weakness in his legs. Sitting down in the most comfortable chair in the room, which he'd been offered as a guest, he pulled a cigar out of an inner pocket, chopped the end off with a special tool that also doubled as a cufflink, then lit it with his ring that seemed to have a laser lighter inside it. The entire traffic control center was filled with the delicate honeyed aroma of expensive tobacco.
Meta caught Jason's longing gaze aimed at the cigar. The fingers of the great gambler were drumming nervously on the desk by the keyboard.
"You were recommended to me in the very citadel of the ancient Space Empire — Earth. If I'm not mistaken, Pyrrus is the owner of the most powerful warship in the galaxy. You're also known as the best and most experienced warriors."
Jason was flattered by such superlatives. After all, he was now also treated as one of the denizens of the Deathworld. Well then, over the years of mutual struggles and fights he really had become almost a Pyrran himself in both body and soul. After his third return here, Jason dinAlt barely noticed the double gravity, as his muscles had strengthened sufficiently. Only his reaction speed still could not match those born on Pyrrus.
"I am an authorized representative of the Great Council in the Consortium of Worlds of the Green Branch," Riverd Berwick finally introduced himself fully.
Jason had naturally heard of the Green Branch, but the Consortium itself was a relatively recent organization, and he was curious to learn of its problems. The fearless space traveler had never had to travel that far before.
The Green Branch, named so by Earth's astronomers thousands of years ago, was a star cluster located some distance from the galaxy. It did indeed look somewhat like a thin shoot, as if a lentil grain had suddenly sprouted through the black soil of interstellar space. A fair number of planets suitable for human habitation circled the sun-like stars of the Green Branch, and some of them had been settled long ago. These worlds were now primarily respectable trade and industrial centers, which was very important for such a remote center of civilization. Some of the younger planets, settled relatively recently, were still aggressive and feuded with one another, but even there the period of stability and prosperity was already approaching. Local wars and conflicts were happening with a reduced frequency. Most importantly, none of the planets of the Green Branch, due to their relatively close proximity to one another, had been touched by the regression of the dark Age of Degeneration. The technological level was almost identical throughout, which eventually resulted in the formation of an organization like the Consortium.
The distance from the rest of humanity that was being torn apart by contradictions and strife allowed the Green Branch to turn into a wealthy region, a blessed place many in the galaxy thought to be a myth invented by romantics in the same vein as the gardens of Eden, while the major businessmen who knew the way there all admitted that this region was ideal for profitable deals and mind-blowing projects.
Nothing seemed to foreshadow any trouble, until first the pilots of the interstellar liners and then the observers on the farthest outpost of the Green Branch from the galaxy, the planet Juctis, detected something in space. An object was slowly but surely approaching the worlds of the Consortium out of intergalactic space. They didn't initially even agree to call it a celestial body due to how odd it appeared on the screens of even the most powerful radars and telescopes. The phenomenon's emissions were far too irregular, and sometimes it behaved like a black body in the physical sense. Meaning it emitted absolutely nothing, and if equipment could think poetically, it would've said that the object approaching Juctis looked darker than the darkest interstellar void.
But even that wasn't the important part. The space object emitted fear. True, it wasn't so much physical as psychological. After all, the so-called "fear rays" weren't being picked up by any piece of equipment, not even psi-casters set to the standard biofrequency, but anyone touching this sinister secret could clearly feel the effect of these mysterious rays not only in Juctis's observation stations, but also on the other worlds of the Green Branch. A clear threat was hanging over the prosperity of the planets. The strange and sinister intergalactic wanderer was approaching.
A week ago, the emissions of the unidentified object became relatively stable, and the astronomers of Juctis were able to identify it as something between a minor planet and a large asteroid with incredibly heavy gravity of 0.7-0.8 g for its tiny size. There was no atmospheric shell, but the entire surface was covered by a thick layer of ice that somehow prevented them from conducting a deep spectral analysis that might shed light on the gravitational mystery. In short, there was no doubt that the asteroid had come from another galaxy. An alien world. A frozen world.
How many billions of years did it take for it to cross the unthinkable chasm at the speed of an orbiting moon? What sort of creatures, what sort of forces had given it its direction? What was the somber ancient asteroid hiding?
All these questions stirred in the minds of the scientists and leaders of the Green Branch worlds, but more than anything they were worried by the fear—sticky, black, uncontrollable fear—that invariably crawled into the mind of anyone even glancing at the image of the dark disk. And it was now ever-present on the screens of all tracking devices. No one knew how to defeat this fear, which was why, despite the obvious threat, no one dared to take any active measures.
Especially since scientists (real scientists) were prepared to study anything, including this unexplained horror. Those engaged in scientific pursuits knew no fear of the unknown, as the unknown merely attracted and inspired them. But this shiver, this stupor caused by the alien object seemed to be something entirely unique. This feeling had no analogs in the known universe that had plenty of horrors and dangers of its own.
And so the choice was study or destroy.
An emergency meeting of the League of Worlds, which included representatives from all the leading technologically developed planets of the galaxy, decided that, first, the very fact of the existence of Object 001 (which was the faceless name they'd assigned to the extragalactic asteroid) was to be classified top secret, second, the object was to be under constant observation with the personnel rotated regularly to avoid mental breakdowns, and third, leading specialists in extreme situations, meaning Pyrrans, were to be asked for assistance. Especially since nothing was so similar to the "black fear rays" than the telepathic hatred of Pyrran lifeforms. Someone even made the risky suggestion that it was the same phenomenon, just diluted on Pyrrus.
"Fear and panic must not spread," Berwick finished his tale, "but decisive steps need to be taken immediately. We don't believe it's only the Green Branch that's in danger, it's the entire galaxy."
"I'm going to have a smoke," Jason informed them after a brief pause that was filled with silence.
"I thought you quit," Meta reminded him with contempt in her voice.
"Yeah, but it's a special occasion," Jason countered.
"Your special occasion only has to do with the smell of fine cigar tobacco in the air," Meta quipped.
"I don't even smoke cigars!" Jason was making excuses like a little boy. "You know, I only smoke cigarettes—"
Then Kerk slapped the table with his huge paw, causing the glasses filled with water to jump up.
"What are you talking about?! We've got other problems!"