Mack Reynolds - Dawnman Planet

Below them was a world that was a park.

It was as though you took a planet, approximately the size of Earth itself and transformed the whole into a landscaped garden. As though you made of the whole, a cinema set portraying the Garden of Eden, the Garden of Allah, the Promised Land, the Islands of the Blest, Zion, the Elysian Fields… what will you, for Paradise?

Rita Daniels hissed her breath in.

Takashi said shakily, “I can detect a nuclear powered ship. Only one. Seemingly larger than our own size.”

Rita said, unthinking, “Uncle Max’s yacht. It’s the fastest…” Then she clammed up.

Ronny said, “Try to pinpoint it, Lieutenant.” He looked at the captain. “No radio contact? No nothing?”

The captain shook his head. “I would think there would be some sort of patrol. Some sort of defense mechanism. But there doesn’t seem to be. I can’t even pick up any radio waves.”

“Possibly they don’t use radio waves any longer,” Birdman muttered.

Richardson looked at him in disgust. “You’ve got to use radio waves,” he said. “You can’t run an advanced technology without radio waves.”

Phil Birdman said, “You mean, you can’t run our technology without radio waves.”

Richardson blinked. “Just how far ahead of us are they supposed to be?”

Nobody answered him.

Ronny said to the captain, “What do you say we orbit her a few times, coming closer slowly?”

Several hours later, it was Rita who said, mystified, “But there aren’t any cities.”

And Phil Birdman said, disbelief in his own voice, “Maybe they don’t use cities, either.”

Takashi said, “There are a few worlds in United Planets that don’t have cities.”

“Yes,” the captain muttered, “but the most backward of all. Places like Kropotkin, the anarchist experiment, arid the planet Mother, with the Stone Age naturalists. By the looks of this world, the whole thing has been landscaped. That’s not exactly within the capabilities of either anarchists or nature lovers, who refuse to utilize any inventions more complicated than the bow and arrow.”

Ronny said thoughtfully, “Early man didn’t have cities. They first came in as defense centers for the new developing agriculturalists, against raiding nomads. Later on, they became centers for trade, and when social labor came in, large numbers of people had to live close together to work in manufacture.”

“What are you getting at?” Rita asked.

“Well, perhaps these people, if they actually have matter converters, no longer need manufacturing or trade. No longer have to live in each others’ laps.”

The captain muttered, “I can’t even make out individual houses. Or, for that matter, any signs of agriculture.”

Mendlesohn said, awe in his voice, “Do you think that this could be a whole planet just devoted to being a park? Possibly their other planets are so built up and crowded that they’ve kept this one just for the sheer beauty of it.”

Phil Birdman said, “Look at that herd of deer, or whatever they are!” His voice tuned low. “The Happy Hunting Ground.”

“What?” Ronny asked.

“Nothing. How long does it take to breed out of a people, the instinct of the chase?”

Takashi said suddenly, “There. There’s a city for you. And it’s not too far from where I detected the nuclear powered spacecraft.”

It was an area of possibly a square mile and the buildings were unique, even at a distance.

The captain looked at Ronny Bronston.

Ronny thought about it. “Let’s drop closer,” he said. “From all we know, if they’d wanted to crisp us they could have done so long before this. A race that could produce a spaceship as large as the one you saw, would have weapons to match.”

They hovered over the complex of buildings, descending slowly, until the screens could pick out considerable detail.

“There in the center,” Richardson said, “a pyramid. It looks like a Mayan pyramid.”

“What is a Mayan pyramid?” Rita asked. Her voice held the same awe of this strange world as did the others.

Ronny said, “Your Earth history has been neglected, my dear. You spent too much of your time reading up on the strongmen. The Mayans were an early civilization in the southern part of North America. They…” He broke off suddenly as something came to him. “This isn’t a city. It’s a complex of religious buildings. Maybe schools, things like that, too. But it’s not a city. Not in the sense of large numbers of persons living in it.”

“There’s one thing for sure”—Phil nodded—“there aren’t a good many people down there. What’s that, on top of the pyramid?”

The skipper focused the small zoom-screen, quickly flashed it off again, his face pale.

“What’s the matter, Captain?” Richardson asked. “Why didn’t you throw it up on the large screen for the rest of us?”

Volos said to Ronny tightly, “Didn’t you tell us that these so-called Dawnmen were sort of a copperish color?”

“That’s right. Great, beautiful physical specimens. Rather a golden color.”

The captain fiddled with his small zoomer again, finally located something and switched it to the compartment’s large screen for all to see.

It was a small group of the Dawnworld people, both men and women. All were dressed in no more than loin cloths, or short kilts. All seemed approximately twenty-five years of age. All were in obvious sparkling health.

“These, eh?” the captain said, his voice strange.

Ronny looked at him. “Yes, of course. Those are the Dawnmen. They don’t look particularly hostile or aggressive, do they?”

Volos said very slowly, “That wasn’t a Dawnman on the top of the pyramid.”

Ronny said, “If Baron Wyler is in the vicinity, it means two things: No matter how much of a headstart he got on us, he hasn’t managed to get what he came after, as yet. Which means, in turn, that we’ve got to get a move on.”

All the others looked at him.

“Well, what’s the program?” Birdman asked.

“The Baron—if that’s his craft we’ve detected—is on the ground,” Ronny said thoughtfully. “We’re going to have to land, too. Skipper, what say that you edge over a mile or so, beyond the limits of this city, or whatever it is, and drop one of us to reconnoiter?”

The captain turned to his control panel, silently.

He drifted the Pisa to the north, brought it down carefully in what was seemingly an isolated glen, devoid of life.

Ronny went to the hatch, Birdman and Takashi accompanying him, the others remaining in the control compartment, glued to the screens.

Lieutenant Takashi eyed the scanners built into the bulkhead over the hatch. “Almost identical to Earth atmosphere, Bronston,” he reported.

Ronny said, “Well, here goes nothing, then.”

The captain came up behind them.

“Citizen Birdman, Lieutenant, would you leave me with Citizen Bronston for a moment?”

Phil’s eyebrows raised and he looked at Ronny, but then shrugged, and following the junior officer, went back into the control room.

Ronny asked, “What was it you saw at the top of the pyramid?”

“That’s what I came back to tell you. I thought perhaps you’d just as well not alarm the girl—and the balance of the ship’s complement, for that matter.”

Ronny looked at him.

The captain cleared his throat. “It was what seemed to be an altar, and on it, a man.”

“A Dawnman?”

“An Earthman. Or, to be more accurate, I suppose, a Phrygian. But, at any rate, a member of the human race, not a Dawnman.”

Ronny sucked in air. Finally, he said, “All right. Drop me. Then take off again. I’ll keep in touch, through Agent Birdman. If anything happens to me, he’s in command.”