Jekyll-Hyde Planet — Background and Themes

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 passengers talked, and laughed, and pressed their faces against the observation ports.

In the ship's lounge, a squawk box crackled ... "Twenty minutes," a mechanical voice said ... "We land on Centauri IV in twenty minutes ... Passengers for Orion, Antares, Cygni, and Polaris, have your transfers ready."

Everyone laughed. The speaker clicked and went dead. And the boy who'd been 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--as far as anyone's going."

"He was only joking, Billy. Maybe someday people will be going to those places, but not now." He glanced at his wife, sitting with her hands folded in her lap.... "I'm glad it's over, Joan," he said. "It's been a long trip--a very long trip."

The woman nodded. She had dark hair, and blue eyes, and minute lines of maturity around her eyes and mouth that seemed to soften, rather than age her. She looked almost too young to have mothered a nine-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 to live."

"I've already told you why. Don't you remember when I showed you the pictures, and asked you how you'd like to live where you'd have lots of room 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. "All right," he said. He raised his arm over the foam-cushion seat-back till it rested on the boy's shoulder.

"You see, Billy, things back on Earth are pretty bad--have been for over a hundred years now. There's too many cities, too many wars, and too many people--it's mostly too many people. They don't have room to move around any more the way they used to....

"To make it worse there are always some people who figure that someone else has a little more room than they have, so they try to take it away from them by starting a war. Not that war ever solves anything. It's just 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 place new; some place where a man had room to move--room to breathe. For a long while it didn't look as if there was such a place--not in our solar system anyhow. But one day a few years before you were born, a fellow by the name of Vincent Taibi made a trip out here to Centauri.... It was a long trip. Took him thirteen years to get out here and back. But the important thing is that he came back with some news.... He came back and reported that there was an uninhabited planet out here, just about the size of the Earth, that was as fresh and new as 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 is a long trip--so long, and so expensive, that no one except maybe a few millionaires would be able to afford it. Anyhow, the government wanted _young_ people out here: people who could colonize the place.... They ran a lot of tests, Son."

Claude nodded and turned to his wife. "The tests," he said. "You remember the tests, Joan?"

"Yes, Claude. I remember. It's been six years, but I remember them as if they happened yesterday."

"That's 'cause you were too young, Son. You didn't have to take the tests.... You were lucky."

"Claude! Billy's not interested in that. Besides they were necessary."

"Necessary! All those psychiatrists? Oh come, Joan.... I felt as if they were picking my brain with an ice pick!"

"But they had to be careful, Claude."

"Careful, yes.... But eight months of tests--every day!"

"Claude!" The woman's tone was severe.

"Why did they have to be careful, Pop?" Billy asked.

"They wanted to be sure, Son. They didn't want anyone out here who was sick, or lazy, or who wanted to start a war. They figured if the right kind of people came out here, Centifor would stay as fresh and clean as it was the day that Captain Taibi first landed here."