Lester del Rey - The Mysterious Planet

He paused, then smiled at them. “Frankly, we’re very happy to have you to study, because we can probably learn more from you than from older people. You’re too valuable to us for us to mistreat, because we hope to learn to get along with your people through you. You’ll be studied of course. But you have complete freedom of this city, and you’ll be given homes, just like anyone else. We want to observe you in real life, not in false surroundings. And now, welcome to Thule. I’m the president of this world—Orsa Faskin. Your names?”

They gave them, half-convinced of the sincerity of the man. Faskin nodded, and introduced them to their guards, using only first names. Ondu, the first one aboard the ship, Wilna and Valin. Then, apparently satisfied, Orsa turned back to other work. The guards had put their weapons away and now came forward.

“We’ll be living next door to you, wherever you are. A choice partly up to you,” Valin told them. “But since you have no women with you, you might find our hotel comfortable. It’s right in this building, underground for silence, of course.”

“Who cares where we go?” Simon asked. “Sure, put us up in this fancy jail of yours.”

“It’s no jail. You’ll have the same privileges as any citizen of Thule, or as nearly so much as we can possibly arrange.”

“Suppose we try to escape?” Bob asked quickly.

Valin looked surprised. “Where? You could leave the city probably—though we’d rather you didn’t without consulting us first. But this whole planet is your jail— you can’t escape.”

“You’ve got spaceships,” Bob persisted.

“Certainly. But it takes at least twenty people to work one of our ships—we have no small ones. Even if you learned how, you couldn’t use them. And you couldn’t force twenty men, scattered over a huge ship, by threatening them with weapons. As for your own charming ship—that will be securely locked down in a public square for the people of Thule to see.”

Simon looked completely unconvinced. “And I suppose we can buy weapons?”

“No, because we don’t use money yet,” Valin told him. “But you can have my weapon now if it will make you feel better. Since you’re a civilized man, I feel quite safe. You wouldn’t use it against me unless you could gain by it. There is nothing to gain. If you need anything, ask for it and you’ll have it—except a chance to leave Thule.”

Bob reached out a hand as Jakes shook his head. “I’d like that, Valin,” he said. He took the weapon and turned it over, trying to see how it worked.

There was a tiny trigger, and a rifled barrel, but he couldn’t see the works.

“Compressed gas,” Valin said. “The bullet is made of wax containing a drug that spreads through the skin and paralyzes. It also leaves a nasty bruise. Here, you’ll find gas capsules and bullets in this. It’s as effective as the explosives and lead guns we previously used, and a lot less messy.”

They were riding down the escalator now, and switched to another that went down about eight stories below the ground. Bob saw that much of the traffic here was underground, and they had subways, with cars riding on a single rail. Then they came to the “lobby” of the

“hotel,” where Valin asked for two suites—one for his party and one for Bob’s. There was considerable consultation before they decided on a setup which would be generally satisfactory.

The boys’ suite turned out to be rather simply furnished, but comfortable by any standards, including a little communication unit that led to the food-supply department, and a small elevator to bring their orders up. But there were no bellboys, and he found that they would have to clean their own place. Valin seemed surprised at the idea of men who served others directly.

Juan stretched out on the bed, considering things. “It is nice here, Bob,” he decided. “I think I like these people. It is a shame we must kill them or have them kill us.”

“You mean you believe all that guff?” Jakes asked incredulously. “You think they’re all sweetness and light, like they pretend? Juan, you need more stuff in your head than that think-tank of theirs can put in it.”

“But a whole world isn’t a lie,” Juan objected.

“No—and this isn’t a whole world. Look, they get themselves three kids—nice and young, easy to handle; you heard the way the old goat put it. Three kids who come from a military base and know how to run spaceships. They can beat us up, and probably get nothing. Or they can slick up part of a city, and soften us up until we spill everything they might want to know.” Simon spread his hands.

“Those guys have to find out plenty about the Solar System—and we’re elected prize suckers to tell them.”

Bob nodded unhappily. The trouble was that it was going to be hard to resist them. They were probably very good at taming wild beasts—and savage men like the three of them!

VALIN ASSURED BOB that they did indeed have a library, that the language course had included reading, and that there were such things as newspapers to be had in the library. He tagged along on the excuse of showing Bob the way, and then quietly disappeared with a book of his own, leaving the Federation captive surrounded by several books and a pile of the pamphlets which served as newspapers.

Bob had selected the books himself. He was sure that the people of Thule might want to fool him, but equally sure that the whole city wasn’t a hoax. That meant that the library was genuine. Books for a people’s own use might have some propaganda in them, but they’d be altogether more honest than anything he would get by asking questions.

He sat studying through their histories and recent Thule happenings for the rest of the day, except once when Valin had wandered in to suggest that they eat. The food at the nearest food department wasn’t anything Bob could rave about, but he found it edible, and there were a couple of things he even liked. Then he went back to his reading. By the time the library closed and Valin guided him back to the hotel, he had a fair idea of what Thule was all about.

Thule had originally been a planet around another star, almost eighty light-years away. It had had a climate similar to that of Earth; the sun had been bigger and hotter, but the distance to Thule had been greater, to make up for it. Life there had pursued a pattern similar to that on Earth, beginning some billions of years ago and evolving through all its various forms until there were men.

And again, history had been similar. Egypt and Rome had their types, though never quite the same. Actually, the difference began in what might be called the Rome of their history.

Instead of declining into an empire, it had split into two separate republics, one of which had been forced to compete against the other with smaller manpower and less resources. The competition had gotten science started far in advance of Earth’s history, and at a more rapid pace.

A thousand years after the first split, the two republics had again been united into one, this time over the whole world. Ships fled from planet to planet—and their sun had nearly five times as many planets as the sun of Earth.

Then disaster had come. Another star was moving toward their sun. The two would come close—so close that both would erupt toward each other, filling the space with flaming magma, and both probably going through a stage where they blew up completely shortly after separation. Such “novas” occurred regularly, but knowing that it was normal didn’t help them to bear it. In the nova stage, a sun would spread out until it covered nearly all of its planets, before gradually sinking back to its normal size.