Donald A. Wollheim (ed) by The Hidden Planet Read Free Book Online

her own —it's too late. I can't put this into
words, captain. But I know what made you go into space even when space was
almost forgotten. I know. Have you forgotten?"
    "I
haven't forgotten."
    "O.K. I'm
asking for a month."
    Captain Nostrand sat down and sipped his coffee. He listened to the rain roaring down outside.
He looked at Mark Kamoto , who remained silent.
    "You make a mean speech, friend," Nostrand said finally, "I can see your month. It had
better be good."
    Keith
was exhausted but confident.
    "Pal," he said, "you ain't seen nothm yet."
    Beyond the station house, the warm rain fell
into the thick jungles and the long gray afternoon began to fade into evening.
     
    V.
    A t
the northernmost extremity of the one inhabited continent of Venus, a brown peninsula thrust out
into the swells of a vast gray-green sea.
    In the copter that hovered just under the
cloud masses that roofed the world, too far away to be seen with the naked eye,
Ralph Nostrand brought his viewer into focus and looked
into it intendy .
    "So
that's Acosta," he said.
    "Yes,"
Keith said. "Watch off the coast there—see those ships coming in? They're
whalers." "Whalers?"
    "Not really whales, of course. They're
true fish, not mammals. But they're plenty big enough—and they hunt them with
hand harpoons."
    "Funny
looking place."
    The viewer showed a small settlement of
perhaps one hundred gabled stone houses, placed on a shelf of rock overlooking the tossing sea. Most of the men and boys were
out in the boats, but the women of the town were clearly visible in the
streets.
    "There," Keith said. "The near
boat crew is beaching one."
    In the viewer, the men and boys leaped out of
their sturdy canoes into shallow water. They all grabbed a line from the near ship and ran with it up onto the beach. They formed a row and heaved.
    An enormous black shadow-shape slid out of
the sea and was hauled up on the rocks, its great tail still bobbing in the
gray-green water. It rolled over, white belly upwards, and the men began to
dance around it, chanting.
    "Whew," said Nostrand .
"That's quite a baby."
    "Acosta is a pretty rugged place," Keith said. "It's a colony of maritime adventurers, as I told you. It's a people who will have a long tradition behind them of dangerous voyages."
    Ralph Nostrand eyed
him. "Shrewd." "I know my racket."
    The captain returned to his viewer and watched for a long time. Finally he nodded. "Next," he said.
    Mark took the copter up higher to hit a favorable wind belt, and they
flew through the warm clouds above the jungles, moving inland. In four hours,
they went down again.
    The first of the Three Cities was spread out
on the viewer.
    " Wlan ?"
asked Nostrand .
    "That's right."
    Wlan was a far cry from the seaside settlement of
Acosta. This was a genuine small city, with a population of perhaps five
thousand people. It was neady arranged into squares,
with snug modern houses, and it was dominated by two large buildings that could
only be factories.
    "The Three Cities are our
industrialists," Keith said. "Of course, they're not turning much out
yet, and the economy is highly artificial at present, but they've got the basic
techniques down pat. We've set up an embryonic technological culture, and the
kids have been brought up to appreciate what that means. We've given them
enough leads so that they'll have aircraft within a century."
    Nostrand nodded. "One thing I've been meaning to
ask you, Keith."
    "Shoot."
    "Is it really fair to bring these kids
up here and determine their lives for them? It seems—sort of wrong,
somehow."
    The copter veered toward the southeast,
rising again into the clouds.
    "I know what you mean," Keith said.
"It seems to deny them their free will. That's not true, though—you know
that yourself, if youll just stop a bit and think.
After all, a child is always bom into a culture he has not built himself;
that's a characteristic of human beings. In that sense, a kid's future is
always determined for him. What he