The Boomerang Circuit

CHAPTER V Industrial World

PLANET SPICUS FIVE was an industrial world. According to the prevailing opinion in the best circles, its prosperity was due to an ample and adequate supply of raw materials, plus a skilled and thrifty population. There were sixteen matter-transmitters on the planet, and their silvery films were never still.

From abecedaria for infants to zyolites (synthetic) for industrial use, its products ran in endless streams to the transmitters, and the other products and raw materials obtained in exchange came out in streams no less continuous. The industrial area covered a continent of sprawling rectangular buildings designed for the ultimate of efficiency, with living-areas for the workmen spreading out between.

The Starshine descended through morning sunlight. Kim, newly shaved and rested, forgot to yawn as he stared through the vision-ports at the endless vista of structures made with a deliberate lack of grace. From a hundred-mile height they could be seen everywhere to north and south, to the eastward where it was already close to midday, and to where shadows beyond the dawn hid them. Even from that altitude they were no mere specks between the cloud-masses. They were definite shapes, each one a unit.

The ship went down and down and down. Kim felt uncomfortable and realized why. He spoke drily.

"I don't suppose we'll ever land on any new planet without being ready to wince from a fighting-beam and find ourselves snatched to hell-and-gone away."

Dona did not answer. She gazed at the industrial plants as they swelled in size with the Starshine's descent. Buildings two miles to a side were commonplace. Great rectangles three and even four miles long showed here and there. And there were at least half a dozen buildings, plainly factory units, which were more than ten miles in extent on each of their ground dimensions. When the Starshine was below the clouds, Dona focussed the electron telescope on one of them and gestured to call Kim's attention to the sight.

This factory building enclosed great quadrangles, with gigantic courtyards to allow—perhaps—of light. And within the courtyards were dwelling-units for workmen. The telescope showed them plainly. Workmen in factories like this would have no need and little opportunity ever to go beyond the limits of their place of employment. The factory in which they labored would confront them on every hand, at every instant of their life from birth until death.

"That's something I don't like, without even asking questions about it," said Kim.

He took the controls. The Starshine dived. He remembered to flick on the communicators. A droning filled the interior of the space-ship. Dona looked puzzled and tuned in. A male voice mumbled swiftly and without intonation through a long series of numerals and initial letters. It paused. Another voice said tensely, "Tip." The first voice droned again. The second voice said, "Tip." The first voice droned.

Dona looked blank. She turned up another wave-length. A voice barked hysterically. The words ran so swiftly together that they were almost indistinguishable, but certain syllables came out in patterns.

"It's something about commerce," said Kim. "Arranging for some material to be routed on a matter-transmitter."

None of the wavelengths carried music. All carried voices, and all babbled swiftly, without expression, with a nerve-racking haste.

The Starshine landed before a gigantic building. An armed guard stood before it at a gateway. Kim trudged across to him. He came back.

"He's stupid," he said shortly. "He knows what to guard, and the name of the plant, and where a workman may go to be received into employment. That's all. We'll try again."

The Starshine rose and moved. She was designed for movement in space, with parsecs of distance on every hand. She was unhandy when used as now for an atmosphere-flier. She descended within a factory quadrangle. There was no one about. Literally no one. The dwelling-units were occupied, to be sure, but no one moved anywhere.

When Kim opened the air-lock there was a dull, grumbling rumble in the air. It came from the many-storied building which surrounded this courtyard and stretched away for miles.

KIM and Dona stood blankly in the airlock door. The air had no odor at all. There was no dust. There was not a single particle of growing stuff anywhere. To people who had lived on Terranova, it was incredible.

Then bells rang. Hundreds and thousands of bells. They rang stridently in all the rooms and corridors of all the dwelling-units which reached away as far as the eye could follow them. It was a ghastly sound, because every bell was in exactly the same tone and made exactly the same tintinabulation.

Then there was a stirring in the houses. Folk moved within them. Figures passed inside the windows. Now and again, briefly, faces peered out. But none lingered to stare at what must have been the unprecedented sight of a space-ship resting in the courtyard.

After a little figures appeared in the doors. Men and women swarmed out and streamed toward openings in the factory building. Their heads turned to gaze at the ship, but they did not even slacken speed in their haste toward the sound of industry.

Kim hailed them. They looked at him blankly and hurried on. He caught hold of a man.

"Where will I find the leader?" he asked sharply. "The boss! The government! The king or whatever you have! Where?" The man struggled.

"I be late," he protested unhappily. "I work. I be late!"

"Where's the government?" Kim repeated more sharply still. "The king or nobles or whoever makes the laws or whatever the devil—"

"I be late!" panted the man.

He twisted out of Kim's grasp and ran to join the swarming folk now approaching the great building.

They hurried inside. The quadrangle was again empty. Kim scowled. Then other workers came out of the factory and plodded wearily toward the dwelling-units. Kim waylaid a man and shot questions at him. His speech was slurred with fatigue. Dona could not understand him at all. But he gazed at the Starshine, and groped heavily for answers to Kim's questions, and at the end trudged exhaustedly into a doorway.

Kim came into the ship, scowling. He seated himself at the control-board. The -ship lifted once more. He headed toward the curve of the plant's bulging form.

"What did you learn, Kim?"

"This is the work continent," said Kim shortly. "The factories and the workmen are here. The owners live in a place of their own. I have to talk to one of the more important merchants. I need information."

Time passed and the ship went on over the rim of the planet. Orbital speed was impossible. The Starshine stayed almost within the atmosphere and moved eastward at no more than fifteen hundred miles an hour.

"Here it is," said Kim, at last.

The ship settled down once more. There was a thin, hazy overcast here, and clear vision came suddenly as they dropped below it. And the coast and the land before them brought an exclamation from Dona. The shoreline was magnificent, all beautiful bold cliffs with rolling hills behind them. There were mountains on farther yet and splendid vistas everywhere. But more than the land or the natural setting, it was what men had done which caused Dona to exclaim.

The whole terrain was landscaped like a garden. As far as the eye could reach—and the Starshine still flew high—every hillside and every plain had been made into artificial but marvelous gardens. There were houses here and there. Some were huge and gracefully spreading, or airily soaring upward, or simple with the simplicity of gems and yet magnificent beyond compare. There was ostentation here, to be sure, but there was surely no tawdriness. There was no city in sight. There was not even a grouping of houses, yet many of the houses were large enough to shelter communities.

"I—see," said Kim. "The workmen live near the factories or in their compounds. The owners have their homes safely away from the ugly part of commerce. They've a small-sized continent of country homes, Dona, and undoubtedly it is very pleasant to live here. Whom shall we deal with?"

DONA shook her head. Kim picked a magnificent residence at random. He slanted the Starshine down. Presently it landed lightly upon smooth lawn of incredible perfection, before a home that Dona regarded with shining eyes.

"It's—lovely!" she said breathlessly. "It is," agreed Kim.

He sat still, looking.

"It even has a feeling all its own," he said. "The palace of a king or a tyrant always has something of arrogance about it. It's designed to impress the onlooker. A pleasure-palace is always tawdry. It's designed to flatter the man who enters it. These houses are solid. They're the homes of men who are thinking of generations to follow them and, meanwhile, only of themselves. I've heard of the merchant princes of Spicus Five, and I'm prejudiced. I don't like those factories with the workmen's homes inside. But—I like this house. Do you want to come with me?"

Dona looked at the house—yearningly. At the view all about, every tree and every stone so placed as to constitute perfection. The effect was not that of a finicky estheticism, but of authentic beauty and dignity. But after a moment Dona shook her head.

"I don't think I'd better," she said slowly. "I'm a woman, and I'd want one like it. I'll stay in the ship and look at the view. You've a communicator?"

Kim nodded. He opened the airlock door and stepped out. He walked toward the great building.

Dona watched his figure grow small in its progress toward the mansion. She watched him approach the ceremonial entrance. She saw a figure in formalized rich clothing appear in that doorway and bow to him. Kim spoke, with gestures. The richly clothed servant bowed for him to go first into the house. Kim entered and the door closed.

Dona looked at her surroundings. Dignity and tranquility and beauty were here. Children growing up in such an environment would be very happy and would feel utterly safe. Wide, smooth, close-cropped lawns, with ancient trees and flowering shrubs stretched away to the horizons. There was the gleam of statuary here and there—rarely. A long way off she could see the glitter of water, and beside it a graceful colonnade, and she knew that it was a pleasure-pool.

Once she saw two boys staring at the space-ship. There was no trace of fear in their manner. But a richly-dressed servant—much more carefully garbed than the boys—led up two of the slim riding-sards of Phanis, and the boys mounted and their steeds started off with that sinuous smooth swiftness which only sards possess in all the first galaxy.

Time passed, and shadows lengthened. Finally Dona realized how many hours had elapsed since Kim's departure. She was beginning to grow uneasy when the door opened again and Kim came out followed by four richly clad servants. Those servants carried bundles. Kim's voice came over the communicator.

"Close the inner airlock door, Dona, and don't open it until I say so."

Dona obeyed. She watched uneasily. The four servants placed their parcels inside the airlock at a gesture from Kim. Then there was an instant of odd tension. Dona could not see the servants, but she saw Kim smiling mirthlessly at them. He made no move to enter. He spoke sharply and she heard them file out of the air lock. Dona could see them again.

Kim stepped into the spaceship and closed the door.

"Take her up, Dona—fast!"

The Starshine shot upward, with the four servants craning their necks to look at it. It was out of sight of the ground in seconds. It was out of the atmosphere before Kim came into the control-room from the lock.

"Quite a civilization," he said. "You'd have liked that house Dona. There's a staff of several hundred servants, and it is beautiful inside. The man who owns it is also master of one of the bigger industrial plants. He doesn't go to the plant, of course. He has his offices at home, with a corps of secretaries and a television-screen for interviews with his underlings. Quite a chap."

"Were those four men servants?" Dona asked.

"No, they were guards," said Kim drily. "There are no proletarians around that place, and none are permitted. Guards stand watch night and day. I'd told my friend that the Starshine was packed with lethal gadgets with which Ades had won at least one war, and he's in the munitions business, so I wasn't going to let his guards get inside. They wanted to, badly, insisting they had to put their parcels in the proper place. He'd have paid them lavishly if they could have captured a ship like the Starshine."

He laughed a little.

"I was lucky to pick a munition maker. There aren't many wars in the ordinary course of events, but he turns out weapons for palace guards, mobile fighting-beam projectors, and so on. All the equipment for a planet ruler who wants a fancy army for parades or a force with a punch to fight off any sneak attack via matter-transmitter.

That's what your average ruler is afraid of, and what he keeps an army to defend himself against. Of course the disciplinary circuit takes care of his subjects."