time, he might succeed.”
“Not if he tried it on me,” Birdman said nastily.
Ronny looked at Richardson, then the skipper. “The fat’s in the fire, gentlemen. One man’s life isn’t very important.”
Richardson said tightly, “Captain, I think he means it.”
Captain Gary Volos rasped, “Very well, but I insist that this, too, be entered in the ship’s log.”
“That log is going to be plumb full before this trip’s over.” Birdman grinned.
Afterwards the two agents sat in the lounge alone over hot drinks.
Ronny growled, “It was lucky I couldn’t sleep.”
“Aw, I could’ve scalped that molly,” the Indian grumbled.
“Not if Mendlesohn would have got around to slugging you on the back of the head.”
Birdman chuckled. “Two down and only three left to go. You think we’ll ever get there without putting them all in the cold? The party gets rougher and rougher.”
Ronny asked suddenly, “Phil, why’d you join Section G?”
“Who, me?” Phil seemed embarrassed. “I don’t know. Better job than I had. Chance to see a lot of the different planets. Get out of the rut. That sort of thing.”
Ronny Bronston went on, as though he hadn’t really heard his companion. “When I was a kid I had the United Planets dream but good. Man exploding out into space, carrying our species to the stars. Going every which way, trying every scheme ever dreamed up from Plato’s Republic to Howard Scott’s technocracy. Trying out every proposed ethic. Trying out a hundred methods of improving the race, by breeding in this, or breeding out that. Planets colonized by nothing but Negroes, others by only people over six and a half feet tall, others by Zen Buddhists, others by persons with I.Q.s of over one-fifty, others by vegetarians, and on and on.”
Phil snorted, missing the earnestness in the other’s tone. “How about Amazonia? A few thousand feminists. No men at all, at first. Artificial insemination. Then when boy kids came along, they enslaved them.”
Ronny said impatiently, “Sure, a lot of them are purely from jetsam, but they’re balanced out by those that are finding new paths, new truths, and really advancing the species. The United Planets dream. An opportunity for everybody to try anything. But what’s the ultimate aim? What’s the goal? To dominate the whole galaxy, the way Rita sees it?”
Phil looked at him questioningly. “Does there have to be a goal?” He was beginning to catch the other’s mood.
“That’s my point. I wonder if there should be. I wonder if the dream wasn’t going better before the Octagon stepped in and decided that UP needed direction.”
“Well, you know how the Old Man would answer that. It was fine to let mankind take off in all directions back when we had no reason to believe there was other intelligent life in the galaxy. But when we ran into those little fellows, then we had to get underway.”
Ronny’s expression was strange. “But underway where? A comparatively small group of men, of Ross Metaxa’s type, decided it was up to them to steer. But of what are they composed that they should know best? Why should Ross Metaxa, and his various supervisors such as Sid Jakes and Lee Chang Chu, be allowed to decide that the government of this planet Amazonia, for instance, should be overthrown and a bi-sexual regime encouraged? Perhaps the matriarchy they’re experimenting with is superior.”
“Yeah.” Phil grinned. “And perhaps not. Especially for
“Yes, but my point is, who is Metaxa to decide? There are tens of billions of members of the race. What makes him so special that he can throw Section G into a local situation on some planet colonized by this opinion group, or that, of their own free will and conscious of what they were going into?”
At long last, Phil Birdman turned throughful. “Maybe I don’t know the answer,” he admitted. “And maybe my decision was a wrong one. But I’m in my mid-forties now and I took my stand quite a time ago. I’m not going to change it now.” He looked at Ronny. “Are you?”
Ronny grunted self-deprecation. “I wouldn’t know what to change it to.”
Ronny Bronston came up behind Captain Volos, who was standing watch in the
The skipper was bug-eying into a zoom-screen. “A spacecraft! I’ve never seen another ship in underspace before. But…but that’s not it. It’s the size. It’s as large as a medium-sized satellite.”
Ronny said, “Let me see.”
The captain grudgingly made room for him.
“I don’t see anything,” Ronny said.
The captain scowled at him and bent over the horizon* tal screen again. “It’s gone!” he blurted. “It can’t be gone!”
“We seem to be approaching the Dawnworlds,” Ronny said dryly. “From what little I know about the Dawnmen, shortly, we’re going to be witnessing a good many things that simply can’t be.”
Gary Volos was still gaping into the zoom-screen.
Ronny said, “How far out are we?”
The captain at last stood erect. “Not very far,” he said. ”
He looked at Ronny Bronston with puzzlement in his face, and also a touch of accusation. He said, “That craft I just saw was far and beyond anything that could be built on any United Planet’s world.”
Ronny said mildly, “I told you that the Dawnworlds are evidently fantastically beyond us, technically.”
Volos shook his head. “I didn’t believe your story. I didn’t know what your game was, but I didn’t believe this tale about other intelligent life forms.”
“Well, Captain, you’d better start thinking about it. The more cool minds we’ve got around, when we come out of underspace, the better off we’re going to be. We have only one small bit of evidence that these critters won’t crisp us immediately upon our materializing.”
“What’s that?” Volos asked, a shade of apprehension in his tone now.
“Those little aliens had photographs, both still and movies, on them. That would indicate that the little fellows actually landed on at least one of the Dawnworlds and were allowed to use whatever camera devices they had and then leave again.”
He indicated the chart on the navigation table. “And that star chart. It shows hundreds of star systems in red. I’ve assumed that those are all Dawnman settled. The little fellas must have sent out various expeditions to compile that extensive a chart. Which means, in turn, that the Dawnmen allowed them to do it.”
“Didn’t you say that the atmosphere of the planets the little aliens were on was changed to what was poison for them?”
“That’s right. Eventually, they must have done something to irritate these Dawnmen; but before they did, they must have done considerable exploring about the Dawnmen domains.”
Ronny thought for a moment, then said, “I suppose you might as well start the process of reviving Rita Daniels and young Richardson. We’re not going to be in any position to remain divided among ourselves after breakout from underspace.”
“All right,” the captain said nervously. He spoke into an order box.
Ronny said, “Look. This trip hasn’t been any too happy, thus far, which isn’t surprising. But now that we’re here, I want to let you know that so far as the operation of the
Volos looked shamefaced. “My instructions were to put myself and command under your orders. I’m sorry I got around to following them so tardily. Very well. I captain the
His eyes flicked to the control panels. “We’re coming out.” He reached over and threw an alarm.
Within moments, Birdman and Lieutenant Takashi hurried into the compartment.
Takashi, his characteristically bland face showing un-oriental-like excitement, said, “Mendlesohn’s bringing the others out of the cold.”
The captain said, “We’re emerging.”
