Philip Dick - THE WORLD JONES MADE

On and on he pondered. Around and around. And all the time the ship and its invisible companion were getting nearer to Venus.

In the other ship, Frank was in the communications room, bent over the receiver.

"In the first seventy-two hours of the Crisis Government," the faint, static-laden voice of the Earth announcer stated, "there has already been a marked change in the people's morale."

Irma and Frank glanced at each other cynically.

"The previous apathy and futility that characterized life under the Fedgov system has vanished; the man in the street has a new zest, a new purpose in life. He now has confidence in his leaders; he knows that his leaders will act; he knows his leaders are not corrupted by intellectual paralysis."

"What's that mean?" Syd asked dryly.

"It means they act first and think second," Irma said.

The voice raved on. In the corner, the tape recorder was taking it all down. The four people listened avidly, not wanting to miss a word, loathing everything the voice said.

"It's so—silly," Irma said. "So sort of stupid and trashy, like bad advertising. But they believe it; they take it seriously."

"The wheels are rolling," Garry stuttered. "Grinding it out. Swords sharpened cheap—hey, a new business. If we ever get back to Earth. Swords sharpened, armor polished, horses shod. Our slogan is: Everything in Medieval Equipment. If it's medieval, we have it."

Nobody was listening to him; the announcer had finished and the three adults were now sunk in gloomy thought.

"We're lucky," Frank said, after awhile. "If we were back there the People's Crusade Against the Invading Horde would be after us. We're not a horde, and we're not invading, but otherwise we fit pretty well."

"It's a good thing somebody thought to send us away," Syd observed. "Was it Rafferty's idea? That whole business at the end was so confused... I'm still not sure what happened."

"Rafferty was out there," Garry asserted. "I saw him hurrying around. He yelled something in at us, but I couldn't hear him."

"Obviously," Frank said, "they had all this set up; they didn't build these ships that morning. Somebody—probably Rafferty—planned to get us off Earth. That much we can assume. The real problem is: what the hell lies at the other end?"

"Maybe they just wanted to get rid of us," Irma said uneasily. "Sort of dump us out into space. A one-way trip."

"But," Syd pointed out, "if they just wanted to get rid of us, they could have done it years ago. Done it cheaply and easily, without going to all the trouble of building the Refuge, and these ships, all the equipment geared to our needs. It doesn't make sense."

"What's Venus like?" Irma asked Garry. "You read books—you know everything."

The boy flushed. "A barren waste. No air, no life."

"Are you sure?" Frank demanded, unconvinced.

"Arid wastes. No water. Dry dust blowing around. Deserts."

"You donkey," Frank said, disgusted. "That's Mars."

"What's the difference? Mars, Jupiter, Venus, Pluto... they're all the same."

"Are we going to live in a dome with the scout teams?" Syd wondered. "We can't; we'll have to have our own dome. A Refuge inside a Refuge."

"They should have told us." Garry complained.

"There wasn't time," Syd complained.

"Time, hell," Frank retorted. "They've had thirty years to tell us. All my life, year after year, and not one word."

"I'm sorry," Irma said, "but I can't see that it makes any difference. What's there to tell? We know where we're going. There's nothing we can do about it; we can't alter the course of the ships."

"The trouble with us," Syd said thoughtfully, "is that we're used to having things decided for us. We've never really done anything on our own. We're like children; we've never grown up."

"Our womb," Frank agreed. He indicated the ship. "And it's still around us."

"We let them think for us, make our plans. We just drift along, like now. We have no conception of responsibility."

"What else can we do?" Garry demanded.

"Nothing." Syd considered. "I wonder if it'll ever end. I wonder if a time will come when we're on our own, making our own plans,"

Nobody said anything; nobody could imagine what it would be like.

The passage between Earth and Venus took two hundred eighty hours and forty-five minutes. Toward the last stages, when the misty greenish orb had risen and filled up the sky, Frank sat alone in the communications room, hands clenched together, waiting.

The ship was no longer silent. All around him the floor and walls boomed with the din of braking jets. Automatic relays were responding to the planet; a spiraling course was being set that gradually lowered the ship toward the surface. In front of Frank, rows of lights lit up in shifting patterns: robot equipment was engaging itself in answer to the situation.

The audspeaker clicked, sizzled with static, and then spoke. "This is the service dome on Venus." A human voice, loud and very close, not more than a few thousand miles away. "Who are you? Why are you landing? We don't have any reports." The voice sounded hopeful, but skeptical. "Please describe yourselves. Supply ship? Replacements? Troop of dancers?"

Another voice asked: "You bringing us more equipment? We're short as hell on food-processing machinery."

"Books," the first man said emphatically. "Christ, we're dying. What's all this stuff about Jones? Who the hell is Jones? Is all this on the level?"

"You have news?" the other man demanded eagerly. "Is it true they're sending ships out past Sirius? Whole flocks of them?"

Frank sat helpless; there was nothing he could do to answer. The transmitter, like everything else, was robot-controlled. It was terrible to hear the pleading voices, very close by, and not be able to respond.

And then the response came. At first he couldn't imagine where it originated. It boomed out deafeningly; the sound washed over his ears in shattering waves.

"This ship," the voice thundered, "is robot-directed. Its passengers have no control over it. The ship and its companion are under the protection of Fedgov."

It was Doctor Rafferty's voice. The voice, taped and incorporated into the automatic equipment of the ship, was issuing from the bank of lights directly above his head. An old tape, prepared when there was still a Fedgov, when the term still meant something.

"This ship," Rafferty explained, "will guide itself to the restricted installations in the N-area of the planet. The companion ship, also robot-controlled, will follow after an interval of one hour. It is requested that you give the passengers as much cooperation as possible, especially in the event that unforeseen difficulties occur." He added: "This is a taped explanation by a legal representative of Fedgov. It will be repeated until the landing takes place."

The weaker voices returned, full of astonishment. "It's them!" one hollered thinly. "Get the ambulances over to N! They're coming down on automatic!"

Scrambling sounds, and the Venus transmitter clicked off. Now there was only static until, five minutes later, Rafferty's statement thunderously repeated itself.

It continued, spaced by five-minute breaks, until the emergency jets screamed it aside, and the ship plunged into the thick lower bands of atmosphere that enclosed the planet.

Stumbling in his haste, Frank made his way out of the communications room, down the corridor to the lounge. The lounge was empty; the others had left it. Terrified, he raced around in a half-circle, yelling into the uproar. The ship was animate with sound, a screeching organic racket, as if every molecule had grown a mouth and was shrieking out its pain.

Garry appeared and grabbed hold of his arm; he was shouting, but nothing came out: only gestures and mouth-motions. Frank followed along; Garry led him to an interior chamber, a reinforced cell at the heart of the ship. Irma and Syd stood mutely together, eyes wide, skins pale with shock. The chamber was the miniature medical ward of the ship. They had retreated here instinctively, pulling as far into safety as possible.