Ronny joined with Dorn in gaping at him. Ronny Bronston knew precious little about precious stones but this one was obviously a gem that a Byzantine emperor would have been proud of.
Marvin said, a bit uncomfortably, “I suppose that this is the purpose of our getting together. You wish to learn something of the workings of Einstein before our admission into United Planets. What I meant was that in our society nothing has exchange value since we produce for use rather than for sale with a view to profit. So far as exchange value is concerned, the stone is worth neither more nor less than this shirt I wear, or this house which we are in.”
The two Section G agents tried to assimilate that. In their time they had been on worlds with some truly off- beat socio-economic systems.
Dorn and Ronny looked at each other.
Dorn said, “Can you think of anything else to ask, immediately?”
Ronny thought about it for a moment before looking at Rosemary and saying, “Yes. When we first met, you called me the
Darlene chirped a charming laugh. “We’re not as uninformed as all that. Of all humanity, you and one other Bureau of Investigation agent, Phil Birdman, are the only ones ever to have landed on a Dawnworld Planet… and survived.”
Dorn Horsten and Ronny Bronston suddenly went cold and hard.
“Not exactly,” Ronny said finally. “The others were brainwashed. Where and what did you hear about the Dawnworld Planets?”
Dorn added flatly, “Their very existence is top secret.”
Chapter Eleven
It all came back to Ronny Bronston.
He had been a First Grade Agent at the time when a small exploratory task force came upon the planets where the monkey-sized intelligent life forms originated. They had inhabited twelve planets in three star systems. It had been determined that theirs was a life form which breathed an oxygen-nitrogen combination, as did man, but when found their worlds all had a methane-hydrogen-ammonia atmosphere. In short, poison gas. It would seem that some other advanced race had completely destroyed them.
It was obvious, too, that the race beyond the small intelligent life form was far from benevolent. Ross Metaxa had taken a chance and summoned the heads of state of the most advanced worlds belonging to the United Planets and revealed to them the true nature of Section G and how it had been subverting Articles One and Two of the United Planets Charter in order to prod mankind into all-out progress.
It had been a mistake. It was found that man will not necessarily unite in the face of a common danger if his political, socioeconomic or religious institutions are threatened.
Some of the member planets had immediately dropped out of the confederation, and Ross Metaxa was afraid that if the story spread, and the more backward worlds found that their institutions had been tampered with by Section G, that they would desert
Indeed, the ambitious Supreme Commandant of the militaristically inclined planet Phrygia, Baron Maximilian Wyler, had taken off almost immediately in his space yacht and headed home. And it was soon found that he dominated Interplanetary Press, the news service.
Metaxa had dispatched Ronny Bronston under vague orders to do whatever could be done to shut up the Baron.
On the way, Ronny had become acquainted with Rita Daniels, niece of the dictator of Phrygia, who had dropped information indicating just how ambitious Wyler was.
On Phrygia he had found that there was only one other Section G agent there, Phil Birdman, of Indian descent and originally from the planet Piegan. Birdman had accumulated information that indicated that Baron Wyler was eager to attack his neighboring worlds and to form an empire. Ronny had gotten in touch with Metaxa and Jakes and made arrangements for him to be named a plenipotentiary extraordinary from United Planets to the Supreme Commandant of Phrygia. The Baron evidently had some of his heavies out looking for Ronny Bronston, and Ronny wanted to throw around some weight.
Metaxa saw it through. The president had declared Ronny a special mission to Baron Wyler and Sid Jakes had notified the Supreme Commandant that Ronald Bronston was on his way.
The reception had been more than impressive. Above ground, the Baron’s palace was a replica of that of King Minos’ Knossos, complete with guards in Cretan armor, even to chariots. Below ground, it was the height of modernity.
Ronny had been whisked to the Supreme Commandant’s personal quarters in the bowels of the building. When the elevator door had opened, he was confronted by a tall, heavy-set man, his face beaming and his hand extended for a hearty shake. Baron Wyler carried his weight well; gracefully might be the better word. He moved as a trained pugilist moves, or perhaps one of the larger cats. His charm reached out and embraced you, all but suffocating you. His face was open; his eyes, blue and wide-set; his arched Hapsburg nose giving an aristocratic quality that only his overwhelming friendliness could dissipate.
Ronny had been taken to as comfortable a room as the Section G agent could ever remember having been in and there had been surprised to find that Wyler had a complete dossier on him down to the most intimate facts.
He also had some startling information. His space fleet had landed on the worlds of the small life forms and, wearing gas masks, had gathered up what information they could. This included a star chart of the some hundred of what the Baron called the Dawnman Worlds and of various films and tapes which had obviously been taken on these worlds.
He showed one of these films to Ronny, in particular a close-up of one of the Dawnmen. “But that’s a human being!” Ronny had blurted. The Dawnman was incredibly handsome. He was dressed in nothing more than brief shorts and sandals. He had a golden-brown coloration, was of bodily perfection seldom seen and then only among physical culture perfectionists who spend a lifetime achieving it. He could have stepped off a pedestal in a Greek temple devoted to the god Apollo. He seemed to be about six and a half feet tall and to weigh about one hundred and ninety. His hair was dark cream, his eyes were blue and very clear and there was the slightest of smiles on his lips! There was no indication that he was aware of being photographed.
Baron Wyler had told Ronny that evidently the technology of the Dawnworlds was incredibly advanced. They had such things as nuclear fusion, and, hence, unlimited power, and matter conversion units that could make anything out of anything. But, said the Baron, there was just one thing in which the Dawnmen differed from man. These aliens didn’t seem to be intelligent.
Ronny had bug-eyed him and Baron Wyler had summoned one of his top scientists, the elderly Academecian Count Felix Fitzjames to help explain. He had dubbed this alien culture the Dawnmen because there was a hypothesis that man had originated there and that Earth had been seeded from one of their planets, that Cro- Magnon man was of the same stock.
The academician explained why it was possible that the Dawnmen were not intelligent. Given a creature with a voicebox and a hand suitable for using tools and, even though his intelligence was low, in a few megayears, bit by bit, he would accumulate knowledge and know-how until in time even matter converters would be his to utilize.
Count Fitzjames had gone on to compare, the Dawnworlds with the caste system of India. The Aryan invaders of the sub-continent had been afraid that unless they took stringent measures, they would soon interbreed with the more numerous indigenous people to the point of merging with them. So they divided society into four orders: the Brahmins, who kept up religious and scholarly pursuits; the Kshatriyas, who were the ruling class and warriors; and the Vaishyas, traders and businessmen. All these were composed of the conquering Aryans.
