Bedlam Planet by John Brunner Read Free Book Online Page B

Parvati.”

THREE NOT SINCE THE CONQUEST
    With a thought I took for Maudlin
    And a cruse of cockle pottage,
    With a thing thus tall (sky bless you all)
    I fell into this dotage.
    I slept not since the conquest—
    Till then I never wakéd
    Till the roguish boy of love where I lay
    Me found and stripped me naked
    And made me sing, “Any food, any feeding,
    Money, drink or clothing?
    Come dame or maid, be not afraid—
    Poor Tom will injure nothing.”
    —Tom o’ Bedlams Song

VII
    O NLY S AUL C ARPENDER , the rangy Australian who had been selected as their shipwright and harbourmaster because his long experience of wandering around the islands of the Pacific had prepared him for conditions on Asgard, was at the little natural wharf next morning to see Dennis off. But he was in the forefront of the minds of many, many other people.
    Paradoxically, they were jealous of him.
    The planners of the Asgard colony had always taken the worst assumptions for granted when deciding what equipment to stock the ships with. It was far faster to move around any planet through its atmosphere rather than in contact with its land and water surfaces, so they might have opted for two or three compact, powerful airplanes or helicopters to furnish the colony with long-range transport. Instead they provided cushionfoils. Between island and island they could speed along on theirunderwater wings, and if necessary they could cross land or sandbars by means of their hoverducts. But most important of all, if their engines failed they could be stripped of their foils and still serve for inter-island transport with oars or sails. It was not by any means certain that the colonists could pass on working engines to their descendants, but seamanship
must
be passed on because it could equally be applied to a dugout canoe.
    Spacemanship, on the other hand, could wait—as Dennis had often cynically reminded himself. Possibly the
Santa Maria
might lift to space again, to explore the nearer planets. But if a ship went from here to Earth again in his lifetime, it would be owing to an irremediable disaster.
    Is there any point to all this, really? So there are human beings under two suns instead of one
:
so what?
    But the impulses which led human beings off on crazy ventures like this were too far below the conscious level for even the finest modern psychologists to do more than hint at explanations.
    He finished checking the long manifest he had compiled for himself by adding Ulla’s and Tai’s new requirements to the one for his last trip and striking off what he had no need for this time. His boat, rocking gently on the outgoing tide, was mostly engine and cargo space anyway, and he had put in every possible additional item against emergencies that the spare passenger space could hold, as well. Successful explorers had vivid and pessimistic imaginations, or so he had always found. But he wasn’t taking anything which might be indispensable back here on the base island, apart from the jar of vitamin capsules Tai Men had insisted on slipping into his medikit. Since the alarming discovery that scurvy had already broken out, the biologist had become almost obsessed with deficiency diseases, and was ordering a complete check of their diet.
    “How long are you going to be away?” Saul demanded, after a long thoughtful study of the loaded boat.
    Dennis shrugged. “As long as seems to be useful. I’llkeep in radio contact, of course. I arranged with Abdul to do the same as before—call up every evening at meal-time. And there’ll be a monitor on my frequency as well, naturally.”
    “A week? Two weeks? A month?” Saul seemed to want a firm answer. Surprised, Dennis resorted to jocularity.
    “Going to miss me, or something? That’s nice! But let’s just say that if you go ahead with Dan’s boat-sheds along here, I’m not likely to recognise the harbour when I get back.”
    Saul didn’t respond to his light tone. He said with a sudden uncharacteristic