The little Atakit was a sorry sight. His fine far was plastered down with sea water and he was somewhat muddy about the feet.
“Peep!” cried Mal when he was close enough to be heard. “Did you go in swimming?”
Peep sat down at the top of the ladder and began to squeeze handfuls of water out of his fur. “Inadvertently,” he said. “Yes.”
“But what happened?” asked Mal.
“We will say no more about it,” said Peep. “It is a tender subject.”
“Oh,” said Mal. “Of course.”
“I will merely postulate,” Peep went on, “that the life of a non-violent person is a difficult one. A short ways up the beach from here is a sort of quay or jetty sticking out into the water where it was deep. I strolled out on it and found myself a comfortable spot near the end of it where I could sit and meditate. Happening to glance down into the water, however, I was interested to discover a good deal of marine life in the vicinity.”
“Oh?” put in Mal, filling a pause in the narrative. “There was one large fish in particular that seemed to use the rock supports of the jetty as a sort of lurking place in which to waylay other, smaller fish. I became quite absorbed in him as I lay there, feeling a particular surge of empathic feeling which caused me to imagine myself, lying in wait, powerful, silent, single-mindedly alert for prey. I responded, in fact I thrilled to the feeling. At that moment I felt as if that fish was my own kin.”
“Uh—I see,” said Mal.
“And then—without warning—my lurking brother shot forward—his jaws flashed open, and when they closed again, a smaller fish twitched helplessly in their grasp. I need not detail you my reaction.”
“No, of course n—”
“As quick as thought itself, all my love for the predator was wiped away, and in replacement my heart broke for the poor victim. Without a thought, I launched myself into the water, my hands outstretched to rend and tear the murderer. Of course I missed him—”
“You did?”
“And had to walk back along the bottom until I came out on shore, being far too heavy to swim in the impure hydrogen oxide you have so much of around here. But the point is—” wound up Peep, severely—“that both attitudes were completely honest ones. And the two together form a paradox.”
“I suppose it’s natural,” began Malcolm vaguely. “But you were lucky you didn’t drown.”
“Drown?” echoed Peep, interrupting his fur-squeezing to look up curiously. “Oh —drown! That was hardly likely, my young friend. As you must know, there is oxygen in what you call water. Even your lungs could extract it if they were used to doing so and had the chest muscles to breathe such a medium easily. Doing so does, of course, require a much higher respiratory rate, since there is not all that much oxygen there. So you might say I more or less had to pant a bit to breathe underwater—nonetheless, the exercise was quite practical. But to return to my moral dilemma. To give a problem a name is not to solve it.”
He paused, looking severely at Mal.
“Oh?” said Mal, numbly, his head still occupied with the thought of Peep breathing underwater.
“Indeed,” said Peep. “And the dichotomy involved is common. I, the individual, abhor the idea of a living creature being the target of a hunter’s sport. But let me, the same individual, casually pick up a weapon such as those used on such occasions, and I thrill to the thought of that same creature being my target. Yet the second feeling is no more to be conquered than the first. In fact—” added Peep, a trifle wistfully— “I sometimes weasel a little bit by imagining that my quarry on such occasions is another Atakit. There is such a long and glorious history of extermination among ourselves, and justifications for it, that it is hard to feel guilty where one of my own species is concerned. I have the lingering impression that they ought to be able to take care of themselves by this time—if you follow me, young friend.”
“Look Peep—” broke in Mal, who had been waiting impatiently for this peroartion to come to a close. “You’re a Federation citizen, aren’t you?” Peep got to his feet and started back toward the cottage; and Mal fell into step beside him. The little Atakit considered the question as he walked, his head thoughtfully a little on one side.
“I suppose you could say so,” he answered at last. “Your word citizen doesn’t quite fit, but yes, I think you could say so.”
“Well, tell me,” said Malcolm impatiently. “Is there some kind of Federation representative here on Earth that we could get in touch with?”
“Representative?” echoed Peep.
“You know,” said Mal, “a sort of consul.”
“Dear me, no,” said Peep promptly. “There’s no need for anything like that. Since you people can’t leave your system, why have someone on duty here? The nearest—er—person of official status would probably be on Arcturus.”
Mal’s hopes fell.
“How do you get in touch with the authorities if you need to?” he demanded somewhat desperately.
“What for?” asked Peep.
Mal gave up that line of questioning; and brought it back to grounds with which he was more familiar.
“The point is,” he said, “I do want to get in touch. If we could build a model of my drive and show it to some Federation official, the Quarantine would be lifted, we’d automatically become Federation citizens and the Company couldn’t touch us.”
“Well, there’ll be an interstellar ship by in about ten years that I was thinking of taking when I left, ” said Peep thoughtfully. “But you seem in somewhat of a hurry. What drive?”
Mal blinked. He had forgotten that the Atakit knew nothing of their situation. They had reached the porch of the cottage by the time he finished explaining it, up to and including his plans for building the drive.
“An excellent idea,” said Peep without the slightest hesitation, when Mal finished explaining. And referring to the plans he added: “I can see a lot of violence being avoided.”
Chapter Six
It was two o’clock the following afternoon before Mal thought fit to Spring his plans upon the rest of them. By that time they had all risen and eaten what was either breakfast, lunch or dinner, depending on how you looked at it. It was, in fact, just as Margie started feeding the disposable plates into the converter and Dirk shoved back his chair preparatory to getting up from the table that Mal decided to call the meeting to order.
“Come back and sit down,” he said to Margie. “We’ve got something to talk out.”
Thoughtfully, Margie disposed of the last of the plates and then returned to the table. They sat facing each other, the four of them, including Peep, who beamed on them all impartially.
“What’s the idea?” asked Dirk.
“Plans,” said Mal. “I had a talk with Peep last night—”
“Peep!” interrupted Dirk.
“That’s right,” said Mal. “What’s wrong with that?”
“Well—” said Dirk. They were all looking at him and he flushed a little with embarrassment. “After all he’s an Alien,” he said doggedly.
“I like Peep,” Margie said.
This had the expected effect of bringing the attention of both men at once upon her while they explained simultaneously but for differing reasons that liking him had nothing to do with it, it was a matter of hard fact, etc. And in the verbal melee that followed the issue was lost and they were finally able to settle down to business.
“What it boils down to, Dirk,” said Mal, when this enviable point had been reached, “is that I’ve been thinking that the drive may be the solution to all our problems.”
Dirk nodded. “You may be right at that,” he replied.
“I’ve been concentrating too much, probably, on my own problem. If the Quarantine was lifted, that’d break most of the Company’s power here and I shouldn’t have much trouble getting a court hearing on my rights.”
“Well, do you all want to hear what I’ve thought of?” asked Mal.
“Go ahead,”
said Dirk.
The other two nodded and Mal launched into his ideas of the preceding night—or rather, early that same morning. When he had finished, there was silence around the table.
“Well? What do you think?” demanded Malcolm.
“I,” said Peep, “must confess to ignorance of your economic system and cannot therefore comment. But—” he beamed at Mal— “I like your spirit.”
“Thank you,” said Mal.
“Not at all,” said Peep.
“I think it sounds fine!” burst in Dirk. “I’ve got all sorts of junk lying around that’s salable— haven’t I, Margie?”
“You certainly have,” said Margie. “But I’m not sure it’s going to do us any good.” The seriousness of her tone brought the eyes of the others upon her.
“It’s a good idea,” she went on. “But I don’t think any of you stopped to think of how many plain, ordinary business contacts the Company has. Just how long do you think we could stay hidden if Dirk were involved in commercial transactions where he had to use his own name?”
Her words brought an immediate pall of silence. Margie had, unfortunately, put her finger on the flaw in the plan. Mal frowned at her.
“What else have you got to suggest?” he demanded. She hesitated.
“Nothing,” she said truthfully, “except—” She stopped.
“Go on,” prompted Dirk.
“Just a small suggestion,” she said. “I’ve been thinking where we could hide. The best thing, it seems to me, is to be a needle in a haystack.”
“And how do you propose to do that?” Mal broke in. The gray eyes she turned on him were troubled and uncertain.
“There’s a place on Venus called New Dorado,” she said hesitantly.
“That’s right,” said Dirk, excitedly catching on to her idea. “The place where the pellucite strikes are being made. The new frontier. The—”
“And what’s all this got to do with us?” asked Mal.
“New Dorado is growing so fast,” said Margie. “The population is supposed to have grown—oh—almost quintupled in the past six years alone. In a place like that it would be awfully hard to find three strangers—let alone the fact that they’ll probably be looking for us in the empty areas here on Earth.”
“But how about the drive?” demanded Mal. “That part of what I was talking about still holds. Building the drive is our only way of getting the Federation’s protection.”
“Then what’s the use of even trying?” said Dirk. “How could we ever get to Arcturus, even if you did build it?”
“Let me build it and I’ll get us to Arcturus,” said Mal. Suddenly his face lit up with an idea. “Say!” he cried. “How about my building a working model into the flyer—that one of Peep’s?”
“Young friend,” interrupted the Atakit suddenly. “You forget my flyer is primarily an atmosphere model and would never take you as far as Venus. That is—if you really intend to go to this New Dorado of yours.” The look of triumph that accompanied Mal’s last suggestion faded from his face.
“That’s true,” he said thoughtfully.
“But there’s no problem in that!” burst out Dirk excitedly. “There isn’t a Company millionaire on the east coast that doesn’t have a space yacht. And I know them all and where they keep them.”
The others exchanged looks.
“Not a bad idea,” said Mal calculatingly. “Which one do you suppose would be the easiest to get away with?” Dirk thought for a minute.
“Josh Biggs!” he said at last. “That old son of a gun drops his on his front lawn and lets it lie there until he thinks about it two weeks later. All we have to do is walk up, get in, and take off.”
“Doesn’t his pilot lock up?” asked Mal.
“Oh, Josh doesn’t have a pilot,” answered Dirk, “he fancies himself a hot spaceman and does his own piloting.”
“Well,” said Mal slowly, “it sounds like a good idea.” The tension broke around the table and he grinned at the others. “Everybody agree?”
They agreed.
Late that evening they took off. At Mal’s direction, Peep took the flyer up and leveled her off in a screaming run across the continent. Inside of two hours they were nosing down toward the eastern edge of the continent. Dirk took over the directions and they dropped, gently as a falling leaf, into the shadows flung by a stately group of conifers, tall and silent in the moonlight.
“Here we are,” said Mal, swinging open the flyer door. He looked out on the moon-silvered lawn and back into the shadowy interior of the flyer.
“Margie,” he said. “You stay here. And be ready to take off. It we don’t make it, we’ll come hooting back in one large hurry. Dirk, you and I’ll have a shot at getting the space yacht into the air. Peep—?”
In spite of himself the little Atakit’s black eyes were dancing with excitement. He blinked once, and the light in them went out.
“I am sorry,” he said simply. “There is too much danger of my being aroused to violence. And I’ve done too much already. I will wait for you both here.”
Mal nodded. He beckoned; and Dirk followed him out. The lawn on which they approached the mansion was clipped and thick and soft beneath their feet.
“Now what?” asked Mal in a whisper. “Where does he keep it?”
“Around the other side of the mansion,” answered Dirk. “I’ll show you the way.”
It took them close to fifteen minutes to circumnavigate the tall, sprawling building. They rounded a corner finally and saw it—a long, beautiful torpedo shape bright-glistening in the moonlight. The thick observation windows in the nose gleamed with the dull luster of black obsidian, reflecting the darkness inside. The heavy, circular port stood half ajar on the side facing them.
“This is it?” said Mal, almost in awe, for even his imagination had not been able to conjure up anything as luxurious as this.
“This is it,” replied Dirk.
They went up along the silver-gleaming side, through the entry port which stood half ajar in the moonlight and down a long carpeted corridor into a spacious control room. There, in the light from the vision screen set in one wall, glittered the simple standard controls which Alien engineering had adapted to all human ships and which everyone nowadays learned about in secondary school.
Mal sat gingerly down in the padded pilot’s chair before the control board and touched the exciter key. No sound passed through the ship, but a little light sprang redly awake on the board. A few more touches on the controls and the yacht lifted lightly into the air, drifted across the mansion and dropped down to swallow the waiting atmosphere ship of Peep and Margie by the efficient medium of the yacht’s wide cargo hatches.
“It can’t be this easy,” said Mal uneasily.
But it was.
The space yacht Nancy Belle rose gently like some Silver torpedo from the soft turf. Gently upward, like a feather, she floated, flashed once in the moonlight—and was gone.
Chapter Seven
New Dorado in the Venusian Midlands would have been a tent city if tents had still been in use by the human race. As it was, it was a city of ramshackle, hastily blown plastic bubbles, crowded and jammed together as chance directed. The plateau which was its base stood like some huge, upthrust island pushing out of the green jungle below; and every inch of its forty square miles of area was jammed and crowded with miners—prospectors, for the most part, individuals with a small stake, a battered atmosphere flyer and a great deal of hope for the hard, white organic deposits that went by the trade name of pellucite, and which the Federation found so valuable for some unexplainable purpose.
But the larger outfits were represented there also. In particular, Solar Metal, Pellucite, Inc., and Venus Metals, all subsidiaries of the Company itself. These organizations were no longer deeply involved in the terraforming process that had begun on Venus—with Alien aid—seventy years ago; the spore-seeded jungle was now maintaining itself while it transformed the atmosphere and surface of the
planet. The huge warehouses needed early in that process were still useful, however, supplying the plateau and providing quarters for what few small industries there were, such as the factory that turned out the bubble plastic for the miners’ shacks and structures, the hydroponics layout, and a good share of the entertainment property of the plateau.
The companies also prospected. That is, they sent gangs of men out to comb the jungle below in search of pellucite pockets, in the same fashion that the individual prospector followed. But by and large their biggest business was in buying up claims once they had been discovered by an independent, and then sending in an ore-extractor crew to blast out the bucketfuls to a small truckload of pellucite that was there. In fact, it was not practical to work much otherwise. Pellucite finds occurred in such small quantities and in such randomly scattered locations that it was neither practical nor efficient to keep men on a payroll just to prospect.
By far the largest percentage of the population of New Dorado was made up, therefore, of the free-lance miners. These either located the claim and sold it immediately or else grubbed out the ore immediately themselves and brought it in for sale at a slightly higher rate. And, as with most mining booms, all made money, but very few kept it. What they did not keep went directly or indirectly back to the Company through the gambling devices and drugs that could temporarily take a man away from the tangled, steamy wetness of the jungle below.
New Dorado had one landing field. That landing field was the plateau itself. A ship approaching the town signaled its desire to come in, and the control officer in the tower picked out some few square yards of unoccupied space on the plateau’s muddy surface and directed the newcomer there. The fact that that space might be the ordinary parking area of someone else who was temporarily absent was no concern of the tower officer, and was treated as such.
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