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

of stability and easy living. But could he see Venus as they saw Venus?
Could he see Venus as the cradle of a new and vigorous culture that would jolt
Earth from the rut into which it had fallen?
    If the Coming Together at Halaja failed to move him, they were through.
    And this was the first of the vast ceremonies
to be conducted almost entirely by the children who were now young men and
women. The old robot humanoids would stay strictly in the background. Surely
their teaching had been effective; it had to
be.
    But
when Keith dozed off into a troubled sleep, his dreams were as gray and
cheerless as the wet clouds above his head.
    It was the time of the Coming Together at Halaja . Five Earth-days were left out of the month that
Keith had asked for.
    With his wife and Captain Nostrand he stood in the doorway of his log home and waited for the ceremony to begin.
    It was night, and the soft silver cloudlight glinted in the Home of the Spirit and touched
the central plaza of Halaja with pale and enchanted
fingers. Great orange fires blazed inside the ring of the wooden houses and
passageways, throwing black, twisted shadows on the walls.
    Drums beat with a slow rhythm and the mixed
voices of low, insistent chants drifted up to the roof of the world and lost
themselves in the glowing mists of night.
    For many days and many nights the people had
come across the swamps and jungles of the great continent to Halaja . They had come as they had always come, as their
fathers had come, and as their fathers' fathers before them.
    Or
so they believed—for had not their own fathers told
them so, throughout the whole of their fives?
    From
far Acosta by the northern sea they had come, and from the three cities of Wlan , Mepas , and Carin . They had walked from the swaying fields of Pueklor and from the rocky hills of Equete .
    It was the time of the Coming Together. Not
all came, of course. These were only selected delegates who made the jungle
trek and who would then return to their people as they had always done.
    The orange fires crackled and the drums
throbbed. A new chant began.
    "Oh
friends from far and near, we come together as we have always come—"
    And the answering chants came back, from the
men and women of Acosta and the Three Cities and Pueklor and Equete :
    "Always come, always come . . ."
    "We
come together, all different, all the same, in peace for all men are
brothers—"
    "All men are brothers, all are brothers . . ."
    Side by side they sat—rough seamen and happy
industrialists, proud hunters and serious philosophers from far Equete .
    The drums beat faster.
    The orange fires painted shadow-dances along
the walls.
    It was the time of the Coming Together.
    Keith felt his heart beating with fierce pride in his chest, and he held
his wife close by his side. Here in the night under an alien sky that glowed
with the light of a million moons—here, at last, was a dream that could not
die.
    Ralph Nostrand was
silent, watching.
    The
old people—it was hard to think of them as robots, for they had been fathers
and mothers and friends—stayed in the rear circles, in the shadows, watching
the children they had led through life.
    It was impossible to believe that they were
not proud.
    For
many long hours the ceremony went on through the long, long night. There was
feasting and singing—and a little gay romancing among the young men and women
from faraway lands, for these people were not saints.
    Fifty
hours after the Coming Together had begun, the old,
old chant was started by the pool that was the Home of the Spirit. The words
were mysterious and strange, but did not the gods say that one day they would
be filled with meaning?
    Keith saw his two sons singing by the pool.
He felt his wife proud and happy by his side. "Beyond the clouds that roof our world,
beyond the rains that cool our skies—"
    "Beyond
the clouds, beyond the rain . . ." "Beyond
our skies lie other skies—" "Other skies, other skies . . ."
    "Beyond
the great