The Mysterious Planet, page 10
leave someone behind.”
It looked more like the latter. The Icarius continued to gain distance, while the black ships moved about over the surface, as if directing some type of searching beam downward. Then they all clumped together, and began moving straight upward, toward the Icarius.
Jakes groaned and tried to nurse another bit of speed out of his straining jets. But they were already at maximum, and nothing more could be done.
The black ships seemed to be thinking things over for a moment more. Then one of them leaped into an acceleration about twice what the Icarius could pull, others seconding the move. The distance began to narrow, more and more rapidly.
They were still less than a fifth of the way to Outpost, and their chances were growing slimmer every second. There was no way to outrun the ships. There was no basis for comparison—it was something like a snail trying to outrun an eagle.
Again the black ships increased their acceleration, until it must have been nearly fifty gravities. Bob hadn’t quite believed his memory of the other tunes, but he believed this. He didn’t want to, but there was no way to deny it. The ships were moving toward the Icarius at a rate which made the result a matter of a minute or less.
Jakes cut his acceleration. The black ships came up behind and matched course and speed instantly. Two of them spread out, and the third suddenly leaped ahead of the Icarius and again matched course. The position of the Planet X ships was an equilateral triangle, with the Icarius dead center.
Jakes hit the controls, and shot downward abruptly, curving off to the side as he did so. The other ships were delayed a split second in following him, but a second later they repeated their maneuver of putting him in the center. Then he tried going up. This time the triangle they formed was smaller.
It grew smaller with each maneuver, until the ships were almost touching the Icarius. Seen through one of the ports, they were huge, without a sign of a break in their smooth hulls.
There were no portholes, though radar had really made these needless for any ships. And there was no evidence of any driving mechanism. They blasted their way through space.
Somehow, they simply moved.
The next time Simon tried to move, he found that nothing happened. One of the big ships was touching the Icarius, and it seemed to be locking them down, though no mechanical contact of magnetic or hooked grapple had been tried.
The leading ship swung over slowly, until the bottom of one end was in line with the Icarius. It began backing up smoothly, while a hatch, twice big enough to engulf the little ship completely, opened in it.
Jakes waited until the sides of the huge opening were at the port, and then cut on his braking rockets. They shot out of the nose of the Icarius, with a blast that should have shriveled anything they touched. But nothing happened. The great ship went on backing around them, until they were completely engulfed.
In the viewing screen from the rear, the boys saw the big doors began to shut again. Bob knew now how Jonah had felt when the whale had swallowed him. This looked exactly like such a huge mouth closing down over them.
Then something seemed to suck them sharply downward and they landed with a shrill clang of metal against what was probably the floor of the huge chamber that had swallowed them.
Jakes cut on the lights of the ship trying to make out something of the place where they had been swallowed. But it seemed to be nothing but a room ten times the size of the whole Icarius, built of black metal, and without any other features.
The jets of the Icarius had obviously been running all along, since Jakes suddenly cut them off. But it made no difference. Then a feeling of weight began to press at their bodies, rising until it had reached about Earth-normal. It stayed there.
“Here we go, bound for Planet X,” Jakes muttered. “And right now, since we can’t do anything, I’m going to sleep. I’m dead.”
He touched the button that turned the seat into a rough couch, and lay back. Bob tried the same, and found it more comfortable than most of the beds in which he had slept. He was surprised to find his own eyes heavy. It didn’t seem possible that he could actually fall asleep. But somehow, after the long flight, the fact that there was now nothing at all they could do seemed to leave him dulled and drowsy.
His last thought was a sudden wonder about what would happen to them if the alien ship ever tried jumping up to her top gravity of acceleration. But there was nothing he could do about that either!
CHAPTER 12
A Matter of Language
WHEN THEY AWOKE, there was the same feeling of normal gravity as before. Bob got up groggily and located material for a simple breakfast. He had no way of knowing what time it was, but he suspected that the long chase had taken more hours than they had realized.
That would account for some of their sleepiness.
Juan was studying the blackness of the chamber in front of their ship. He took the food from Bob, and began eating listlessly, his eyes still fixed outward. “I have a theory,” he announced.
He dug into the food, then swallowed thoughtfully. “I think that what we feel here is not the pressure of acceleration at all. It doesn’t change, and it is much too slow for the ship’s, if what we have seen is true. What we feel is real gravity—a gravity made right in these ships.
Consider. If they can control gravity, then they are indeed advanced, wouldn’t you say?”
“We know that already,” Bob answered. “But you may be right about the gravity here. I wonder if they move the same way—control gravity and make it pull them toward or away from whatever they like?”
“I have considered that, too,” Juan put in. Then he shook his head. “But it is not so logical. If they can control gravity, they may control inertia. They may be able to say to inertia, go away—and it will go away for them. Then with the slightest effort, they can reach any speed; the mass of this ship will not object to changing
its speed, it will take no work to change it. And because we inside also have no inertia for that change of speed, we do not even feel it. It is as if there had been no change, even though we leap from no speed forward to millions of miles an hour. That way, they can stop dead after any speed and not be hurt.”
It was a good enough theory, though a surprising one. There had been a little theoretical work done which indicated that inertia was not a fixed thing, but nobody had been able to prove it. Still, if the ship could repeal inertia whenever it wanted to, it would explain things fairly well.
“Then where are we now?” Simon asked. His face was dulled with sleep, but seemed somehow less stupid than it had been. Maybe he was developing.
“We are on Planet X, of course,” Juan announced. “We have slept for many hours, and they can travel at any speed. So we have arrived.”
That wasn’t just a theory, they found a few minutes later. The great door at the rear snapped open to show what might almost have been a country meadow back on Earth. Grass grew lushly and there were trees everywhere. Above, the sky was filled with soft clouds. But none of the trees looked exactly like normal Earth ones. There was a subtle difference about everything.
Something similar to a car, but on three wheels, came rolling up a ramp, and stopped beside the lock of the Icarius. There was the sound of the outer lock opening. Bob jumped to the viewing port, but he could see nothing of the occupants of the car.
“Hey, suppose they’re cannibals!” Jakes breathed.
It was nothing to the thoughts that were churning in Bob’s mind. He really hadn’t tried to picture the aliens before, but now every fantasy he had read seemed to come to his mind.
Walking plants, lizards with giant heads, things with arms like octopuses, and a horde of monsters of every shape. He drew his knife slowly, opening the big blade.
The inner lock opened cautiously. It was darker than the inside of the Icarius, and Bob could make out only a vague shape. Then the creature stepped forward.
The shock was worse than any monster could have given them. The alien from Planet X looked almost exactly like a human!
He was a short man, and his knee joints looked a little wrong; there wasn’t the usual knobbiness. The hand that held some kind of a weapon had four normal fingers, but there was a thumb opposite the regular one, giving him a double palm. Yet even the fingernails were there. Generally, his body seemed almost completely normal. His ears were a bit too large, and there was no hair on his head, while his eyes had a vaguely Asiatic slant to them.
His skin was an orange shade, not too different from some jaundiced people, but still unmatchable on Earth.
Yet even on Earth, he would hardly have attracted a second glance. He was dressed in something like a Scotch ceremonial kilt of solid blue, with a soft T shirt and a brief cape. On a wide belt at his waist, several pouches were sewn. The costume was no odder than the man.
He stepped further into the Icarius, his eyes resting in amusement on the knives that Jakes and Bob held. He tapped his pistol-like weapon confidently, and made a motion of throwing something away, pointing at the knives. The two boys took the hint, and he smiled pleasantly at them.
“Vla no yoga,” he told them in a soft, educated voice. “Nikomi ol Thule. Vu yara ultai san vorstala?”
“Sounds like he’s telling us hello and welcome to this world,” Bob guessed. He saw Juan blink his eyes in surprise—probably a delayed reaction at the fact an alien spoke what might almost have been a human language. “Wonder what his question was?”
“Aw, probably wants us to take a ride in his buggy,” Simon answered. “And from the motions he’s going through, that’s no guess.”
There were two other creatures waiting outside as the
boys emerged. They looked much like the first, except for minor details. At the sight of the three humans, they both smiled, and moved to open the door of the three-wheeled car. Even that was surprisingly human—or not so surprising, since both races would obviously have the same ideas of comfort. It was a large vehicle, with room for the three humans in back and jump seats where the two guards could ride facing them. The first alien climbed behind the rod that served as a wheel and backed the little distance down the ramp. Then he swung the car around, and began heading for a city some distance away.
Bob sat next to a window, and his eyes were busy. He might be killed the next minute—after all, smiles might not mean kindness here—but at least he’d get an eyeful.
The overall picture was still Earthlike, though thousands of details of leaves and roads and birds were different. They were apparently in a sort of combination park and spaceport—which was logical enough, where spaceships needed no rocket blast, and where heavily loaded vehicles probably nullified part of the gravity acting on them. Bob noticed that there was very little room in the car for an engine, and that it ran smoothly and quietly. They were following a well-used road along part of the park now, where other ships lay spread about casually.
Then they turned and headed for the city proper. Again, the sights were not too startling. In many ways, the architecture looked more open and rounded than on Earth; there were few square corners, and more doors and windows. The tallest building was only eight stories high, but many were wider than any usual buildings on Earth. This must have been the business section, but there were little parks everywhere. Beyond, he caught a glimpse of what might be a suburb, with many small buildings spread about in a rambling fashion. The major difference from Earth was a feeling of greater comfort and an absence of bright signs and loaded shop windows.
Now they drove up to the tallest building, and the three guards walked behind, pointing out the way up an escalator to the top floor. He then turned to a moving belt which carried them down a large open hall toward a wide door at the end. They stepped off, and were obviously facing someone of authority. The man there on the platform, containing a table and a comfortable chair, was older than the others and he radiated power of some sort.
Now Bob spotted others in the huge room. One wall was covered with machinery that might have been calculators and electronic brains. Another was composed of wide windows looking out on a park. And scattered about casually were a large number of chairs. The guards motioned the three boys into comfortable ones near the banks of machines.
It all seemed so relaxed and friendly that Bob’s guard had been going steadily down. He dropped into the chair without a second thought, and the other two did the same.
Beside him, a man suddenly dropped a huge mechanical gadget over his head and locked it on deftly with a single motion. Bob heard Jakes’s frenzied yell, and saw that Simon and Juan were receiving the same treatment.
It had been smart to lull him first, and then spring torture on him suddenly. But it wouldn’t work. He gritted his teeth as another older man came out and was fitted with a different type of machine, one that trailed long wires after it, and completely covered his neck and the back of his head. He wasn’t going to give away any of the Federation secrets, no matter how much they tortured him.
The man in front of them began reading from a book in a soft voice, going slowly. Something tingled in Bob’s mind. He struggled to resist it. So it wouldn’t be torture, but hypnotism. Well, he’d had a few courses in how to resist that, too.
The tingling still went on, though. And suddenly the words began to sound less strange, and to take on meaning. It was a repetitious thing, with a slow shift through new words to still newer ones. But he found them sinking in, and no longer foreign. It was perfectly natural that a “Nota should Glur”—just as natural as that a Man should Sleep.
There must have been some hypnotic quality to the process, because he suddenly awakened to find that the machine was gone from his head. He stood up and looked around to see the helmets all being packed away. Then a brisk knock from the platform caught his attention and he turned to face the older man there.
“You are, of course, on the planet Thule,” the man said quietly, using the Thulian language which now seemed as normal to Bob as English. “As you see, we’ve taught you our language. Believe me, we’re as surprised as you are to find our two races so much alike, not only physically but mentally. It is a mystery. We have no way of knowing whether all races evolve as we two have done on worlds like this, or whether it is a great coincidence. We are not alike in all ways of course. You have one heart and we have two. You have thirty-two teeth, and we have six less. And so on. But let us begin by admitting that we are all human beings. You are our captives, but you are not captives of alien monsters. So don’t strain yourselves looking for motives that wouldn’t be normal if you had been captured by opposing groups on your own planets.”
He paused, then smiled at them. “Frankly, we’re very happy to have you to study, because we can probably learn more from you than from older people. You’re too valuable to us for us to mistreat, because we hope to learn to get along with your people through you. You’ll be studied of course. But you have complete freedom of this city, and you’ll be given homes, just like anyone else. We want to observe you in real life, not in false surroundings. And now, welcome to Thule. I’m the president of this world—Orsa Faskin. Your names?”
They gave them, half-convinced of the sincerity of the man. Faskin nodded, and introduced them to their guards, using only first names. Ondu, the first one aboard the ship, Wilna and Valin. Then, apparently satisfied, Orsa turned back to other work. The guards had put their weapons away and now came forward.
“We’ll be living next door to you, wherever you are. A choice partly up to you,” Valin told them. “But since you have no women with you, you might find our hotel comfortable. It’s right in this building, underground for silence, of course.”
“Who cares where we go?” Simon asked. “Sure, put us up in this fancy jail of yours.”
“It’s no jail. You’ll have the same privileges as any citizen of Thule, or as nearly so much as we can possibly arrange.”
“Suppose we try to escape?” Bob asked quickly.
Valin looked surprised. “Where? You could leave the city probably—though we’d rather you didn’t without consulting us first. But this whole planet is your jail— you can’t escape.”
“You’ve got spaceships,” Bob persisted.
“Certainly. But it takes at least twenty people to work one of our ships—we have no small ones. Even if you learned how, you couldn’t use them. And you couldn’t force twenty men, scattered over a huge ship, by threatening them with weapons. As for your own charming ship—that will be securely locked down in a public square for the people of Thule to see.”
Simon looked completely unconvinced. “And I suppose we can buy weapons?”
“No, because we don’t use money yet,” Valin told him. “But you can have my weapon now if it will make you feel better. Since you’re a civilized man, I feel quite safe. You wouldn’t use it against me unless you could gain by it. There is nothing to gain. If you need anything, ask for it and you’ll have it—except a chance to leave Thule.”
Bob reached out a hand as Jakes shook his head. “I’d like that, Valin,” he said. He took the weapon and turned it over, trying to see how it worked.
There was a tiny trigger, and a rifled barrel, but he couldn’t see the works.
“Compressed gas,” Valin said. “The bullet is made of wax containing a drug that spreads through the skin and paralyzes. It also leaves a nasty bruise. Here, you’ll find gas capsules and bullets in this. It’s as effective as the explosives and lead guns we previously used, and a lot less messy.”
They were riding down the escalator now, and switched to another that went down about eight stories below the ground. Bob saw that much of the traffic here was underground, and they had subways, with cars riding on a single rail. Then they came to the “lobby” of the
“hotel,” where Valin asked for two suites—one for his party and one for Bob’s. There was considerable consultation before they decided on a setup which would be generally satisfactory.
The boys’ suite turned out to be rather simply furnished, but comfortable by any standards, including a little communication unit that led to the food-supply department, and a small elevator to bring their orders up. But there were no bellboys, and he found that they would have to clean their own place. Valin seemed surprised at the idea of men who served others directly.
