The Mysterious Planet: читать книгу онлайн полностью и бесплатно

Bob had the answer as to how one Thulian, at least, reacted to man.

And the trouble was that he couldn’t be sure that Valin wasn’t right He’d seen that Thule had many confused ideas, and a mixture of strange sense and traditional nonsense. If they couldn’t help it, how could he help having false values of his own. Maybe clear logic would place the same interpretation on events as Valin had placed on them.

He suspected that the truth was somewhere in between, or that both were wrong. But this didn’t help any. Certainly he couldn’t go around explaining things to everyone here—it would only lead to more trouble.

As far as he could see, neither side wanted war. And yet both sides were being driven closer and closer to what they didn’t want. Each felt that the other was too dangerous for them to share a sun with.

And the way it was working out, both were right.

He remembered the idea of sending lithium bombs against the planets. With their ships, they might succeed; but not before some of the Federation forces had managed to send suicide squads in on Thule with the same medicine.

It might wind up with the sun having ten planets instead of nine, and no living intelligence on any of them!

CHAPTER 14

In Silken Chains

JUAN SEEMED TO LOSE INTEREST after the first day, which was no particular surprise to Bob. The boy had been pushed from pillar to post, from his own world into life on a freighter, then in tragedy to the inner circle of a military machine. He’d been tossed back to the outskirts of that machine, and had gone to work, only to go out on a mad chase. Now he was in still another life. This one, at least, had some advantages for him. He was no more a stranger than Simon or Bob, and life here was a comfortable one, even a pleasant one.

Most of his time seemed to be spent in seeing the pre-migration films made by Thule—outright romance and adventure stories which were always given a touch of fantasy by the difference in the Thule point of view. There were millions of such films in the near-by vault, and Juan seemed to go no further. He did take care of the suite for them, however, and neither Bob nor Simon had any objections to that.

Simon and Bob roamed around, sometimes together and sometimes alone. On the surface, they had complete freedom. Nobody stopped them from anything, except that they were barred from one building. It had something to do with high scientific policy, but it seemed to be more a matter of safety, as Valin said, than of secrecy. The Thulians themselves were barred from the building, unless they had special reasons for being there.

Nobody tried to keep them from examining anything they wanted. And most of the citizens were apparently eager to explain anything they didn’t understand.

On the theory that this city might be specially selected for them, Bob asked permission to fly halfway around their world and visit another. Valin spent several hours arranging for special transportation, but there was no objection at any point. They were flown in a stratosphere rocket, making the trip with no one else on board, and Bob found the second city to be no different from the first, except that it was smaller and even more sparsely inhabited. With ninety-nine per cent of the population still in suspended animation, it wasn’t too surprising that the world seemed rather empty, and that most of the factory cities were entirely shut down.

Yet there were always the guards. Wherever Bob went, he found Valin tagging along, always with a legitimate excuse. Jakes was having the same trouble with Ondu. Bob came back from his flying visit to find Jakes stamping around, demanding to be let alone, or at least given someone younger. That seemed like a safe request, since neither one of the boys had met anyone who wasn’t at least thirty. The young men were still in suspended animation, it seemed.

Ondu shrugged mildly. “I’m only trying to help you, Simon. This is a big world, and a new one.

You might get lost or in trouble. I’m responsible for your safety.” He reflected then, hands outspread. “But if you’re tired of me, we’ll have to find someone else. Someone younger, you want?”

“That’s right. Someone younger—plenty younger!” Simon told him.

His request was granted the next day. Ondu came in with a boy of about thirteen, who seemed both afraid and eager to meet the men from the Federation. “This is Emo, our president’s son,” he told Simon, “He is the only young one we have revived.”

Bob grinned, in spite of himself. The Thulians always managed to find some way, it seemed—even if they had to enlist their president’s family. He waited for Jakes to blow up at having a boy that much younger.

But Simon only grinned, and held out his hand after a second’s thought. “That’s fine, Ondu. Couldn’t be better. Hi, Emo, I hope you won’t mind wasting time on someone who needs a little help?”

Emo broke out in a toothy smile, and they went off together, while Juan and Bob stared at each other, trying to figure Jakes out.

News came through from Outpost, finally. A Thulian ship had made a quick night trip—technically night for Outpost, since it was when most of the officers slept. With the aid of high-speed photography, they had come back with some information. Bob and the others were furnished with copies of it at once, but there was nothing very impressive there. From the photographs and groupings of the ships, it looked as if Outpost was about halfway along with its preparations to invade Thule. But none of them were trained to interpret such matters.

“We dropped a picture of you three to show that you were well, and also that letter you wrote your father,” Valin told Bob casually.

Bob puzzled over it, until he remembered the note he had written one night when he was bothered with loneliness. He’d put a lot of information in it about Thule, and only a few personal things, because he’d only written it to kill time. He’d been sure that it would never reach his father. Valin had asked about it once when he saw it, Bob had answered truthfully, and that was the end as far as he was concerned. Now he wished he’d written more, both personal and informative.

“Too bad he can’t answer,” he told Valin.

The guide looked surprised. “Why not? Naturally, we would permit a single ship to fly over and drop anything smaller than a bomb. One can’t break up families, unless communication is impossible.”

Bob had never quite gotten the family relationships clear here, but he gathered that they were a good deal closer than on Earth, and that they also involved some degree of politics.

The president was a part of every family, as were his wife and children.

But he knew that no Federation ship would fly over. It would seem like simple suicide.

It was after that that Valin suggested he might call Outpost on the radio. The permission carried certain obligations, however. He would be required to read a prepared paper to the Naval heads at Outpost, giving the opinions of Thule. The translation would be up to Bob.