Happiness: A Planet (10 page)

“Your moon....” Munred said.

“....has disappeared,” the Spokesman curtly finished for him. “And moons don’t just disappear. What has happened to it?”

Munred took note of his hostile manner, composed himself, “From all the evidence I have seen so far I believe, as do the police...”

“They got back safely then?”

“Naturally. That’s why I’m here.”

“I’m pleased. Go on.”

“From all the evidence, so far gathered, I believe that your moon has disintegrated and that the debris from it is adversely affecting your ionosphere, causing transmissions to and from this planet to be blocked.”

“Feasible. But wouldn’t someone on this planet have seen our moon explode?”

“I said disintegrate. If it simply fell apart it may not have been noticeable from down here.”

“Unlikely, but possible. Now explain two of our ships being shot down and four of them being missing. I take it that those four ships have not arrived at XE2?”

“Not when I left. The police believe, as I do, that they have probably gone elsewhere.”

“Possible, but unlikely. What of the two that were shot down?”

“The police encountered no resistance.”

“They were seen firing their guns.”

“Testing them in light of what they were told here. A simple matter of prudence. Nothing, however, attempted to stop them.”

“Two of our ships were destroyed.”

“Ah yes... Miss Keal. I’m afraid I have reached the conclusion that her testimony is dubious.”

“I believe her.”

“Yes... Unfortunately, the police are of the same mind as me. You see I checked Miss Keal’s medical records. While she was at school on XE2 she was under psychiatric care.”

“She was homesick.”

“Quite. Though the records do say acute depression. And while I do not wish to denigrate or defame Miss Keal, in fact I can fully sympathise with her not wanting to leave home, but I can also imagine the routes whereby she came to invent such a story in order that she might remain at home. You must admit that her story does contain several inconsistencies, if, as she claims, those two ships were attacked by other ships.”

The Spokesman refused to be rattled by Munred’s deliberately superior tone.

“If they were not destroyed,” he said, “then where are those two ships and the other three that are missing? One of the five, at least, must have reached XE2.”

“According to our records,” Munred glanced to his open case, “all those who have gone missing were between seventeen and twenty two years of age. Now, as you are well aware, Sir, the majority of children who are born on planets ultimately end up in Space.”

“I am fully cognisant with the statistics Director. However your records appear to be incorrect. One of those missing was thirty seven years old. He left here a wife and three young children. His eldest son is at school on XE2. Where else would he have gone?”

“I was coming to him,” Munred said unperturbed. “Men have been known to leave their families before. Without warning. Given the least opportunity. I am sure that, sooner or later, they will all turn up. Intact.”

“I personally had to press that man into going.”

“I must emphasise, Sir, that nothing interfered with my journey here.”

“Nor has anything prevented several freighters coming here. I take it you’ve checked for them at their next port of call?”

“I have. But their failure to arrive may mean no more than that they had their itineraries altered. Happens all the time.”

“You are stretching coincidence pretty far to suppose that every ship that has left here in the last five weeks has had a change of mind about its destination.”

“Only if you read something sinister into it.”

“I am reading nothing whatsoever into it. The facts are speaking their own disquiet.”

Munred realised that this fat farmer was getting the better of him. He had thought to swamp him with facts, to overawe him with his authority. This farmer, though, simply saw him as but a part of the bureaucratic machinery and was consequently, for the record, addressing himself over Munred’s head to his superiors. Four of those superiors were going to interview Munred in six days time.

Munred, belatedly, tried to retake charge of the interview, brought up the subject of farm boundaries, that being a persistent grumble of most farmers.

No planet is allowed to be farmed exhaustively. Space stipulates that half the land area of each colonised planet, that is every planet with no indigenous intelligence, be left untouched to allow that planet’s natural evolution, in the belief and hope that it might throw up a heretofore unknown species of intelligence which might be, if not of direct use to Space, then at least add to the diversity of life in Space.

Having to live alongside vast tracts of uncultivated and potentially productive land is, however, irksome to many farmers, especially as the protected areas are often fertile river valleys, those being the places historically most likely to nurture a new intelligence. The aggrieved farmers generally believe that to be a forlorn hope, and often voice the suspicion that it is just Space putting yet another obstacle in the way of their making planetary life a success.

Those farmers, in this instance, are wrong. It is a genuine, if extremely farsighted, policy. Say, for instance, in one of those apparently useless tracts of wilderness a telepathic intelligence were to evolve. Such an intelligence would solve our communication difficulties at a stroke. Because telepathy, supposedly, is instant. No more confusing time factors to be taken into consideration.

Although Happiness came under his jurisdiction Munred passed on all communications concerning agriculture to the City-based Director of Planets.

“I will naturally forward your requests,” he told the Spokesman, “Indeed I have already done so. But first we will have to wait and see what the meteorological changes are here. If any. No doubt, in due time, the Department will send down a team to compute the changes. When the climate has stabilised the boundaries will be redrawn. Until then I suggest that you continue farming within your present boundaries.”

The Spokesman was not to be side-tracked.

“I realise that,” he said, and by his reasonable agreement stole Munred’s lead over him.

Before Munred could digress further the Spokesman returned to the disappearance of their ships and of their moon, speculated on the cause of that disappearance,

“Some Members of the Senate believe that we are the victims of Space skulduggery.”

“I assure you that these events, so far as I am concerned, have not been inspired by any official policy.”

“What about unofficial?”

“Unofficial?”

“Mining consortiums have been known to ride roughshod over many a law. When large profits are concerned people do not always behave reasonably.”

“You think that could have caused your moon to disappear? That it has been stolen by a mining consortium?”

“Anything’s possible.”

“But your moon was exhaustively mined over four hundred years ago. It has no intrinsic mineral value.”

Having scored that point Munred now felt free to patronise the farmer, “What other form of Space skulduggery did your Members have in mind?”

“Nothing specific. Mining was the most obvious. But they distrust Space. Have been the victims of too many ill-considered policies in the past. Ideas dreamt up in some office in Space by someone who’s never been to a planet.”

“I assure you there’s been no change of policy.”

“That may be so. But like one Member said, ‘For all we know someone Out There could have started a fashion for collecting moons. Our moon could have been sold.”‘

“Collecting moons?” Munred smiled, “Sold?”

With the more improbable the guesses as to what may have happened to the moon, with the floating of a conspiracy theory — one which implicated the police — Munred began to get the upper hand. His became the voice of reason: the Spokesman became the mouthpiece of planetary prejudice. When repeating the preposterous suggestion of one Senate Member the Spokesman realised how ridiculous he must sound.

“Believe me,” he said, “I have no antagonism towards Space. I simply prefer to live here. But I am duty bound to put to you all the arguments voiced at the Senate. So let’s be reasonable. If the moon had exploded, or, as you say, had abruptly disintegrated, someone down here would have seen it happen, one of our machines would have registered it. Nor is it, whatever it is that is blocking our transmissions to you, natural interference. All our planetary communications are working; and some of those use the same satellites that relay transmissions into Space. Those satellites are above the ionosphere. This is selective interference. So, no matter which way I look at it, and I’m not a power paranoiac — I do not see conspiracies on all sides of me — but someone Out There is plotting all this. Who or what I don’t know. For the moment all that I want to find out is what has happened to our moon and to the five people who have disappeared en route to XE2.”

Munred acknowledged his reasonableness, and proceeded to scoff at an earlier suggestion that the whole business was caused by some rich city types having fun at the expense of their planet.

“To come to the here and now,” the Spokesman interrupted Munred’s sport. “We have only three spaceworthy ships left. Two of those, by law, have to stay here. So we have only one ship at our immediate disposal. Unless the Senate chooses to declare a State of Emergency. And that is a distinct possibility....”

A State of Emergency within his Department would not allow Munred to attend his interview.

“And what will the nature of this Emergency be?” Munred asked him. “Under what category will it come? Planetary paranoia? Mass hysteria? Use that and this planet will recruit no more settlers. Within two generations the only people coming here will be anthropologists — to study a ghost planet. You’ll be a gold mine for thesis writers. So, before any State of Emergency is declared, let us wait until we have some hard and fast evidence and not hysterical conjecture.”

After three hours, the planet’s night having made of the office window a black mirror, they had said everything at least twice. Feeling that he had adequately acquitted himself Munred closed the interview and, an hour sooner than he had anticipated, he jauntily returned to his ship.

The Spokesman stood outside his office door and watched the ship lift towards the wispy white clouds of night. He felt that the interview had been a tiresome formality, a waste of time and breath, albeit a necessary part of the process.

Munred let the beacon take him up to the stratosphere. While it was so doing he laid in a course to take him to XE2 by the shortest and quickest route. No sooner did the ship reach its station in the stratosphere than Munred told it to proceed.

As the accelerating ship passed out through the ionosphere Munred saw a black shape between him and the stars. Frowning he reached for the control column. Something large hit his ship and a massive electrical discharge caused it to explode.

For all of Munred Danporr’s ‘let’s be reasonable’ browbeating of Happiness’s Spokesman, an off-the-record doubt, an unadmitted fear, had had him leave a confidentially tabbed instruction on XE2. That confidential tab was timed. Allowing himself two days travel either way, and with a six hour stopover on Happiness, should he have failed to return that confidential tab was to be lifted two hours after his ETA on XE2.

So it was, 4 days 8 hours after Munred’s departure from XE2, that a message was flashed to his Sub and to the police that he was to be officially considered missing. Of all Munred’s sorry efforts in this affair that was his one indisputably sensible action.

Thus it was that, on reporting back for duty after their four day leave, Sergeant Alger Deaver and Constable Drin Ligure found themselves once more dispatched to the planet Happiness.

Neither of the two policemen were pleased. Both were disconcerted, suspecting that they may have failed in their duty the last time. Coincidences were fast overtaking them. And for the Director to disappear...

“Of course,” Alger tried to console himself, “he could’ve done a bunk. Given his shrewish woman the slip.”

“And give up his career?” Drin had once seen the Director at a formal function; moreover they had his faultless record with them.

“It’s been known.”

But even Alger wasn’t convinced. Not one freighter that had left Happiness in the last 50 days had turned up elsewhere. Something was happening, but what?

On their arrival at Happiness they made a seven hundred kilometre high orbit. No ground transmissions, no other ships, no moon. They descended slowly through the ionosphere, picked up the ground transmissions in the stratosphere.

As before.

Coasting down on the Spokesman’s beacon they arrived at his grain farm in his blue dawn. Having docked Alger checked the planet’s records before leaving the ship. He saw that the Director had indeed been here and when he had left — with time aplenty to spare to reach XE2 before their own departure.

They were crossing the apron when the Spokesman came wandering out of his farmhouse. He was still fuzzy with sleep. Even taking that into account he seemed singularly unsurprised to see them.