It was only later that Ronny Bronston found out that there was no such person as Tommy Paine. He was, in actuality, a cover for Section G when they secretly committed some of their subversive acts against members of United Planets who were failing to progress because of reactionary institutions.
New Delos had changed considerably since Ronny had been there before. For one thing, the capital city, formerly on the sleepy side, had doubled in size and was abustle with activity. The spaceport was also considerably larger and there were a dozen spaceships of varying size on the field. Obviously, New Delos was conducting a wide trade with her fellow members of United Planets. Under the god-king she had been what amounted to a hermit planet, with as little intercourse with other worlds as she could manage.
Among the spaceships, was a Space Forces cruiser. Captain Joe Wald set the Cherokee down as near to it as he could.
Ronny Bronston and Dorn Horsten had long since packed. They said hurried goodbyes and, accompanied by the dogs, started in the direction of the SFC Alexander Hamilton.
Plotz, happy at the chance for some exercise after the cooped up period on the Cherokee trotted ahead.
Ronny looked down at Boy, who was pacing along beside him. He said, “What are you looking so smug about?”
Boy hung his tongue out for a couple of quick pants and said, “Didn’t you notice? Plotz was in heat, back on the Cherokee.”
Ronny rolled his eyes upward. “Oh, wizard. A great lover I’ve got on my hands. She’ll probably have the pups before we get back to Earth—always assuming we do.”
Boy gave his bobbed tail several wags. “Sixty-three days,” he said with satisfaction. “Gestation period is about sixty-three days. I understand that you humans take nine months. Waste of time.”
Lee Chang Chu and a tall, uniformed Space Forces officer were awaiting them at the top of the gangplank. As always, she was dressed in a silken Cheongsam. And, just as characteristic, she was demurely smiling as the two Section G agents approached, a mere Oriental woman in the presence of men.
When Ronny and Dorn reached the hatchway she said, “Supervisor Ronald Bronston, Agent Dorn Horsten, let me introduce you to Captain John Fodor, commander of the Cruiser Alexander Hamilton.”
The three men shook hands. The captain was, tall, sparse, about forty and gave the impression of being the no-nonsense type. He radiated the air of spaceman.
Lee Chang looked down at the dogs and said, “Where in the world did you acquire these two beautiful animals?”
Ronny said, “Lee Chang, meet Boy and Plotz.”
Boy stuck out his paw for a shake and said, “Hello. You the Boss’ female?”
Lee Chang’s almond eyes widened and her chin dropped a little. She shook the offered paw, and darted a quick look up at Ronny.
She said, “Why, no. Why do you ask?”
“It’s the way you two look at each other,” he told her. “Meet my bitch friend.”
Plotz extended a paw and said, “I am happy to meet you. Lee Chang.”
The captain was gaping too.
Ronny said to him, “Let’s get spaceborne soonest, skipper. We’re in the biggest hurry, ever.”
“Where are we bound for?” Captain Fodor said.
“We’ll tell you later. For the time, set a course in the direction of Xanadu.”
“Right,” the captain said. He looked down at the dogs again, shook his head, then turned and headed toward the cruiser’s bridge, saying over his shoulder, “Supervisor Lee Chang Chu will show you to your quarters.”
Carrying the bags, the two agents followed her, the dogs bringing up the rear.
She said, “You have the second officer’s cabin. He’s doubling up with the third deck officer. I’m right next to you in the first officer’s quarters. He’s moved in with the first engineer.”
The door to their new quarters was open and they found the cabin on the Spartan side, but comfortable. Somebody had improvised a second bunk and Dorn was pleased to see that it was ample in size for his bulk. Evidently, Lee Chang had given them the word on his size.
While the men were putting their bags down, Lee Chang put her hands on her hips and said, “Ronny Bronston, have you been studying ventriloquism? I couldn’t even catch your mouth moving.”
He grinned at her. “Nope,” he said. “They really talk. In fact, I sometimes think Boy talks too damn much.”
“Some nerve,” Boy said, but he gave his stub of a tail a double wag to indicate he wasn’t really upset at the charge.
Dorn said, “They come from Einstein and on that planet they not only upbreed themselves with a vengeance but evidently everything else.”
Ronny said to the Chinese operative, “This cruiser is bigger than I expected.”
“It was the only one immediately available,” Lee Chang told him.
“How big’s the crew?”
“The captain and three deck officers. The chief engineer and three engineer officers. And a chief steward. That’s the officers. There are thirty in the crew, of varying ranks.”
“Damn,” Ronny said. “It’s too many. The fewer people that see anything at all of the Dawnworlds, the better.”
“I’ve thought about that,” she said, nodding. “I think our best plan is to set-down and we three disembark and the cruiser blast-off again immediately and go into orbit, with instruction not to use the scanners to observe the surface. We’ll keep in laser beam communication with them and call to come and get us, when required.”
They could feel the spaceship tremble beneath them and knew that they were underway.
They found seats and for a moment looked at each other in silence.
“Who’s in command, among the three of us?” Ronny said finally.
“You are,” Lee Chang said. “We’re both of supervisor rank, but you’re in charge.”
“You’re my senior.”
“But you’ve been on the Dawnworlds before. You’re the only one who has—at least the only one who remembers.”
He didn’t argue. She made sense. As little as he really knew about the Dawnmen, it was more than anybody else did.
He said, “How’s the Alexander Hamilton armed?”
“The same as all other cruisers of this class.”
“Wizard. We’ll have the skipper jettison all weapons. That includes everything, even our H-guns, if you brought them along.”
Lee Chang and Dorn both eyed him questioning.
Ronny said, “I don’t want to approach that first Dawnworld we’ll come to with as much in the way of a potentially deadly article as a fly swatter, not to speak of laser weapons, nuclear weapons and such.”
Lee Chang nodded. “I suppose you’re right. We want to give every indication of friendly, peaceful intent.”
They met most of the balance of the cruiser’s officers in the mess at the noon meal. Except for the first officer and the first engineer, both of whom were on watch, the full complement were on hand. Lee Chang, who had come with them from Earth, was already well known, and, as usual, it was obvious that, to a man, they were in love with the provocative Chinese. She introduced them all and then made the ship’s officers acquainted with the two dogs. Boy went around wagging and offering his right front paw to each in turn.
“Hi,” he’d say. “Glad to meet you.”
Plotz had simply said, “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” wagged her tail a few times, to guarantee the truth of her statement and remained in the background.
Except for one muttered, “I don’t believe it,” the Space Forces men simply ogled.
The captain said, “All right, all right. Let us get down to the nitty-gritty.” He looked at Ronny. “Citizen Lee Chang Chu has been most secretive. She would tell us nothing about our destination, saying that we’d have to wait until our rendezvous with you and Doctor Horsten.”
Lee Chang said quietly, “In actuality, I don’t even know it, Captain.”
Ronny put his fork down and said simply, “Our destinatio
n is unknown, Captain. What exactly were the orders that you were given?”
The captain was staring at him. “To put my ship and my crew under your orders and to carry out your every order—to the death, if necessary. They were issued to me by the President of United Planets himself. What do you mean, you don’t know our destination, Supervisor Bronston?”
“I didn’t mean that. When I said our destination is unknown, I meant that it will remain unknown to you, your officers and the crew. I am the only person that knows it. And shortly Supervisor Chu will. You will never know where you have gone or where you have been.”
The skipper was looking at him as though he had gone completely around the bend. So were his officers.
Captain Fodor said, “My dear sir, how am I going to be able to take you to this mysterious destination if I don’t know where it is?”
“Who is your navigator?”
“Traditionally, the second deck officer is navigator. Mr. Tokugawa, here. But the captain also double checks the navigating and, if needed, overrules the second officer.”
Very well,” Ronny told him. “And who is in charge of the star charts?”
“Mr. Tokugawa and myself.”
“Wizard. Supervisor Lee Chang Chu is also a spaceship navigator. I will reveal the coordinates of our destination to her. She will do the navigating. During our journey, even while in underspace, Mr. Tokugawa will not be allowed on the bridge at any time. And you, yourself, will not be allowed on it while Lee Chang is setting our courses.”
The captain’s face went indignant. He said stiffly, “This is my ship, sir.”
“And you are under the direct orders of the President of United Planets.”
Captain Fodor glared at him for a long moment. Finally, “Very well, sir.”
Lee Chang said quietly, “I think it would be best if all star charts would be placed in my custody, in my stateroom, and that a guard be placed at the door on a twenty-four hour a day basis.”
“What in the hell’s going on!” the captain demanded in indignation.
Dorn Horsten spoke up for the first time in his quiet voice. “The fate of the human race is going on,” he said.
“Dogs too, evidently,” Boy murmured.
After the meal, for the next few hours in their own quarters, the five of them rehashed the developments on Einstein, Lee Chang being only partially acquainted with them. Ronny pulled no punches, admitting that he had been suckered by Rosemary, giving her the opportunity to drug him, and leading to his being given Scop and his mind being picked.
She said, her soft voice gently mocking, “I didn’t know that you were that susceptible to feminine charms, Ronny.”
He looked at her in irritation. “I’m a man, damn it.”
“On the face of it,” she nodded sweetly.
She thought about it for a moment, then said, “I suppose that the quicker you give me the coordinates of the Dawnworlds, the sooner I can get to setting as direct a course as possible for the nearest one.”
“Yes, certainly,” Ronny said. He looked at Dorn apologetically. “I think that it’s better that not even you be in on it.”
The doctor pushed his glasses back on the bridge of his nose and said emphatically, “I most certainly agree with you. What I do not know, I cannot betray, even under Scop. I have sometimes wondered, in reflection, whether or not Ross Metaxa shouldn’t have brainwashed you as well as the crew of the Pisa and Rita Daniels. Possibly nobody should know the location of the Dawnworlds. You say that they are in an obscure spiral, off the beaten track, and that ordinarily we wouldn’t stumble upon them for ages. Very well, just knowing that they are out there, somewhere, is enough, that and the information we have about them. Sooner or later, stumble upon them we will—and the later the better.”
“We’ll leave you here with the dogs,” Ronny said. “Obviously, they, too, can’t hear what I have to tell Lee Chang.”
Don’t you trust me, Boss?” Boy said, giving a quick double pant and obviously just kidding. The super-pooch even had a sense of humor.
“Shut up,” Ronny said, escorting Lee Chang toward the door and toward her own quarters.
He closed and locked the door behind him.
“Why, Ronny,” she said modestly.
He grunted at her and looked at the door. “I imagine that’s sound proof and proof everything else, for that matter. But I wonder if there’s the chance of an icicle in hell that this cabin could be bugged.”
“No,” she said. “Sid Jakes had a team of our people go through the Alexander Hamilton like a fine comb. A cockroach couldn’t be on it that we didn’t know about. And each crewman and officer was searched down to the last mote of dust in his clothes, before coming aboard. There’s no bug in this cabin—or anywhere else on the cruiser.”
“Wizard,” he said. “All right, these are the coordinates of the Dawnworlds. To be exact, the coordinates of the one I first landed upon. The same coordinates those Einstein cloddies have.”
He gave them to her and she mentally noted them down, rather than risking any written record.
She nodded and said, “Very well. We’re already headed in the general direction. Tomorrow, I’ll take over the bridge and drop us into underspace, after taking every star chart they have. I’d have to look at a chart, but from memory I think you’re probably correct. They’re located in such a spiral that I doubt that, ordinarily, we would have come in contact for some time.”
He came to his feet, saying, “I suppose I should get back to Dorn and the dogs.”
She stood, too, and the sides of her mouth turned down. “But, Ronny,” she said. “You said you were a man—damn it, as you put it. And here we are. You have me in a locked room.”
He gaped at her. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Her almond eyes took him in, in amusement. “Don’t you think that you’d be more comfortable in here with me than with Dorn and the dogs?”
She turned and looked at the bunk. “There seems to be room for the two of us. After all these years, Ronny, you’ve still never approached me.”
“I… I didn’t know that you were available.”
“You never asked,” she said, a slightly mocking element in her voice.
Chapter Sixteen
The hop from New Delos to the first Dawnworld planet was as uneventful as that from Einstein to New Delos had been, though longer.
On the second day Lee Chang confiscated all star charts and put them under lock and key in her cabin. The captain had looked miffed, but said nothing. All of them, of course, were not required but if she had allowed some to remain in the chart room they would have been a clue to where the Dawnworlds were not.
She and Ronny went to the bridge and politely requested that all ship’s personnel currently on watch retire. They looked at Captain Fodor.
He said, “We are under the command of these representatives of the Bureau of Investigation of the Department of Justice, of the Commissariat of Interplanetary Affairs. Their orders override my own, even though I am commander of this cruiser.”
The spacemen marched out and Lee Chang took her place at the controls.
She said, “Just as a double check, give me those coordinates again. I remember them, but just to be sure.”
He gave them to her.
She looked it up on the star chart before her and nodded. “Mapped only by radio telescope. No indication that human manned exploration ships have ever touched there.”
She set a course and then came out of her chair, folding her star chart.
“That’s it, Ronny,” she said. “Let’s get this back to my cabin and under lock.”
Ronny spent the rest of the hop staying in Lee Chang’s cabin at nights. Whether or not the cruiser’s officers were aware of this he didn’t know. However, by the envious expressions he sometimes caught on their faces he suspected that they did. He couldn’t have cared less.
The hours that they could have together with each other were precious. He had t
old her the truth. They were expendable and it was unlikely that they would ever return from this assignment. There was almost without doubt, no future for their relationship.
The difficulty was that it was becoming increasingly close. He mentally kicked himself for not having established it sooner. He had never suspected that the beautiful Chinese had been attracted to him. Every unmarried agent in Section G was head over heels for Lee Chang and Ronny had no illusions about his own masculine charms. He had always been on the unprepossessing side in appearance.
When they came out of underspace, it was in the vicinity of the Dawnman planet where Baron Wyler, later followed by Ronny and agent Phil Birdman, had originally set-down.
They held a conference with the captain on the bridge.
Ronny said, “Somewhere on the planet below is probably an Earth-type spacecraft. At least, I assume that they got here first. You can detect it?”
“Of course.”
“Very well. Please locate it and set down in its vicinity. Supervisor Lee Chang Chu, Doctor Horsten and myself will disembark. To the extent possible, you will prevent your officers and crew seeing anything whatsoever of the surface of this planet. I know you can’t accomplish this completely, but to the extent possible.”
The captain sighed in exasperation.
Ronny went on. “As soon as we are disembarked, you will lift off again and go into orbit, a high enough orbit that you will be unable to observe details of the surface of this world. We will communicate with you at least once every six hours. If a period goes by in which we do not do so, you are immediately to attempt to return to Earth where you will report to my superiors, in Section G of the Bureau of Investigation, that the mission has proved a failure and that I recommend a mobilization of the Space Forces, as hopeless as that might be.”
Brain World up-7 Page 12
