“What do you mean, I’ll attempt to return to Earth?” Captain Fodor said.
“He means just that,” Dorn said flatly.
The captain said, in irritation, “How can I get back to Earth if I don’t even know where I am? To navigate in underspace you’ve got to know the coordinates of where you start from as well as those of where you are going.”
Lee Chang Chu said softly, “I have left a star chart on the table in my cabin. It is sealed. On it is marked our present location. If we fail to communicate with you, break the seal and attempt to return to Earth.”
“If you make it, you’ll probably be memory washed,” Ronny said. “Reveal this location to nobody, not even your navigator. Do the navigating yourself. There has never been a top secret more top secret than this in the history of the human race, Captain.”
Captain Fodor looked at him. “I wish the hell I knew what was going on,” he growled.
And Ronny looked back at him emptily. “So do I,” he said. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
With only his first officer on the bridge, and the three Section G agents, Captain Fodor set about locating the spaceship from Einstein. They went into orbit, the Alexander Hamilton’s sensors scanning the planet below.
After a time, the captain scowled and said, “This world is unpopulated. There’s not a sign of cities or even towns. There’s no sign, even, of individual buildings, houses or whatever. There are no ships on the seas.”
Ronny sighed and said, “It’s not unpopulated, Captain. However, the less I tell you about it, the better.”
The first officer, as mystified as his commanding officer, was at the sensors, the captain sitting before a viewing screen at the space cruiser’s controls.
John Fodor said to Ronny, “After I put you down, and go into orbit, as you directed, what shall I do if I am intercepted by elements of their spacefleet? I assume they have a spacefleet.”
“Yes,” Ronny said grimly. “They have one. I suggest that you might try prayer.”
The captain eyed him disgustedly but went back to his controls.
They finally spotted the spaceship from Einstein on the side of the Dawnworld almost directly opposite to where Ronny Bronston had landed before.
Ronny said to the captain, “All right. Set down about half a kilometer from them, preferably behind a hill. For all I know the cloddies may have weapons and might take a shot at us.”
The captain set down with care and immediately activated the hatchway, after questioning Ronny about the need for spacesuits. The Section G agent had shaken his head. The atmosphere was almost identical to that which prevailed on humanity-settled worlds, as was the gravity.
John Fodor saw the three to the gangplank and watched after them.
Boy, who had been tagging along, with Plotz behind him, said, “Do we come, Boss?”
Ronny looked down at him. “Why?”
Boy gave a double pant. “You never know. Maybe you’ll have occasion to trail somebody, or scout on ahead, or something. We’re Vizslas, best trailers anywhere.”
“All right. Come along.”
Boy gave him a triple wag of his bobbed tail and started down the gangplank after Lee Chang, Dorn and his master. Plotz brought up the rear.
The captain called after them, “Good luck.”
As soon as they had cleared out of the immediate vicinity, the Alexander Hamilton took off again, as ordered.
The three looked about. Save for the differences in flora, the Dawnworld looked remarkably like Einstein. It seemed to be one great park. For that matter, the plant life had developed as it had on many of the Earth-settled worlds. Dorn Horsten decided inwardly that given the same type of atmosphere, the same gravity, that it wasn’t too surprising.
Ronny said, “This way, isn’t it?” and headed off in the direction of the Einstein spaceship. The two dogs ranged ahead, as though trying to flush birds.
Ronny put his right hand out before him and said, “Now this is the way you walk on a Dawnworld.”
Both Lee Chang and Dorn stared at him.
“Why?” Dorn said.
“So you won’t run into a house and smash your nose.”
Lee Chang said, worry in her voice, “Ronny, what’s wrong with you?”
He came to a halt for a moment to explain to them. “The captain was wrong when he said there were no buildings down here. The Dawnmen are something like the people of Einstein. They don’t like the landscape to be cluttered up with buildings. On Einstein they solve the problem by putting all buildings underground. On the Dawnworlds they make them invisible.”
“Invisible?” Lee Chang said in puzzlement.
“Yes. Invisible and transparent. You can walk right into one. You can feel the wall, but you can’t see it whatsoever. Evidently, the Dawnmen can, somehow, but we can’t.”
They took his word for it and each of them extended a hand before him as they walked.
They came upon no houses or other buildings between the point where they had set down and the Einstein spaceship.
Arrived at their destination, they stared up at it. It was a small passenger craft. Ronny suspected that it was one of the spaceships the scientists of Einstein utilized from time to time to journey to conferences held on other worlds.
The hatchway was open, the gangplank was out, but there was no one.
“Hallo!” Dorn called out.
There was no response.
Boy looked up at Ronny and said, “Want me to take a look, Boss?”
Ronny said, “Yes.”
The dog was up the gangplank in a trice and had disappeared into the ship’s bowels. The three Section G agents and Plotz waited.
Finally, Boy emerged and looked down at them. “Nobody aboard, Boss,” he said.
Ronny leading, the three agents mounted the gangplank and entered.
The craft was well outfitted, something like a space yacht. It would, undoubtedly, have accommodated at least a double dozen of passengers, plus a crew. They went from cabin to cabin, double-checking on Boy, and found that only five of the cabins had been occupied and, by the looks of them, by four men and one woman.
They wound up in the spaceship’s lounge and sank into seats. The two dogs settled to the floor.
“What now?” Dorn said. “Where do you think they might be?”
“Damned if I know,” Ronny growled. “If they tried any tricks they might already be dead. When I was here last, the Dawnmen had a small complex of very ancient buildings, that looked as though they were of religious nature, temples and pyramids. On top of the largest pyramid was an altar. I didn’t see it in use, but the captain of the Pisa and Baron Wyler and Fitzjames did. The Dawnmen used an obsidian knife to open the chest cavity of the victims so they could pull out the heart. The whole crew of Wyler’s yacht went that way.”
“Good heavens,” Lee Chang said in feminine protest.
Dorn was scowling at Ronny. He said, “Do they do that to all strangers?”
“No. They didn’t do it to me, nor Wyler and Fitzjames. Wyler’s crew had attempted to purloin some of the Dawnman devices. But they warned us to leave. There is nothing in the rituals by which they live to provide for intercourse with strangers.”
And at that moment a voice entered into the mind of each of them.
You are correct, Ronald Bronston; there is no place in our society for the stranger. We warned you not to return to our worlds and to warn off your race. But instead, you have come again and, through your informing others of our location, thev came as well.
Ronny said, in protest, “I came, with my friends here, only to warn the others away, to prevent them from antagonizing you.”
Nevertheless, you came, and must bear the consequences. As must the others. They attempted, in their arrogance, to confound us, to rob us of discoveries we made aeons past. But we are aware that if we released our technology to other life forms they would then be in a position to confront us and, possibly, one day to destroy us. Now, the
y cannot, for our technology is the most advanced of which we know in the whole galaxy.
Beyond that, neither your home planets, nor that of these other strangers, are ready for the advances which we have made long since. If you were, you would have developed them yourselves. Let me dip into your minds for an example in your own history. You had a primitive early man in the early millenia of your race. The Neanderthal. Would you have turned over to a Neanderthal a highly powered, internal combustion vehicle of the type which I can discern in your minds, and taught him to drive it? Had you, he most likely would have killed someone, and probably himself.
Dorn Horsten said, “What do you plan to do with us?”
It is now out of the hands of we whom you once called the Brahmins of the Dawnworlds. To carry on the similes of your Academician Count Felix Fitzjames, there are three ancient castes on our worlds, the Brahmins, whom I represent, the Kshatriyas, who were originally our ruling class and warriors, and the Sudras, the working class. It was long ago that these castes were formed, long, long ago, but still we keep our ancient traditions.
“What do you mean, it’s out of your hands, out of the hands of you Brahmins?” Lee Chang wavered.
You will be turned over to the Kshatriyas for their annual ceremonies.
Chapter Seventeen
“What annual ceremonies?” Ronny demanded.
But suddenly all three realized that the intelligence that had been communicating with them telepathically had withdrawn. They stared at each other, aghast.
Through all this, the two dogs had been stretched out on the floor, Boy growling low in his throat, all but inaudibly. Now he said, “What was all that, Boss? I seemed to be hearing somebody talking—in my head.”
“Me too,” Plotz said, a worried whine in her voice.
“We all heard it,” Ronny told them. “They can evidently communicate, no matter what the language, with any intelligent life form.”
“What do we do now?” Dorn said.
“What can we do?” Ronny said. “All we can do is wait and see what happens.”
LeeChang said, not very convincingly, “I could probably pilot this spacecraft. We could take off and rejoin the Alexander Hamilton.”
“No,” Ronny told her. “I doubt if they’d let us. Besides, our mission isn’t finished. Somehow, we’ve got to keep them from sending out their fleet to polish off United Planets.”
He took his communicator from his pocket, activated it and said into the screen, “Ronald Bronston, calling Captain John Fodor of the Space Forces Cruiser Alexander Hamilton.”
The captain’s face faded in immediately. “Supervisor Bronston,” he said. “Are you all right?”
“We’re still alive,” Ronny said laconically. “We’ve made contact with the people we came to see. Are you okay, up there?”
“Yes. Everything is routine.”
“Wizard. Carry on, then. We’ll contact you, as arranged, within another six hours.”
He switched off the communications device and thought about it for a minute, then switched it back on again and flicked a stud. “Ronald Bronston, calling Irene Kasansky” he said.
Irene’s face faded in and when she saw who it was turned apprehensive. “Ronny,” she said. “Are you three all right?”
“Well, so far we’re still with it. Is the old man available?”
Ross Metaxa’s face, tired and moist of eye as always, took the place of Irene’s in the small screen. He looked at Ronny questioningly.
Ronny said, “It looks bad, sir. Briefly, the others got here first. We’re in their ship. They’re missing. We’ve been contacted by one of the, uh, Brahmins. It doesn’t look as though they’re going to let us go this time.”
“What are their plans for United Planets?”
“I don’t know.”
“Should I recommend to the President that the Space Forces fleet be mobilized?”
“Certainly not yet. Not while we’re still here and working on it. I told Fodor that if they did us in, he should recommend it, but it won’t do any good. The last time I was here I saw one of their spacecraft. It was a hundred times the size of the largest spacecraft we’ve got. And it was even able to turn itself invisible. We’re scheduled to be turned over to their soldier caste for something they call their annual ceremonies. It doesn’t sound so good.”
“All right, Ronny,” his superior sighed wearily. “Do what you can.” His face faded.
The three stared at each other some more without words. There was nothing to say.
Lee Chang said finally, “Should I check out the ship’s galley? We could eat something before whatever comes next.”
“I couldn’t eat anything,” Ronny said.
“I could,” Boy said, giving the Chinese girl a couple of wags. “I can always eat something.”
“Chowhound,” Plotz said, with the nearest thing to a sneer she could put over, but she too got up to follow Lee Chang.
But it was then that a voice came into all of their minds. The Brahmin’s had been calm, gentle, and in accord with the fact that he was a scholar. This voice had a ring of command.
You will leave the space vessel.
Ronny looked at Lee Chang and then Dorn and came to his feet. He said, “I doubt that disobeying would make much sense. Not to speak of physically resisting.”
They stood, too, wordlessly, and followed him, the two dogs coming along behind.
Boy growled, “By the way, Boss, that conditioning of mine, not to bite people, applies only on Einstein.”
Ronny said, “Well, don’t try it.”
At the top of the gangplank he looked out. Below were nine Dawnmen. Eight of them were drawn up in a squad, the other, obviously in command, was out in front. All were somewhat over six feet in height and all in the vicinity of one hundred and ninety pounds. All were golden of skin, dark cream of hair. They could have been brothers, so similar were they. Not exactly twins, but very similar, including the officer. All were clothed in identical shorts, nothing else, and all wore sandals.The eight bore what looked like Neptune’s trident, of mythology. Their leader carried a swagger stick.
Ronny wasn’t deluded. They might not look very efficiently armed, or dangerous, but he knew better. He started down the gangway and was followed by the others.
He marched up to the officer and said, “Okay. What do you want?”
The officer turned and looked at his men, without speaking. Evidently, he didn’t have to speak. Four of them stepped forward briskly a few paces, then snappily executed a left face and started marching off.
Into the minds of the three Earthlings and their dogs came the order, Follow.
They fell in behind the four.
Behind them, they could hear the remaining four take their place in the march. The officer strode to one side.
Dorn said to Ronny, “Was this the way they dressed the last time you were here?”
“Yes.”
“I get the impression that the climate is always the same. No seasons. Always perfect. They must have unbelievably competent climatic engineers.”
“They’ve got unbelievably competent everything,” Ronny said sourly. “I wonder where in the hell we’re being taken.”
Boy, trotting along beside Ronny, had been sizing up the Dawnmen. He gave a couple of pants and said, “The way they dress, you could really get in a nifty bite on the calf of a leg.”
“Shut up,” Ronny said.
Into their minds came another message. What kind of an… animal is that?
Ronny wondered why the Dawnmen ever asked questions. If they could read his mind, and memory, they could find the answer to any question they might want to ask. Well, perhaps it was simpler, or faster, or whatever. Or possibly only the Brahmins could read memory.
He said, “It’s a dog. On Earth and on most of the humanity-settled planets, we keep them as pets.”
Pets?
It seemed that the Kshatriyas, even the officers, weren’t as astute as the Brahmins.
The Brahmin who had contacted them would have been able to dig out man’s relationship to his pets with no difficulty. But then, that made sense. The Brahmins were the brains of the Dawnworlds, the Kshatriyas were the soldiers. The Dawnmen Ronny had seen on his first visit were Sudras and hadn’t communicated with him at all; in fact, they hadn’t even seemed aware of his existence.
He said, “They serve as companions to us and live in our homes with us. They guard our houses and sometimes have special tasks such as herding other animals.”
Boy looked up at him and said, “Sure enough, Boss. How about pulling dog sleds in Alaska in the old days, stuff like that? I read a book once by an Earth-side writer named Jack London.”
That was the extent of the questioning. They marched on.
Their destination wasn’t far. They had covered approximately a kilometer and a half when an order came into their minds.
Halt!
Simultaneously, the four Dawnmen before them came to a snappy halt and they could hear those behind do the same.
The officer strode forward and suddenly a door opened before him, seemingly in the clear air. Ronny had seen the astonishing phenomenon before but Lee Chang gasped and Dorn’s eyes bugged. Beyond the door could be made out a furnished room.
Enter.
They filed through and the door closed behind them.
The surprise was in the lack of surprise. The room beyond was not as different as all that. In fact, Ronny Bronston couldn’t help comparing it to those in the monasteries of the planet Saint Athos which had been settled by a Greek religious order. It was cell-like, and there was no decoration whatsoever—as befitted a bee-hive culture. The furniture looked comfortable and utilitarian. It came to the Section G agent than any humanoid life form would evolve much the same furniture, the chair, the table, the bed, the couch. But no. The table was off-beat. There were no legs to hold it up. The top just hung there in the air. Some form of anti-gravity was being used.
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