Dawnman Planet up-2

by Mack Reynolds

  Ronny said to Richardson, “What was the idea?”

  The other glowered resentment, in spite of the leveled gun. “What do you think it was? You’ve taken over the ship at gun point. I was trying to recapture it.”

  The captain entered from the compartment entrance opposite the one Ronny occupied. “What’s going on?” he demanded.

  “This cloddy here is making like a hero,” Ronny said mildly. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to ask you to put him in cold, Captain Volos.”

  “He’s a necessary member of my crew!”

  Phil Birdman muttered, “He’s about as necessary as a coronary.”

  Ronny Bronston, still holding the gun, said, “So long as we’re in underspace, you could handle the ship singlehanded, Captain, as you well know.”

  “I refuse to put a man into cold without his permission.”

  Ensign Richardson glared defiantly at the Section G agent.

  Ronny said mildly, “Then I’ll have to shoot him. I can’t afford to take the chance of having him loose. Next time, he might succeed.”

  “Not if he tried it on me,” Birdman said nastily.

  Ronny looked at Richardson, then the skipper. “The fat’s in the fire, gentlemen. One man’s life isn’t very important.”

  Richardson said tightly, “Captain, I think he means it.”

  Captain Gary Volos rasped, “Very well, but I insist that this, too, be entered in the ship’s log.”

  “That log is going to be plumb full before this trip’s over.” Birdman grinned.

  Afterwards the two agents sat in the lounge alone over hot drinks.

  Ronny growled, “It was lucky I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Aw, I could’ve scalped that molly,” the Indian grumbled.

  “Not if Mendlesohn would have got around to slugging you on the back of the head.”

  Birdman chuckled. “Two down and only three left to go. You think we’ll ever get there without putting them all in the cold? The party gets rougher and rougher.”

  Ronny asked suddenly, “Phil, why’d you join Section G?”

  “Who, me?” Phil seemed embarrassed. “I don’t know. Better job than I had. Chance to see a lot of the different planets. Get out of the rut. That sort of thing.”

  Ronny Bronston went on, as though he hadn’t really heard his companion. “When I was a kid I had the United Planets dream but good. Man exploding out into space, carrying our species to the stars. Going every which way, trying every scheme ever dreamed up from Plato’s Republic to Howard Scott’s technocracy. Trying out every proposed ethic. Trying out a hundred methods of improving the race, by breeding in this, or breeding out that. Planets colonized by nothing but Negroes, others by only people over six and a half feet tall, others by Zen Buddhists, others by persons with I.Q.s of over one-fifty, others by vegetarians, and on and on.”

  Phil snorted, missing the earnestness in the other’s tone. “How about Amazonia? A few thousand feminists. No men at all, at first. Artificial insemination. Then when boy kids came along, they enslaved them.”

  Ronny said impatiently, “Sure, a lot of them are purely from jetsam, but they’re balanced out by those that are finding new paths, new truths, and really advancing the species. The United Planets dream. An opportunity for everybody to try anything. But what’s the ultimate aim? What’s the goal? To dominate the whole galaxy, the way Rita sees it?”

  Phil looked at him questioningly. “Does there have to be a goal?” He was beginning to catch the other’s mood.

  “That’s my point. I wonder if there should be. I wonder if the dream wasn’t going better before the Octagon stepped in and decided that UP needed direction.”

  “Well, you know how the Old Man would answer that. It was fine to let mankind take off in all directions back when we had no reason to believe there was other intelligent life in the galaxy. But when we ran into those little fellows, then we had to get underway.”

  Ronny’s expression was strange. “But underway where? A comparatively small group of men, of Ross Metaxa’s type, decided it was up to them to steer. But of what are they composed that they should know best? Why should Ross Metaxa, and his various supervisors such as Sid Jakes and Lee Chang Chu, be allowed to decide that the government of this planet Amazonia, for instance, should be overthrown and a bi-sexual regime encouraged? Perhaps the matriarchy they’re experimenting with is superior.”

  “Yeah.” Phil grinned. “And perhaps not. Especially for me .”

  “Yes, but my point is, who is Metaxa to decide? There are tens of billions of members of the race. What makes him so special that he can throw Section G into a local situation on some planet colonized by this opinion group, or that, of their own free will and conscious of what they were going into?”

  At long last, Phil Birdman turned throughful. “Maybe I don’t know the answer,” he admitted. “And maybe my decision was a wrong one. But I’m in my mid-forties now and I took my stand quite a time ago. I’m not going to change it now.” He looked at Ronny. “Are you?”

  Ronny grunted self-deprecation. “I wouldn’t know what to change it to.”

  Ronny Bronston came up behind Captain Volos, who was standing watch in the Pisa’s control compartment. He said, “What’s wrong?”

  The skipper was bug-eying into a zoom-screen. “A spacecraft! I’ve never seen another ship in underspace before. But…but that’s not it. It’s the size. It’s as large as a medium-sized satellite.”

  Ronny said, “Let me see.”

  The captain grudgingly made room for him.

  “I don’t see anything,” Ronny said.

  The captain scowled at him and bent over the horizon* tal screen again. “It’s gone!” he blurted. “It can’t be gone!”

  “We seem to be approaching the Dawnworlds,” Ronny said dryly. “From what little I know about the Dawnmen, shortly, we’re going to be witnessing a good many things that simply can’t be.”

  Gary Volos was still gaping into the zoom-screen.

  Ronny said, “How far out are we?”

  The captain at last stood erect. “Not very far,” he said. ” I can’t be too sure. I have no references except that chart you gave me. Possibly the coordinates are off. However, we should be coming out of underspace before long.”

  He looked at Ronny Bronston with puzzlement in his face, and also a touch of accusation. He said, “That craft I just saw was far and beyond anything that could be built on any United Planet’s world.”

  Ronny said mildly, “I told you that the Dawnworlds are evidently fantastically beyond us, technically.”

  Volos shook his head. “I didn’t believe your story. I didn’t know what your game was, but I didn’t believe this tale about other intelligent life forms.”

  “Well, Captain, you’d better start thinking about it. The more cool minds we’ve got around, when we come out of underspace, the better off we’re going to be. We have only one small bit of evidence that these critters won’t crisp us immediately upon our materializing.”

  “What’s that?” Volos asked, a shade of apprehension in his tone now.

  “Those little aliens had photographs, both still and movies, on them. That would indicate that the little fellows actually landed on at least one of the Dawnworlds and were allowed to use whatever camera devices they had and then leave again.”

  He indicated the chart on the navigation table. “And that star chart. It shows hundreds of star systems in red. I’ve assumed that those are all Dawnman settled. The little fellas must have sent out various expeditions to compile that extensive a chart. Which means, in turn, that the Dawnmen allowed them to do it.”

  “Didn’t you say that the atmosphere of the planets the little aliens were on was changed to what was poison for them?”

  “That’s right. Eventually, they must have done something to irritate these Dawnmen; but before they did, they must have done considerable exploring about the Dawnmen domains.”

  Ronny thought for a moment, then
said, “I suppose you might as well start the process of reviving Rita Daniels and young Richardson. We’re not going to be in any position to remain divided among ourselves after breakout from underspace.”

  “All right,” the captain said nervously. He spoke into an order box.

  Ronny said, “Look. This trip hasn’t been any too happy, thus far, which isn’t surprising. But now that we’re here, I want to let you know that so far as the operation of the Pisa is concerned, Agent Birdman and I want to cooperate. You’re the captain. We’ll follow orders.”

  Volos looked shamefaced. “My instructions were to put myself and command under your orders. I’m sorry I got around to following them so tardily. Very well. I captain the Pisa , but the overall decisions are yours.”

  His eyes flicked to the control panels. “We’re coming out.” He reached over and threw an alarm.

  Within moments, Birdman and Lieutenant Takashi hurried into the compartment.

  Takashi, his characteristically bland face showing un-oriental-like excitement, said, “Mendlesohn’s bringing the others out of the cold.”

  The captain said, “We’re emerging.”

  They came out in the planetary system of a sun remarkably like Sol, and within reasonable distance of a planet most remarkably similar to Earth.

  The captain muttered, “The coordinates were as perfect as any I’ve ever seen. Much better, in fact.”

  Phil Birdman said, “We told you, those little aliens were far and gone in advance of us. Evidently in interplanetary navigation as well as elsewhere.”

  Rita Daniels and Ensign Richardson, both looking a bit green about the gills, came into the compartment, cups of some steaming broth in hand.

  The captain, his eyes magnetized to the large screen whiph took up a full half of one control compartment wall, threw a lever. Richardson put down his cup and slid into a control chair, so did Takashi.

  The captain said to Ronny Bronston, “Well?” Ronny shrugged. “Why put it off? Let’s go closer.” He had an afterthought and said, “You people have some method of detecting any craft down below using nuclear propulsion, haven’t you?”

  “Of course. It’s part of the equipment utilized to locate possible wrecks of spacecraft, which have crashed.”

  “Could you locate the Baron’s ship, or fleet, as the case may be?”

  Volos frowned. “Why do you think he’s here? There are hundreds of star systems on that chart.”

  “I’m not sure he is,” Ronny told him. “But this is the nearest of them all. Why should he go further, if he’s in a hurry?”

  Rita snapped, “I demand to be put in instant communication with my uncle!”

  She was universally ignored, even by young Richardson.

  “We can detect him easy enough,” Volos said. “But how can we tell if it’s him, rather than one of these Dawnworld craft? Although I suppose it’s possible that they no longer use nuclear power.”

  Richardson turned and stared at him. “Has he talked you into believing that jetsam, sir?”

  “I saw a starship at least a thousand times larger than anything in United Planets,” his skipper told him without inflection. “Mr. Richardson, and you others, consider yourselves under the command of Citizens Bronston and Birdman. Countess Wyler, if that is your correct name, you attempted to confound me. Please keep in mind that I am captain of this vessel, no matter who your uncle may be. I expect the respect and cooperation of everyone aboard.”

  It was half an hour later before he spoke again.

  And then it was to say, “On the face of it, below we have one of your Dawnworlds. It could be nothing else.”

  Below them was a world that was a park.

  XIII

  It was as though you took a planet, approximately the size of Earth itself and transformed the whole into a landscaped garden. As though you made of the whole, a cinema set portraying the Garden of Eden, the Garden of Allah, the Promised Land, the Islands of the Blest, Zion, the Elysian Fields… what will you, for Paradise?

  Rita Daniels hissed her breath in.

  Takashi said shakily, “I can detect a nuclear powered ship. Only one. Seemingly larger than our own size.”

  Rita said, unthinking, “Uncle Max’s yacht. It’s the fastest…” Then she clammed up.

  Ronny said, “Try to pinpoint it, Lieutenant.” He looked at the captain. “No radio contact? No nothing?”

  The captain shook his head. “I would think there would be some sort of patrol. Some sort of defense mechanism. But there doesn’t seem to be. I can’t even pick up any radio waves.”

  “Possibly they don’t use radio waves any longer,” Birdman muttered.

  Richardson looked at him in disgust. “You’ve got to use radio waves,” he said. “You can’t run an advanced technology without radio waves.”

  Phil Birdman said, “You mean, you can’t run our technology without radio waves.”

  Richardson blinked. “Just how far ahead of us are they supposed to be?”

  Nobody answered him.

  Ronny said to the captain, “What do you say we orbit her a few times, coming closer slowly?”

  Several hours later, it was Rita who said, mystified, “But there aren’t any cities.”

  And Phil Birdman said, disbelief in his own voice, “Maybe they don’t use cities, either.”

  Takashi said, “There are a few worlds in United Planets that don’t have cities.”

  “Yes,” the captain muttered, “but the most backward of all. Places like Kropotkin, the anarchist experiment, arid the planet Mother, with the Stone Age naturalists. By the looks of this world, the whole thing has been landscaped. That’s not exactly within the capabilities of either anarchists or nature lovers, who refuse to utilize any inventions more complicated than the bow and arrow.”

  Ronny said thoughtfully, “Early man didn’t have cities. They first came in as defense centers for the new developing agriculturalists, against raiding nomads. Later on, they became centers for trade, and when social labor came in, large numbers of people had to live close together to work in manufacture.”

  “What are you getting at?” Rita asked.

  “Well, perhaps these people, if they actually have matter converters, no longer need manufacturing or trade. No longer have to live in each others’ laps.”

  The captain muttered, “I can’t even make out individual houses. Or, for that matter, any signs of agriculture.”

  Mendlesohn said, awe in his voice, “Do you think that this could be a whole planet just devoted to being a park? Possibly their other planets are so built up and crowded that they’ve kept this one just for the sheer beauty of it.”

  Phil Birdman said, “Look at that herd of deer, or whatever they are!” His voice tuned low. “The Happy Hunting Ground.”

  “What?” Ronny asked.

  “Nothing. How long does it take to breed out of a people, the instinct of the chase?”

  Takashi said suddenly, “There. There’s a city for you. And it’s not too far from where I detected the nuclear powered spacecraft.”

  It was an area of possibly a square mile and the buildings were unique, even at a distance.

  The captain looked at Ronny Bronston.

  Ronny thought about it. “Let’s drop closer,” he said. “From all we know, if they’d wanted to crisp us they could have done so long before this. A race that could produce a spaceship as large as the one you saw, would have weapons to match.”

  They hovered over the complex of buildings, descending slowly, until the screens could pick out considerable detail.

  “There in the center,” Richardson said, “a pyramid. It looks like a Mayan pyramid.”

  “What is a Mayan pyramid?” Rita asked. Her voice held the same awe of this strange world as did the others.

  Ronny said, “Your Earth history has been neglected, my dear. You spent too much of your time reading up on the strongmen. The Mayans were an early civilization in the southern part of North America. They…”
He broke off suddenly as something came to him. “This isn’t a city. It’s a complex of religious buildings. Maybe schools, things like that, too. But it’s not a city. Not in the sense of large numbers of persons living in it.”

  “There’s one thing for sure”—Phil nodded—“there aren’t a good many people down there. What’s that, on top of the pyramid?”

  The skipper focused the small zoom-screen, quickly flashed it off again, his face pale.

  “What’s the matter, Captain?” Richardson asked. “Why didn’t you throw it up on the large screen for the rest of us?”

  Volos said to Ronny tightly, “Didn’t you tell us that these so-called Dawnmen were sort of a copperish color?”

  “That’s right. Great, beautiful physical specimens. Rather a golden color.”

  The captain fiddled with his small zoomer again, finally located something and switched it to the compartment’s large screen for all to see.

  It was a small group of the Dawnworld people, both men and women. All were dressed in no more than loin cloths, or short kilts. All seemed approximately twenty-five years of age. All were in obvious sparkling health.

  “These, eh?” the captain said, his voice strange.

  Ronny looked at him. “Yes, of course. Those are the Dawnmen. They don’t look particularly hostile or aggressive, do they?”

  Volos said very slowly, “That wasn’t a Dawnman on the top of the pyramid.”

  Ronny said, “If Baron Wyler is in the vicinity, it means two things: No matter how much of a headstart he got on us, he hasn’t managed to get what he came after, as yet. Which means, in turn, that we’ve got to get a move on.”

  All the others looked at him.

  “Well, what’s the program?” Birdman asked.

  “The Baron—if that’s his craft we’ve detected—is on the ground,” Ronny said thoughtfully. “We’re going to have to land, too. Skipper, what say that you edge over a mile or so, beyond the limits of this city, or whatever it is, and drop one of us to reconnoiter?”

  The captain turned to his control panel, silently.

  He drifted the Pisa to the north, brought it down carefully in what was seemingly an isolated glen, devoid of life.