And not a Foundation ship, either.
The world government still had a few spacecraft on operational status—a few lonely skeletons left from the half-forgotten fleet that had long ago explored the solar system and pronounced it useless.
A few ships used for infrequent investigations, a few ships to back up the slogan:
DON'T ROCK THE BOAT.
Keith Ortega stood in the rain and swore.
"Camel You look after things—tell Bill I'll be back as soon as I can."
"Be careful, Keith." She stood in the doorway of their home, small and fragile in her shirt and shorts.
Little Keith—who was not so little any more—and Bobby listened curiously to the echoes of the decelerating ship and wondered what their father was worried about.
"What's up, Dad?" asked Keith.
"Can we go with you? We can help," Bobby assured him. Keith looked at them with what he hoped was a stem expression. "You're not children now," he said. "You're young
men, and you have responsibilities. Have you forgotten about the ceremonies tonight?"
"Sorry, Dad. We just thought—"
"I'll attend to this. It's nothing important."
"Well, gee, what was that funny noise?"
"That's what I want to find out," Keith said. "Some sort of storm up above the clouds, I think."
"O.K., Dad."
He left them in the rain and sprinted out of the village and along the pathway that led to the Smoke River. He swam the river, which was hardly wetter than the pelting rain in the air, and hurried along a concealed path through the jungle. By the time he reached his hidden emergency copter he was breathing hard.
If those kids ever saw that spaceship, there would be hell to pay.
He took the copter up into the sea of gray rain, gunned it to full power, and headed for the dome-shaped station house far to the east. Undoubtedly, they had tracked a Foundation ship from Earth. Since those ships were carefully shielded from the native colonies, they always landed at the station clearing, where Keith himself had landed fourteen years before.
Keith stared into the rain and clenched his fists.
If that ship was a government ship—and it had to be—then there was going to be trouble.
He could not bear the thought of failure now.
Somehow, that ship had to be stopped.
In eight hours, he landed at the station clearing.
The rain had stopped and he saw the ship as soon as he came over the dripping wall of the gray-green jungle. It was a big one, and it had the blue symbol of the world government on its nose. He set the copter down next to it, his heart thumping like a hammer in his chest.
The ship loomed silently over his head, its very hugeness impressing upon him the absurdity of his own plans. What could he do—attack the thing with a club and a handful of rocks?
It was still daylight, but he saw a glearn of yellow light inside the dome of the station house. He didn't know what he was going to do, but he did know that he was going to do something.
He walked across the field, acutely aware of the vast ship beyond him. Could that ship be destroyed? Would he do it if he could? And if he did, wouldn't that just confirm the suspicions on Earth—wouldn't they send more ships, more men?
He shook his head. He wasn't thinking straight.
The cold knot in his stomach drew tighter.
There were no windows in the round station house, so there was no way for him to sneak a look inside. He simply walked up to the door, knocked, and went in.
A large central room, stacked with supplies. A door to his right, where babies were received. Two humanoid robots conversing in low tones against one wall. A bright yellow light in the ceiling.
Toward the back, another door, partly open.
Voices.
Keith picked his way through the piles of supplies and knocked on the half-open door. "Who is it?" Mark's voice. "Keith." "Come on in I"
He went inside. There, at the table where he and Carrie and Mark had shared their coffee so many years ago, there was more coffee.
And a man in a uniform.
"Keith, this is Captain Nostrand—Space Security. Captain, this is Keith Ortega."
They shook hands.
"I've heard of you, sir," Captain Nostrand said. "I never expected to meet you under these . . . unusual . . . circumstances."
Keith sized up the captain. After the mental image he had built up in his mind of a veritable ogre sent out from Earth to crush his dream, Captain Nostrand was a pleasant surprise. He was middle-aged, relaxed, with graying hair. He had quiet brown eyes and an easy smile.
He looked like a nice guy—if that helped any.
"Mark, what's the deal?"
Mark Kamoto shrugged and poured Keith a cup of coffee. "I guess you've about figured it," he said.
"I heard the ship. I knew it wasn't one of ours."
Captain Nostrand sat down and crossed his long legs. "The government has been getting reports off and on of unexplained spaceship take-offs," he said. "They finally decided to find out what was going on. They tracked one ship here, and sent me up to have a look-see. Simple enough."
"How many men are with you?"
Nostrand smiled quizzically. "You planning on starting a fracas, Dr. Ortega? I'm unarmed, of course."
Keith felt the hot blood in his cheeks. "Sorry," he said. "I'm upset—to put it mildly. Look, what are you going to do?"
Nostrand sipped his coffee. "What do you think?" "You can't go back and tell them, captain. This is too big. You don't understand. You can't tell them." "Want to bet?"
"Easy, now," Mark said. "Drink your coffee, Keith. It won't do any good to go off half-cocked."
Keith downed his coffee at one searing gulp.
"You're mighty nervous," Captain Nostrand grinned. "What have you got out in that jungle anyhow? A swamp full of monsters?"
Keith managed to laugh, not too successfully. "Hasn't Mark told you?"
"I haven't said anything," Mark cut in. "But the captain has sharp eyes."
"Has he got a cigarette?"
"Sure," said Nostrand. He fished out a pack and handed one to Keith. The smoke tasted good.
"Look, Captain Nostrand. I'm sorry I came busting in here like a fugitive from a nightmare. It's just that this thing is terribly important—more important than you can imagine. One word from you now will destroy two decades of work. You and your crew have got to be made to see—"
"The crew's robot," Nostrand said. "I'm the only one you've got to deal with."
"Then look-"
"You listen to me a minute," Captain Nostrand said slowly. "I wasn't sent out here to pass judgment on whatever it is you're doing. That's not my job. I was just sent out to see if you're doing anything up here. You are, that's clear. I'll go back and tell them there's an unreported settlement here, and that's the end of it as far as I'm concerned. Nothing personal, understand?"
Keith slammed his fist down on the table. "It is personal!" he said, amazed at his own vehemence. If he had needed any proof that the Keith Ortega who had come out here from Earth fourteen years ago was dead, he had it now.
Outside, the rain started up again, swishing down the sides of the station dome.
Desperately, Keith leaned across the table, staring at the man in the old uniform of Space Security. There was one chance, a long one—
"Nostrand," he said carefully, "how many men besides yourself are still in the space service?"
The captain poured himself another cup of coffee. "You already know that, Dr. Ortega." "A hundred? Two hundred?" "A hundred and twenty." "Mostly maintenance men?" "Yes."
The rain came down harder, rushing like a river over the slick bulge of the station house.
"What made you stay in the space service, captain? What made you stay when space was dead?"
Captain Nostrand shrugged, but his brown eyes narrowed.
"How many flights have you made, captain? How many in the last thirty years?"
"Four,"
he said slowly. "Three were runs to Luna."
"What made you stick it out, captain?"
Nostrand stood up. "That's none of your business."
Keith faced him. "It is my business. I know you, Nostrand. I know why you went out into space when other men stayed at home."
Captain Nostrand shrugged again.
"Captain, listen. I'm asking you to wait one Earth-month before you go back. Let me show you what we're doing here—all of it, every bit of it. If you still think it's your duty to tell them after that, O.K. If you don't, then you can report that the rocket they tracked was just a private ship out on a lark—some crazy back-to-the-good-old-days enthusiast. Vandervort can fix it up—yes, 111 tell you all about him, too. Captain, you've got to stay now—it's your duty to find out everything they want to know. Radio back and tell them it will take you a little time to investigate. Will you do that, Nostrand?"
"What's in it for you?"
Keith kept his voice even. "If you understand what Venus means, you'll never tell them. You know and I know that Earth may never go back into space on her own—it's too late. I can't put this into words, captain. But I know what made you go into space even when space was almost forgotten. I know. Have you forgotten?"
"I haven't forgotten."
"O.K. I'm asking for a month."
Captain Nostrand sat down and sipped his coffee. He listened to the rain roaring down outside. He looked at Mark Kamoto, who remained silent.
"You make a mean speech, friend," Nostrand said finally, "I can see your month. It had better be good."
Keith was exhausted but confident.
"Pal," he said, "you ain't seen nothm yet."
Beyond the station house, the warm rain fell into the thick jungles and the long gray afternoon began to fade into evening.
V.
At the northernmost extremity of the one inhabited continent of Venus, a brown peninsula thrust out into the swells of a vast gray-green sea.
In the copter that hovered just under the cloud masses that roofed the world, too far away to be seen with the naked eye, Ralph Nostrand brought his viewer into focus and looked into it intendy.
"So that's Acosta," he said.
"Yes," Keith said. "Watch off the coast there—see those ships coming in? They're whalers." "Whalers?"
"Not really whales, of course. They're true fish, not mammals. But they're plenty big enough—and they hunt them with hand harpoons."
"Funny looking place."
The viewer showed a small settlement of perhaps one hundred gabled stone houses, placed on a shelf of rock overlooking the tossing sea. Most of the men and boys were out in the boats, but the women of the town were clearly visible in the streets.
"There," Keith said. "The near boat crew is beaching one."
In the viewer, the men and boys leaped out of their sturdy canoes into shallow water. They all grabbed a line from the near ship and ran with it up onto the beach. They formed a row and heaved.
An enormous black shadow-shape slid out of the sea and was hauled up on the rocks, its great tail still bobbing in the gray-green water. It rolled over, white belly upwards, and the men began to dance around it, chanting.
"Whew," said Nostrand. "That's quite a baby."
"Acosta is a pretty rugged place," Keith said. "It's a colony of maritime adventurers, as I told you. It's a people who will have a long tradition behind them of dangerous voyages."
Ralph Nostrand eyed him. "Shrewd." "I know my racket."
The captain returned to his viewer and watched for a long time. Finally he nodded. "Next," he said.
Mark took the copter up higher to hit a favorable wind belt, and they flew through the warm clouds above the jungles, moving inland. In four hours, they went down again.
The first of the Three Cities was spread out on the viewer.
"Wlan?" asked Nostrand.
"That's right."
Wlan was a far cry from the seaside settlement of Acosta. This was a genuine small city, with a population of perhaps five thousand people. It was neady arranged into squares, with snug modern houses, and it was dominated by two large buildings that could only be factories.
"The Three Cities are our industrialists," Keith said. "Of course, they're not turning much out yet, and the economy is highly artificial at present, but they've got the basic techniques down pat. We've set up an embryonic technological culture, and the kids have been brought up to appreciate what that means. We've given them enough leads so that they'll have aircraft within a century."
Nostrand nodded. "One thing I've been meaning to ask you, Keith."
"Shoot."
"Is it really fair to bring these kids up here and determine their lives for them? It seems—sort of wrong, somehow."
The copter veered toward the southeast, rising again into the clouds.
"I know what you mean," Keith said. "It seems to deny them their free will. That's not true, though—you know that yourself, if youll just stop a bit and think. After all, a child is always bom into a culture he has not built himself; that's a characteristic of human beings. In that sense, a kid's future is always determined for him. What he does with the materials of his culture, though, is up to him. So long as he has the stuff, he'll make out O.K. anywhere. Don't forget that to the kid this is his culture; it's home. He's never known anything else, and he'd fight to stay there. And don't forget, too, that those kids were abandoned by their own parents on Earth. This beats a Foundation orphanage, believe me."
"I surrender," Nostrand grinned.
"Excuse the sermon, Ralph. It's hell to really have faith in something again. We're not used to it, back on Earth."
The copter paused briefly at Mepas and Carin, the other two nearby industrial towns, and then flew southwest across the continent. They set the copter on automatic, caught what sleep they could, and in sixteen hours were high above the skin tents of Pueklor. The gray sky and the massed oceans of the clouds had not changed—and there were still eight
Earth-days left before the coming of the pale Venusian night.
"Looks like an Indian tribe," commented Nostrand, looking closely into the viewer. "I remember seeing some old photographs somewhere."
Keith nodded. "They're modeled on the ancient Plains Indians of North America," he said. "You'll notice how different the country is here—tall grass instead of jungle. Pueklor has a basically hunting culture; they go after an animal not too unlike the old bison, but much slower. They hunt 'em on foot."
Far below, the skin tents of Pueklor stood in a large ring in the grassy fields of the southwestern plains. Curls of smoke drifted up into the still air and a group of children were running races along the banks of a sluggish river.
"You'll catch it more clearly when you see some of them in Halaja," Keith said. "Pueklor is an extremely proud culture—filled with the joy of living, if I can put it that way. They'll lend a very real esprit de corps to the continental culture that will be here a century from now."
The copter swung eastward through thick sheets of rain, and by the time they reached Equete in the southeastern hills the three men were bone tired. Nevertheless, the sight of Equete nestled in a rocky valley picked them up.
Equete was a series of low, rounded rock structures that harmonized beautifully with the rugged grandeur of its surroundings. It blended browns and pinks and greens into a pleasing pattern that accentuated the banded colors of the land.
"That's your baby, Ralph."
Nostrand looked down at its image in the viewer and tried to see in Equete what he was supposed to see.
"Not much visible from here," he said.
Keith smiled wearily. "The business of Equete is ethics-ethics and elaborate social complexities. In addition, this is where the basic research is being done that will one day lead to the independent development of space flight on Venus. See that tall, domed structure over there? We've given them enough hints so that they'll develop a cloud-piercing telescope before too many years have gone by. Philoso
phically, we've already provided them with a logical picture of the universe—and their ethics demand space flight as the first great step in the fulfillment of man's destiny."
"Sounds good," Ralph said. "It is good," Mark corrected.
"It's all so complicated," Ralph Nostrand said tiredly. "I try to see it the way you do—but it isn't easy. All these new cultures, growing up independendy of Earth, groping toward space travel in a hundred years or so. Don't forget what Earth is like these days—what if these people come swooping down and smash it to pieces?"
"When you see the ceremony at Halaja," Keith said, "you won't worry about that."
Captain Nostrand was unconvinced, but he held his tongue. The copter lifted again into the clouds and flew northward, back to the hidden receiving station where the great Space Security ship still waited in the late morning fog.
Keith closed his burning eyes and tried to relax. He knew that Nostrand was an unusual man—he had to be or he would never have gone into space in this century of stability and easy living. But could he see Venus as they saw Venus? Could he see Venus as the cradle of a new and vigorous culture that would jolt Earth from the rut into which it had fallen?
If the Coming Together at Halaja failed to move him, they were through.
And this was the first of the vast ceremonies to be conducted almost entirely by the children who were now young men and women. The old robot humanoids would stay strictly in the background. Surely their teaching had been effective; it had to be.
But when Keith dozed off into a troubled sleep, his dreams were as gray and cheerless as the wet clouds above his head.
It was the time of the Coming Together at Halaja. Five Earth-days were left out of the month that Keith had asked for.
With his wife and Captain Nostrand he stood in the doorway of his log home and waited for the ceremony to begin.
It was night, and the soft silver cloudlight glinted in the Home of the Spirit and touched the central plaza of Halaja with pale and enchanted fingers. Great orange fires blazed inside the ring of the wooden houses and passageways, throwing black, twisted shadows on the walls.
Drums beat with a slow rhythm and the mixed voices of low, insistent chants drifted up to the roof of the world and lost themselves in the glowing mists of night.
Donald A. Wollheim (ed) Page 4
