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//-->/* /*]]*/A PROMISING PLANETJeremy Strike1970EBook Design Group digital back-up edition 1.0click for scan notes and proofing historyvalidXHTML 1.0 strictContents|1||2||3||4||5||6||7||8||9||10||11||12||13||14||15||16||17|It was a promising planet, all right. It promised fabulous commissions for Bill Warden, surveyor for StarSystems, Inc. who had made first landing.It promised a lot, but getting delivery was going to be another story. Because what Bill discovered rightoff was that this was a very religious planet. If you asked God for something, you either got it—or adirect answer saying why not. If you cursed, you received immediate reprimand. If you prayed, you mightget a prompt response.It was most disconcerting, to say the least, and especially so when the planetary deity decided He did notwant any traders leaving the planet—and showed Bill and his rivals that where Almighty Power wasconcerned, it was no mere figure of speech!AN ACE BOOKAce Publishing Corporation1120 Avenue of the AmericasNew York, N. Y. 10036Copyright ©, 1970, by Jeremy StrikeAll Rights Reserved.Cover by Jack Gaughan.To TONY, for patience.“The god business is really rather boring, you know,” the voice said.“All those hosannas floating up to the sky and the eternal petitions to do this or that and ‘I promise ifyou’ll do this, I’ll never do that again’ and then the wars.“They’re the only thing that keeps it interesting, you know, the wars. They say I wouldn’t approve ofwhat someone else is doing, which is usually taking away some territory or other, and then they makewars—in my names. Us gods have lots of names, you know.”A slightly bewildered expression spread across the face of the tall man who stood alone in the large,glowing cavern.“Uh, wars?” he said.“Yes, wars,” the voice replied. “Give me a good war any old time. It relieves the tedium.”“Uh, tedium?”“Yes.”“Oh.”“Quite.”A silence descended for several minutes. At last the rangy man ran fingers through a thatch of wiry,carroty hair.“I don’t know very much about gods,” he got out at last.“That’s all right. I do quite a lot of improvising, anyway.”“You do?”“Yes. I didn’t start out as a god, it was just sort of— thrust on me.”“Thrust,” the man said in a strangled voice.“Thrust.” The response was succinct. “You see, it was, oh, several millions of these planetary revolutionsago, when—”“Revolutions?”“Night and day, night and day,” the voice snapped impatiently. “Seasons, equinoxes, the life cycle.”“Oh, those kind of revolutions.”“Yes, but you interrupted; gods are not used to being interrupted. Let Me finish.”“I’m sorry.”“That’s all right.” The voice sounded mollified. “At any rate, before you barged in, I was going to say thatI hadn’t always been in the god business, but—”“Excuse me.”“Oh, for My sake, what is it this time?”“How does one go about addressing a god? I’m sorry, but—”“Why do you keep saying you’re sorry? Of course you’re sorry. Now what is it you want this time?”“What do I call you?” the man asked humbly. “I mean, it isn’t every day I get to talk to a deity; mostsocieties don’t have them anymore.”“The natives usually preface My names with ten or twenty honorific titles but under the circumstances,and since you’re from off the planet, I suppose you could call Me Most High, or Earth Mother or justplain Your Worship. Take your pick, I’m really a very liberal god.”“Earth Mother? You mean You’re a female god?”“Not at all. But all primitives call their planet Earth, or its equivalent, in the first place, and identify it as amaternal figure in the second. Actually,” the voice went on, smugly the man felt, “I’m really quite neuter.If you’d be happier thinking of Me as male, that’s quite all right.”“Thank you.”“Not at all,” the voice said graciously.I^»Bill Warden nudged the controls of the survey ship into a flattened orbit and turned to the screens whichwould give him a close-up view of the planet below.It hung in space reflecting blue and green light from the sol-class sun. He had spotted the star on infraredsweep days ago and when the instruments pinpointed it as a possible, had run for it.Warden hoped other corporation surveys hadn’t beaten him to it. This was his sixth month in the sector,slowly quartering back and forth across the barely-charted star systems. He had found three acceptableplanets in that time, and each was marked by the directional signal of one of the other majorcorporations.The signals meant the planet was not only marked, but probably staffed by a few claim holders until theexploration and exploitation rights could be established by whichever corporation had found it.Warden was a surveyor for Star Systems, Incorporated. He received a commission plus bonus on allbusiness derived from any viable planets he found and claimed for Star Systems.Star Systems was a johnny-come-lately to the race of home corporations for lucrative planets among thefar stars. It was small as corporations went in the latter days of Earth’s first great expansion. It was ahungry organization which specialized in low-budget operations, snatching jobs the bigger, older, andricher corporations wouldn’t touch.This meant they were unable to send out heavily staffed surveys. Star Systems grew on the luck ofgamblers like Warden. They also underbid jobs viciously. Warden knew that was why his corporationwas unpopular. He also knew why surveyors like himself were considered slightly crazy by othermissions: Warden went out alone, worked alone, and ran the risks of doing it. If he fell sick, the ship’slimited life-support systems could only help so much. If he were injured on any world he located, it washis fault. He lived by quick wits and a reliance on experience and fast reflexes.In ten years on the job, Warden had been attacked by strange plants and by hostile animals, including afew cultured natives he had come across. During that time, he had developed his own ways of going intopromising worlds and getting out again.He whistled tunelessly to himself as he went about checking the standard bands on his receiver to see ifclaims to the planet were being broadcast.He was unable to detect any signal in two passes around the globe below him.Infrared, radar and radio scanners and optical telescopes cut in, he settled into the control board to seewhat there was to see. Elation swept over him as he thought that, if he were here first, the planet could bean important one.Since the ship computer would correlate the data from most of the scanner systems, Warden contentedhimself with bringing one of the telescopes into a close focus.Slight glimmers of light showed on the night side. He had seen many planets at various levels of culturaladvancement, and he failed to be impressed.He grunted and made a note in his log. He palmed the stud for radio transmission. The scanner swept arandom selection of bands. There was nothing.Warden noted it and then ran a more comprehensive television scan than he had needed for hispreliminary title search. He wrote in the log: Inhabitants presumed to be at or below nineteenth-centurylevel, Terran. No indication of electronic transmissions of any kind.The monitors fed information into the computer as he popped a pre-packaged meal into the oven.Warden slit the package with a thumbnail and poured the contents onto a plate, then crumbled thepackage over the stew. The package was a bread substitute.As he ate, Warden read the report the computer was showing on the master viewplate. He saw that theplanet was slightly larger than Earth, there were three major land masses, and the atmosphere contained aslightly higher proportion of oxygen than the level he liked to maintain in the ship. He made a note toincrease his own supply for a couple of cycles so that he wouldn’t be giddy when he left the ship, if he leftit.It definitely was a planet where he could breathe comfortably. But there might be a problem with microbelife, not to mention the natives or the natives’ pets.Warden’s reading usually consisted of reports from other survey craft, when he could get his hands onthem. He was not usually entertained by tales of spores that burrowed under the skin with horribleresults, or of crews expecting friendly contact but ending by giving some native a case of indigestion.Warden had long since resolved never to accept an invitation to dinner, even if the natives were friendly.The high priest stood on the ziggurat, earnestly contemplating the heavens. He had prayed long andmightily in the holy cave, but with no answer from the Most High. Now near despair, he anxiouslywatched for a reason why the deity was not responding.Usually when the Most High was displeased with the people, there were terrible storms or earthquakesor nasty things from the ocean depths raining from the skies.Yet the weather was continuing fair, the sun came out every morning on schedule and it rained everyevening in the correct amount. The crops flourished.He reflected, tugging at a wattle beneath his chin, never had things gone so well before!Zelnak, twentieth in line of high priests who had gone before him with the same name, was miserable.This was unheard of! The enemy tribes to the west were not warring on the borders, the pirates had notyet come storming out of the eastern sea this year, and worst of all, the population was up.He had profoundly studied the hidden writings of the great men who preceded him. Zelnak took it as anarticle of faith that if the populace didn’t have something to grumble about, they soon would begin togrumble about the priesthood.Thus, he prostrated himself in a burgeoning panic before the high altar. “Most High,” he mumbled into thestone, “this must not be allowed to happen!”The god upon the altar bore a striking resemblance to the inhabitants of the planet, tall and slightly saurianin appearance. Light from oil lanterns cast a flickering glow on the face of the god. Its gray stone visagewas immobile.At last the priest rose and, while arranging his robes and straightening his crown, looked off between theplanet’s two small moons. He saw the flash as a star that seemed to descend toward the surface.The high priest stared at the fiery tail the star dragged behind it. Then he clapped his hands and hurried tothe top of the steps. Pointing, Zelnak called out to the temple keepers below, “A sign! The Most Highsends us a sign!”There were low murmurs of awe from the grouped priests below. Somewhere, a drum began to beat. Asthe high priest turned back to the falling star, a choir took up a chant to the glory of the Most High.Warden had orbited the planet for two ship’s days, correlating the information from the computer.He was elated. Surveys showed the world to contain a high incidence of usable ores.He spent some time observing the native cultures. The computer told him, when he filed his observations,that the culture was at about the level of the Aztec civilization found by the Spanish invasions in theancient history of his own planet. There was soil cultivation with pyramids and large palace complexessurrounded by towns. It suggested priests or priest-kings ruling the populace.Regular scratchings on the exteriors of major buildings suggested a written form of communication as wellas a developed oral tradition.“I suppose I could pose as a god, or an emissary from the gods,” Warden mused. “It could be fun, until Ifinish the complete surveys and get the beacon set.”He considered the natives. They looked like bipedal snakes, from his visual observation.It would be better if they were mammalian, but it didn’t really give him any cause for concern. Peopleback home reacted better to humanoid cultures. These natives had four fingers, one of which was almostas opposed as a thumb. He wondered why they had a gray tinge.Warden happily cleared speculation from his mind and gave all his attention to lowering the ship to a spothe had chosen previously.He took control and brought the ship down on the night side in the hills about four miles from the largestcity. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]