Robert Sheckley - Ghost V

'He's reading our sign now,' Gregor said, his long bony face pressed against the peephole in the office door.

'Let me see,' Arnold said.

Gregor pushed him back. 'He's going to knock - no, he's changed his mind. He's leaving.'

Arnold returned to his desk and laid out another game of solitaire. Gregor kept watch at the peephole.

They had constructed the peephole out of sheer boredom three months after forming their partnership and renting the office. During that time, the AAA Ace Planet Decontamination Service had had no business - in spite of being first in the telephone book. Planetary decontamination was an old, established line, completely monopolized by two large outfits. It was discouraging for a small new firm run by two young men with big ideas and a lot of unpaid-for equipment.

'He's coming back,' Gregor called. 'Quick - look busy and important!'

Arnold swept his cards into a drawer and just finished buttoning his lab gown when the knock came.

Their visitor was a short, bald, tired-looking man. He stared at them dubiously.

'You decontaminate planets?'

'That is correct, sir,' Gregor said, pushing away a pile of papers and shaking the man's moist hand. 'I am Richard Gregor. This is my partner, Doctor Frank Arnold.'

Arnold, impressively garbed in a white lab gown and black horn-rimmed glasses, nodded absently and resumed his examination of a row of ancient, crusted test tubes.

'Kindly be seated, Mister'

'Ferngraum.'

'Mr Ferngraum. I think we can handle just about anything you require,' Gregor said heartily. 'Flora or fauna control, cleansing atmosphere, purifying water supply, sterilizing soil, stability testing, volcano and earthquake control - anything you need to make a planet fit for human habitation.'

Ferngraum still looked dubious. 'I'm going to level with you. I've got a problem planet on my hands.'

Gregor nodded confidently. 'Problems are our business.'

'I'm a freelance real-estate broker,' Ferngraum said. 'You know how it works - buy a planet, sell a planet, everyone makes a living. Usually I stick with the scrub worlds and let my buyers do their decontaminating. But a few months ago I had a chance to buy a real quality planet - took it right out from under the noses of the big operators.'

Ferngraum mopped his forehead unhappily.

'It's a beautiful place,' he continued with no enthusiasm whatsoever. 'Average temperature of seventy-one degrees. Mountainous, but fertile. Waterfalls, rainbows, all that sort of thing. And no fauna at all.'

'Sounds perfect,' Gregor said. 'Micro-organisms?'

'Nothing dangerous.'

'Then what's wrong with the place?'

Ferngraum looked embarrassed. 'Maybe you heard about it. The Government catalogue number is RJC-5. But everyone else calls it "Ghost V".'

Gregor raised an eyebrow. 'Ghost' was an odd nickname for a planet, but he had heard odder. After all, you had to call them something. There were thousands of planet-bearing suns within spaceship range, many of them inhabitable or potentially inhabitable. And there were plenty of people from the civilized worlds who wanted to colonize them. Religious sects, political minorities, philosophic groups - or just plain pioneers, out to make a fresh start.

'I don't believe I've heard of it,' Gregor said.

Ferngraum squirmed uncomfortably in his chair. 'I should have listened to my wife. But no - I was gonna be a big operator. Paid ten times my usual price for Ghost V and now I'm stuck with it.'

'But what's wrong with it?' Gregor asked.

'It seems to be haunted,' Ferngraum said in despair.

Ferngraum had radar-checked his planet, then leased it to a combine of farmers from Dijon VI. The eight-man advance guard landed and, within a day, began to broadcast garbled reports about demons, ghouls, vampires, dinosaurs and other inimical fauna.

When a relief ship came for them, all were dead. An autopsy report stated that the gashes, cuts and marks on their bodies could indeed have been made by almost anything, even demons, ghouls, vampires, or dinosaurs, if such existed.

Ferngraum was fined for improper decontamination. The farmers dropped their lease. But he managed to lease it to a group of sun worshippers from Opal II. The sun worshippers were cautious. They sent their equipment, but only three men accompanied it, to scout out trouble. The men set up camp, unpacked and declared the place a paradise. They radioed the home group to come at once - then, suddenly, there was a wild scream and radio silence.

A patrol ship went to Ghost V, buried the three mangled bodies and departed in five minutes flat.

'And that did it,' Ferngraum said. 'Now no one will touch it at any price. Space crews refuse to land on it. And I still don't know what happened.'

He sighed deeply and looked at Gregor. 'It's your baby, if you want it.'

Gregor and Arnold excused themselves and went into the anteroom.

Arnold whooped at once, 'We've got a job!'

'Yeah,' Gregor said, 'but what a job.'

'We wanted the tough ones,' Arnold pointed out. 'If we lick this, we're established - to say nothing of the profit we'll make on a percentage basis.' 'You seem to forget,' Gregor said, 'I'm the one who has to actually land on the planet. All you do is sit here and interpret my data.'

'That's the way we set it up,' Arnold reminded him. 'I'm the research department - you're the troubleshooter. Remember?'

Gregor remembered. Ever since childhood, he had been sticking his neck out while Arnold stayed home and told him why he was sticking his neck out.

'I don't like it,' he said.

'You don't believe in ghosts, do you?'

'No, of course not.'

'Well, we can handle anything else. Faint heart ne'er won fair profit.'

Gregor shrugged his shoulders. They went back to Ferngraum.

In half an hour, they had worked out their terms - a large percentage of future development profits if they succeeded, a forfeiture clause if they failed.

Gregor walked to the door with Ferngraum. 'By the way, sir,' he asked, 'how did you happen to come to us?'

'No one else would handle it,' Ferngraum said, looking extremely pleased with himself. 'Good luck.'

Three days later, Gregor was aboard a rickety space freighter, bound for Ghost V. He spent his time studying reports on the two colonization attempts and reading survey after survey on supernatural phenomena.

They didn't help at all. No trace of animal life had been found on Ghost V. And no proof of the existence of supernatural creatures had been discovered anywhere in the galaxy.

Gregor pondered this, then checked his weapons as the freighter spiralled into the region of Ghost V. He was carrying an arsenal large enough to start a small war and win it.

If he could find something to shoot at...

The captain of the freighter brought his ship to within several thousand feet of the smiling green surface of the planet, but no closer. Gregor parachuted his equipment to the site of the last two camps, shook hands with the captain and 'chuted himself down.

He landed safely and looked up. The freighter was streaking into space as though the furies were after it.

He was alone on Ghost V.

After checking his equipment for breakage, he radioed Arnold that he had landed safely. Then, with drawn blaster, he inspected the sun worshippers' camp.

They had set themselves up at the base of a mountain, beside a small, crystal-clear lake. The prefabs were in perfect condition.

No storm had ever damaged them, because Ghost V was blessed with a beautifully even climate. But they looked pathetically lonely.

Gregor made a careful check of one. Clothes were still neatly packed in cabinets, pictures were hung on the wall and there was even a curtain on one window. In a corner of attic room, a case of toys had been opened for the arrival of the main party's children.