Comment:

Mystery fiction, with a hardly noticeable outer space planet as background. If one reads carefully, the resolution can be determined.

Quotes:

The old man said, “This, as I have intimated, is a test of skill, agility, resource. I presume you carry your favorite weapons with you?”

The old man seemed in the best of spirits; his mournful jowls quivered and twitched. “Now, gentlemen, now we come to the end of the elimination. Five men, when we need but four. One man must be dispensed with; can anyone propose a means to this end?”

Quotes:

Frayberg interrupted. “What we can use, Wilbur, is a sequence on Sirgamesk superstition. Emphasis on voodoo or witchcraft naked girls dancing stuff with roots in Earth, but now typically Sirgamesk. Lots of color. Secret rite stuff...”

The creature rose to his feet, strode springily toward Murphy. He carried a crossbow and a sword, like those of Murphy's fleet-footed guards. But he wore no space-suit. Could there be breathable traces of an atmosphere? Murphy glanced at his gauge. Outside pressure: zero.

Republished in Sail 25 and Other Stories, Spatterlight 2012

Quote:

It must be, I tell myself, that both objectivity and subjectivity enter into the situation. I receive impressions which my brain finds unfamiliar, and so translates to the concept most closely related. By this theory the inhabitants of this world are constantly close; I move unknowingly through their palaces and arcades; they dance incessantly around me. As my mind gains sensitivity, I verge upon rapport with their way of life and I see them. More exactly, I sense something which creates an image in the visual region of my brain. Their emotions, the pattern of their life sets up a kind of vibration which sounds in my brain as music...The reality of these creatures I am sure I will never know. They are diaphane, I am flesh; they live in a world of spirit, I plod the turf with my heavy feet.

Republished in The World-Thinker and Other Stories, Spatterlight, 2012.

Quotes:

Six days after the Kay had come and gone, the Beaudry arrived from Blue Star. It brought a complete ecological laboratory, with stocks of seeds, spores, eggs, sperm; spawn, bulbs, grafts; frozen fingerlings, copepods, experimental cells and embryos; grubs, larvae, pupae; amoebae, bacteria, viruses; as well as nutritive cultures and solutions. There were also tools for manipulating or mutating established species; even a supply of raw nuclein, unpatterned tissue, clear protoplasm from which simple forms of life could be designed and constructed. It was now Bernisty’s option either to return to Blue Star with the Blauelm, or remain to direct the development of New Earth. Without conscious thought he made his choice; he elected to stay. Almost two-thirds of his technical crew made the same choice. And the day after the arrival of the Beaudry, the Blauelm took off for Blue Star.

Within the Beaudry there was everywhere a sense of defeat. Bernisty walked limping along the promenade, the limp more of an unconscious attitude than a physical necessity. The problem was too complex for a single brain, he thought or for a single team of human brains. The various life-forms on the planet, each evolving, mutating, expanding into vacant niches, selecting the range of their eventual destinies they made a pattern too haphazard for an electronic computer, for a team of computers.

“Kay ships,” said Bufco. “A round dozen mountainous barrels! They made one circuit departed!”

Full story on the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/Future_Science_Fiction_v04n01_1953-05/page/n9

Quotes:

NOLAND BANNISTER, superintendent of Star Control Field Office #12, was known at the space-port and along Folger Avenue as a hell-roarer a loud-voiced man of vigorous action. He made no secret of his dislike for administrative detail and attacked paper work with a grumbling rancor. Negligence in his staff he dealt with rudely. Mistakes of a more serious nature left him grim and white with rage.

“Here’s how I see it,” said Bannister. “If there’s money to be made looting this planet, Plum will be out and away as soon as he organizes a trip. Once in space, under sky-drive, he’s gone. We can’t trace him. Unless of course we have a representative aboard. There’s where you come in. He’s practically hired you already. You return the jewel to him, tell him you’re sorry you ran off with it, and that you want a chance to pick up a few yourself.”

Republished in Sail 25 and Other Stories, Spatterlight 2012