Mack Reynolds - Brain World

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, they 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.