Dawnman Planet

With no other idea of what to do in mind, he walked in the direction of the city, or religious buildings, or whatever they were.

He rounded a bend and came upon what could only be a picnic. A group of the Dawnpeople, about ten of them, were seated on the bank of a stream. There were both men and women, all seemingly somewhere between the ages of twenty and thirty: All absolutely perfect physical specimens. If anything, the perfection was its own drawback. They were, Bronston decided, too perfect.

Not a woman nor a man among them but wouldn’t have met the highest standards of Tri-Di sex symbol back on Earth, or any of the other planets that continued the fan system of theater. No Greek goddess could have rivaled a single of these women in pulchritude. Paris would have had his work cut out, choosing whom to give his apple.

Ronny hesitated. Obviously, these people were at their leisure, enjoying themselves. He disliked to intrude.

But then it came to him, that given fusion power and matter converters, they must have considerable in the way of leisure. Besides, they would be interested in him as a complete alien. He might as well take the plunge.

He stepped nearer and said, “I beg your pardon,” feeling like a flat at the words, but the ice had to be broken somehow. He assumed that a race this advanced would have some method of communicating with him. Some technician who…

But then, Baron Wyler’s words came back to him: these Dawnpeople are not intelligent.

Nonsense! On the face of it…

But on the face of it, they didn’t even see him.

He stepped closer.

They went on with their picnic, if that’s what it was. They ignored him, completely, enthusiastically. He stepped so close that they couldn’t possibly have missed his presence.

And it wasn’t as though they were blind. He could see them performing actions that obviously required the coordination of hand and eye.

One of them, an absolutely perfectly formed girl wearing nothing but sandals and a colorful kilt, picked up a handful of sand and gravel from the stream’s bank and turned with it to a low table. There was, on the table, a device that reminded Ronny of nothing so much as a primitive coffee grinder he had once seen in an Earth museum. She poured the dirt into a funnel-shaped hole on the top and touched a switch or stud.

She opened a small door and brought forth what was seemingly a piece of fruit, though unrecognizable as to type by the Section G agent. She began to munch it.

Ronny Bronston closed his eyes in surrender.

He said, in sudden exasperation, “Look, won’t somebody give me a steer?”

They still didn’t notice him.

He looked at the gathering more closely. There were several of the coffee-grinder devices. Evidently, they were in continual use. Some of the Dawnpeople were drinking from intricately shaped glasses, some eating various unidentifiable foodstuffs. They laughed. One or two sang, from time to time, in that strange trilling manner Ronny had heard earlier from his first contact.

They were obviously having one whale of a time.

He stared at the devices.

With unbelievably good luck, he had stumbled, within a half hour of the first landing on the Dawnworld, on one of their matter converters. They were paying no attention to him. He might as well have not existed. Suppose he took one of the things up. What would they do? It was hard to believe that any of these people were apt to resort to violence. And most certainly they carried no weapons.

But that gave him pause. Given the occasion, who could say but that they were capable of pouring a handful of sand into one of their gismos and bring forth a pistol to end all pistols?

But this was his obvious chance. For whatever reason, the Baron was evidently still on this planet. His expedition, thus far, had failed. If Ronny could acquire one of these working models of matter transformers, Section G’s technicians could possibly take it apart, duplicate it, come up with larger models.

He went so far as to tentatively reach forth a hand toward the nearest. They continued to ignore him. By not a flicker of eye did they admit to his presence.

Ronny drew his hand back.

He wondered wildly if he were invisible to them. But no. Obviously these people were human. Perhaps not exactly of his genus, but most certainly they were of the species Homo. This world of theirs had obviously been landscaped to please their own taste. It pleased his as well. They saw what he saw.

He stared at the matter converter. There it was. There was victory over the Baron and his plans to dominate.

Something kept him. Intuition? What? He didn’t know. He was disgusted with himself. Why not snatch it up?

His communicator hummed. Impatiently, he snatched it from his pocket. It was Birdman again.

“What is it?” Ronny snapped.

“Baron Wyler,” the Indian said urgently. “He’s made contact with us.”

“Oh.” Ronny paused. The Baron’s space yacht was considerably larger than the four man United Planets Space Cruiser. Ronny had no doubt that it was armed with the most efficient weapons the Baron could find.

He asked, “What does he want?”

“Help.”

XIV

For the moment, he didn’t allow himself to dwell further on that. He snapped, “Tell the skipper to get down here and pick me up.”

“Right,” Phil said, and faded.

Ronny Bronston went back to the grove in which the Pisa had set him down such a short time before. His mind was in a whirl. He held in abeyance Birdman’s information about the Baron, and tried to find some rhyme or reason about his own discoveries.

Wyler and Fitzjames must have been right. These people were not intelligent in the sense of the word that Homo sapiens implied. Intelligent, somehow, he supposed. But with a different intelligence. He shook his head in exasperation.

The Pisa came gently to rest, and he went over to it as quickly as was safe.

The captain and Birdman were at the lock when he entered.

Ronny snapped, “What’s all this… ?”

Phil Birdman said, “Wyler took the initiative. I suppose he picked us up as quickly as we did his yacht. At any rate, he contacted us. He says he wants help.”

“Help from what?”

“He didn’t say.”

They went back to the control room and joined the others.

Ronny said, “It’s a trap, he’s trying to suck us in.”

Captain Volos shook his head. “I don’t think so. On the screen, he looked like a broken man. Obviously, he knows you’ll place him under arrest. That all his plans are shot.”

Phil Birdman said, “Listen, let’s leave him in whatever juice he’s stewing in. If it’s a trap, we won’t spring it. If he’s really in trouble, it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”

Rita held a small fist to her mouth.

Ronny shook his head. “No,” he said. “Let’s get over there. No matter what, he’s our people, and we’re all in a strange land.” He grumbled, “A damnably strange land.”

While the captain and his crew turned to their ship’s controls, Rita looked at Ronny Bronston. She said softly, “You’re not the worst person around, young fella.”