The Mysterious Planet: читать книгу онлайн полностью и бесплатно

Griffith smiled weakly. “Hi, Bob. Yes, President Faskin, it’s an old trick. We’ve used it, too.”

He stood up and moved his chair to a position nearer Bob, while Faskin busied himself with the records.

“We seem to be good at fool missions, Bob,” he said, “but Wallingford was in on this. After Thule dropped your note and picture, he thought we might work a prisoner release and perhaps get a cooling-off period. So I volunteered. Only instead of flying over and dropping notes, I came down for a landing. And according to the law here, that makes me a spy. I…”

Faskin had swung back and now interrupted. “Commander, in the two days you’ve been here, we’ve kept our index machines busy working on precedents and collating results. But I frankly still don’t know what to do with you. Ignorance of our law is no excuse, as in the case of your own law. And you had the example of our own messenger-observation ship. You claim you can’t be a spy since you were in uniform and in a military ship. We believe you are because you came inside our lines on the false basis of being a lone messenger, and hence not suspected of trying to land. As usual, we’re proud of our own spies and very hard on others. I don’t see how we can help executing you, though I’d regret it…. Yes, Robert?”

Bob had stared unbelievingly through most of it. It had taken time to realize that the danger to his father was real. But now he was on his feet, moving toward Faskin.

The president motioned him back. “Sit down. We can talk just as well in comfort. You have an idea?”

“No,” Bob stated, trying to sound surer than he felt. “A protest. Since when did a man’s attempt to communicate with a son, from whom he had received no word, turn into spying on Thule? Are the ties of family here being mined by war?”

Faskin shook his head. “Robert, you know that isn’t so. We made every effort to send your communication to your father, and he received it. When relatives are known and communication possible, we respect it.”

“Did my father hear from Simon or Juan?” Bob asked quickly. “They were living within Dad’s home.”

Bob hadn’t been sure that Thule would regard the family important for enemies, but luck had been with him. In this society, nothing was as important as family ties.

Faskin nodded slowly, while Bob’s father stared from one to the other blankly. At the president’s question, he agreed that the two other boys had been living with him, but it was all nonsense to him, obviously.

The president reached out for a group of papers and stamped them. “Very clever, Robert,” he commented then, as he looked up. “You learn our ways almost too quickly. Commander Griffith, I find your landing justified as parental anxiety, and dismiss the charge of spying. But I’ll have to hold you as a prisoner, since you have seen too much of us to be returned.”

“Thank you.” Griffith accepted his reprieve with almost no signs of emotion. He reached for his pipe and seemed to dismiss that matter. “I gather there’s not much chance of getting the other prisoners returned?”

“None, I’m afraid,” Faskin admitted. “I’ve examined them and found them all in good physical condition. Your worry that they might suffer deficiencies from the diet here are unfounded.

And while none of them know much, together they might supply bits of information that would be valuable military knowledge. We’ll have to hold them.”

“What about the charges against me?” Bob asked. He wanted to get it over with, but it seemed that important things were being completely overlooked.

Faskin smiled. “No charges, Robert. We provoked you into an attempt to escape in order to study your attitudes toward us under an emergency.”

He turned toward Griffith. “Commander, you’re the first man of the Federation with any authority whom I’ve seen. And you don’t want war. I tell you that I hate the very thought of war.

Yet here we are, enemies, getting ready to start the greatest war either of us has seen. What are we going to do about it?”

“Fight, I’m afraid,” Bob’s father said bitterly. “At least, everything we’ve tried to bring peace has made war that much closer. And this isn’t going to help much.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning your holding me.” Griffith paused to think, then shook his head. “I’m not important, of course. But I’ve come to be considered the leading voice for peace. Now I take off to hold trace talks—and I’m either killed or captured. It will make peace seem completely impossible to the Federation.”

“And we send a messenger ship alone over your Outpost, and it’s fired on.” Faskin nodded slowly. “That makes you look like a race determined to have war. All misunderstandings, of course. But can I be sure? Or are you sure? Commander, if I freed all prisoners and you, would it prevent this war?”

“Probably not.”

“Besides now we’d have to hold the three boys. Simon Jakes, for example, managed to obtain some of our secret documents with plans for weapons.” Bob grunted as Faskin confirmed his suspicions, but the president didn’t seem to notice. “We’ve substituted false papers since then—but if he has a good memory, he already knows too much. He may no longer need the documents.”

There was no answer that any of them could see. It was the most peculiar war that Bob could imagine. Nobody wanted it. But fear was driving them on. The Thulians couldn’t risk having their secrets stolen. For one thing, the Federation was far ahead of them in methods of production and in manpower. Given a few years of peace, Thule might find itself actually inferior in strength, instead of ahead of the Federation.

And the Federation already had reasons to feel that Thule could not be trusted. From their view, Thule had started the war. The business of trying to take a place around their sun was itself almost an act of war to most people. If Thule made any normal gestures of peace now they would only be taken as tricks to gain time while they revived the rest of their people.

Yet Bob was sure now that Thule was more like Earth than its mere outward appearance.

There was less difference between the race of Thule and the original inhabitants of Earth than there had been between various Earth cultures in times past.

Perhaps, at the first meeting of the two, things could have been settled. But then there had been no way to reach a full understanding, and mistakes had been inevitable. Now those mistakes had grown and multiplied.