They came out in the planetary system of a sun remarkably like Sol, and within reasonable distance of a planet most remarkably similar to Earth.
The captain muttered, “The coordinates were as perfect as any I’ve ever seen. Much better, in fact.”
Phil Birdman said, “We told you, those little aliens were far and gone in advance of us. Evidently in interplanetary navigation as well as elsewhere.”
Rita Daniels and Ensign Richardson, both looking a bit green about the gills, came into the compartment, cups of some steaming broth in hand.
The captain, his eyes magnetized to the large screen whiph took up a full half of one control compartment wall, threw a lever. Richardson put down his cup and slid into a control chair, so did Takashi.
The captain said to Ronny Bronston, “Well?” Ronny shrugged. “Why put it off? Let’s go closer.” He had an afterthought and said, “You people have some method of detecting any craft down below using nuclear propulsion, haven’t you?”
“Of course. It’s part of the equipment utilized to locate possible wrecks of spacecraft, which have crashed.”
“Could you locate the Baron’s ship, or fleet, as the case may be?”
Volos frowned. “Why do you think he’s here? There are hundreds of star systems on that chart.”
“I’m not sure he is,” Ronny told him. “But this is the nearest of them all. Why should he go further, if he’s in a hurry?”
Rita snapped, “I demand to be put in instant communication with my uncle!”
She was universally ignored, even by young Richardson.
“We can detect him easy enough,” Volos said. “But how can we tell if it’s him, rather than one of these Dawnworld craft? Although I suppose it’s possible that they no longer use nuclear power.”
Richardson turned and stared at him. “Has he talked you into believing that jetsam, sir?”
“I saw a starship at least a thousand times larger than anything in United Planets,” his skipper told him without inflection. “Mr. Richardson, and you others, consider yourselves under the command of Citizens Bronston and Birdman. Countess Wyler, if that is your correct name, you attempted to confound me. Please keep in mind that I am captain of this vessel, no matter who your uncle may be. I expect the respect and cooperation of everyone aboard.”
It was half an hour later before he spoke again.
And then it was to say, “On the face of it, below we have one of your Dawnworlds. It could be nothing else.”
Below them was a world that was a park.
XIII
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
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
