The Mysterious Planet

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.

He almost agreed, but decided to consult with Jakes. And Jakes couldn’t see it. “Sure, act as propaganda bureau.”

“What difference does it make, if it helps bring the two sides together in any way?” Bob wanted to know.

Jakes was suddenly serious. “Bob, are you falling for these people. Are you beginning to believe them?”

“I like them,” Bob had to admit. “There’s a lot of good in Thule.”

“Sure there is. And there’s a lot of good in the Federation. Hey, look. They want you to like them. That’s probably the whole idea of our being here. You get to like them, and they have you call up Outpost and tell them things you think are true. They want to make a traitor out of you, Bob. And I’m not going to stand for that.”

He was pacing up and down the room, his scraggly blond hair bouncing up and down on his forehead, and making him look completely ridiculous. But for once, he didn’t sound ridiculous.

“Suppose we had young Emo on Outpost,” he went on. “We’d fix him up, keep him amused, give him all the candy he wanted. And we’d have him call Thule. Oh, we’d give him the truth to speak. How we didn’t want war, everything your father believes. Right? And you know what we might do then? When he got them

about softened up and believing us, the side that thinks we have to have war would hop right in and knock Thule for a cocked hat. Look at your history. It’s full of such acts.”

Bob thought the matter over slowly, and finally was forced to agree. What they would give him to say might very well be true, but it would be one side of the truth, and not the side having the most power.

“All right,” he agreed, “I’ll wait until I know more about it. Maybe I am a little naive right now.”

“You were just about being made a sucker of,” Jakes told him firmly.

He went over to the door and locked it firmly. When he came back, he wore the air of a trained conspirator—trained in some movie lot, that is. His voice was barely a whisper.

“Wait a minute.”

Some of his things had been transferred from the Icarius, and one of the objects was a leather brief case with a combination lock. He went to it now and unlocked it, dragging out a sheaf of papers. He selected two of them and spread them out carefully.

“There,” he announced proudly, “is what I’ve been doing. The plans of most of their weapons. Here’s that ball-lightning thing. And here’s their pressor-ray gadget I don’t know just how they work, but I can read enough to give any real scientist all he needs. How’s that for being a spy?”

“Where were they?”

“In that science building they kept us out of.” Jakes chuckled. “Why do you think I took young Emo as my guide? Not for fun, I can tell you. He’s a good kid, but he keeps asking so many questions about the Federation my tongue gets tired before luncheon. But he can get into that building. And when he wants to go in, he takes anyone else in with him. Big guided tour, with half a dozen men to make sure he doesn’t get in any trouble. They were so busy watching him I spent half an hour alone back in the files!”

Bob tried to believe it had been that simple. It was

true that the family relationships here, plus the fact that Emo was technically a son of every man on the planet, would make for a lot of attention. But if Jakes had been shown the files and left alone with them, there must have been good reasons for it.

“I’ve plans for getting out of here,” Jakes told him. “I haven’t got them entirely worked out, but there’s one way, and I intend to be ready for it. When I go, these go with me. There’s everything here. How that inertia gadget works, how they feed power into the air, artificial gravity, everything. I went through the whole list and skimmed the best of it.”

“And I suppose you walked right out with them, and they offered to gift wrap them at the door?”

Jakes snorted. “Go on, be funny. I was carrying this brief case with me at the time. I had it full of stuff I took out of the library, so I just chucked these in with them. Nobody even asked to see them.”

“It’s still too easy. If these plans are really worthwhile, they wouldn’t make it that simple.” Bob was getting more worried as he thought about it.

“It’s always easy if it works,” Jakes told him. “That’s what spies count on, I’ll bet. A lot of luck, like young Emo figuring Federation men are the same as we used to think cowboys and Indians were, and being the president’s son. And a little bit of pure nerve. Maybe I don’t always think my father’s wonderful, but he’s got nerve. I guess I take after him.”

He put the papers back carefully, and shoved the brief case into a closet. “How about going to look at the old Icarius? I heard they had her on exhibition at Center Park. And that her galley is still stocked with decent food.”

Bob had been about to turn it down, but the mention of food decided him. He thought about calling Juan, but then gave up the idea. Juan claimed he was learning more about the people of Thule from the old films than they could discover in ten years of living with them.

He’d objected once when Bob had tried to get him to skip his studies for a day. Let him sit in the vault if he wanted to. Besides, they could always bring back some of the food for him.

Valin and Emo appeared in the door as if by accident as they were leaving and dropped in beside them. Emo led them proudly to a subway that took them directly to Center Park.

The Icarius was the center of attention there, though few people seemed to want to go inside through the lock. On Earth or Mars, everything movable would have been stripped clean by curious collectors, but here all was exactly as it had been left.

Valin explained the way it was fastened down, with nothing showing on the surface; it simply seemed to be sitting on its tail fins, poised for an immediate take-off. But ten feet away in a circle, there were small devices buried in the ground. They held the Icarius in as firm a net as iron bars could have done, safe from wind, hurricane—or theft by Federation men who wanted to go home. It was the only example of the possibility of tractor rays Bob had seen, and he was surprised when he walked through one of the beams and felt nothing. They could be set for an exact distance, it seemed, and nothing between mattered.

The trip turned out to be a flop, as far as Bob was concerned. The food was good, but he had too many other things on his mind, including the stolen papers. Even Emo’s serious attempts to like Mulligan stew didn’t impress him.

He was glad when Jakes finally cleaned up and went into the small closet to wash up, and followed him in, just as the older boy let out a yell.

The light there had burned out, and Jakes was staring at his hands in the semi-darkness.

They were glowing a pale green.

Bob shut the door with a snap, squeezing in with his mouth against Simon’s ear. “Hide them!” he whispered.

“I told you it was too easy. Those papers have fluorescent ink on them—and you must have left a fine trail, if they ever look for them.”

Maybe it wouldn’t matter too much. And maybe Jakes had doomed all three of them by his easily traceable theft!