Planet in Peril by John Christopher Read Free Book Online Page A

cupboard.
    "Take what comes?”
    "Within reason.” He watched Dinkuhl pour two glasses and bring them over, together with the bottle, on a tray. “Turnip and tomato again?”
    Dinkuhl shook his head. “The real stuff. Plum brandy. Well now. How’ve you been missing KF?”
    "To tell you the truth, I hadn’t given it a thought.” "You’re a lucky man.” Dinkuhl let his nose rest for a moment against the edge of his glass. "Ah. That’s a bad business you landed in.”
    "What do you know about it?”
    "Nothing,” Dinkuhl said blandly. “You tell me.”
    Charles told him. When he had finished, Dinkuhl replenished their glasses. Charles looked at him. “Well?” “And your good friends in UC haven’t quite succeeded in persuading you that you are a promising psychotic?” Dinkuhl asked.
    “I had my doubts at times, but I have none now.” "Good boy. It has long been a fixed principle of mine to assume that the world around me was populated by mugs and fleecers ; I never take any man’s word unless I know he has an axe to grind, and know just what the axe is. Then I can make allowances.”
    "What axe have you got?”
    "An interesting point. Two, principally—to further anything that looks as though it may sabotage, in the least degree, the managerial world in which we live; and to save my own skin”
    Charles grinned. "All right. I’ll settle for them.”
    "Not yet you won’t. First I have to justify my seditious attitude.” He finished his own glass. “You’re not drinking.”
    "Not at your pace. I don’t think I need the justification. I’m more concerned with getting some advice.”
    Dinkuhl filled his own glass. "The advice can wait. It won’t be of an order to require your urgent attention-urgent within the next half-hour at any rate. Why do I wish to destroy this world-wide fatherly society of managerial in whose bosom we five? Why indeed?”
    Charles resigned himself to the situation. "Because the end is in sight—the end of KF?”
    "Partly, partly. But a few other things as well. Tell me —what anniversary falls two years from now?”
    "I don’t know. Should I?”
    "It’s the anniversary of the War. What do you know about the War—about the way the society of today came into being? I’ll ask you another question. Professor Koupal taught History at Berkeley, one of the very few academic institutions which provide tuition in that subject. How many students did he have?”
    "Before his disappearance? Two.”
    "You surprise me. Yes. Two. I doubt if there are a score of students reading History in continental North America. Although you could not be expected to appreciate it, this is—historically speaking—an extraordinary state of affairs. Other decadent periods have misread and distorted the history of their origins; ours is the first to have succeeded in ignoring it altogether.”
    “Decadent?”
    Dinkuhl sighed. “I hoped I shouldn’t have to argue about that. You must have been viewing Red League. Man conquering the last barrier—twenty-first-century Man grasping for a new heritage among the Stars— Conquering the Chill Lunar Wastes. But tell me: how long is it since the lunar base was established? You don't remember. It was there when you were a child. Perhaps you can remember when the last attempts were made at Mars and Venus? You should remember them.”
    Charles thought. “The Del Marro expedition—”
    “Over twenty years ago.” Dinkuhl glanced at him sardonically. “You were a young man, then, settling down into your niche at Saginaw. That was Mars. They had ruled Venus out ten years before that”
    “The difficulties are very great.”
    “Not as great as they were for the first trip to the Moon. But in any case, we aren't trying any longer. The work has been abandoned. Not worth the risk.”
    “The Moon,” Charles pointed out “hasn’t been worth it. Except possibly in terms of astronomical research.” “By which,” Dinkuhl said, “you display yourself as a true