Mack Reynolds - Brain World

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.

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 told 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.”

“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.”