Planet in Peril Read online

  WAS SHE REAL?

  Charles looked down at the unconscious girl. The girl who’d worked with him, loved him. He turned to the other man.

  “What have you done to Sara, Hiram? What’s this all about?”

  From his pocket, Hiram Dinkuhl took a small knife; he flipped the catch and the sapphire blade leaped out. Charles watched in fascination as the other man bent down toward the unconscious face. Charles heard himself saying: “Stop. . . !”

  With a deft motion, Dinkuhl sliced into the flesh at the base of the girl’s forehead. He held up the strip he had cut away. There was no bleeding from the incision. The cut laid bare not flesh but plastic.

  Now, beyond any doubt, Charles knew he had been loving a mask…

  JOHN CHRISTOPHER

  PLANET IN PERIL

  Copyright © 1959 by John Christopher

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  PART ONE

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  PART TWO

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  CODA

  Planet in Peril

  PART ONE

  I

  After he had put the remains of the meal down the chute and snapped the table back into the wall, Charles Grayner slumped automatically in his fireside chair and his eyes, as automatically, went to the flickering telescreen. He cut the whole thing off when he left the house in the morning, but the daily help put it on again. He knew her viewing habits by now; she alternated between three channels—Red League, Honey, and Cosy Bright. The singer, Loulou del Keith, was a Cosy Bright exclusive. His hand dropped to the control panel. He checked himself for a moment and then pressed the ninth button decisively.

  Sight and sound went, and were replaced by a Mozart string quartet. On the screen was the El Greco “Cleansing of the Temple.” Dinkuhl had used that juxtaposition before—twice at least. Charles felt a mild irritation; he had been one of those who had protested against this business of deliberately associating musical works and paintings.

  The quartet ended, on a flat note. Dinkuhl’s face came through, characteristically smiling, half mocking, half enraged.

  “This,” Dinkuhl said, “is Channel KF.” His voice was soft but flexible; it could resonate into anger. “I propose to save a lot of people a lot of money. Well, when I say a lot of people—” He shrugged. “I've hired a boy to go through my stenoflips for me. He has instructions to destroy any one that tells me I have to stop linking Mozart and El Greco, or Haydn and Rubens, or Beethoven and Rembrandt So save yourself a couple of quarters.”

  He paused. “Do you object that you would prefer to see the musicians, in all their ugliness, in all their squalor? In that case I recommend that you go right out and see them—in the flesh, my friends, in the disillusioning flesh. Few of you will have to travel more than five hundred miles to find a concert hall. But this is TV, and there is only one Channel KF, and I shall continue to kill two birds with one stone. Some of you, at least, must be tone deaf.”

  Dinkuhl backed away from the camera, turned his back on it, and rooted around in a corner of the studio. Then he came back to face the camera. “Now I remember,” he said. “I fixed it all up before. Ladies and gentlemen, the KF newsreel!”

  The music was a neat parody of the signature tune for the Red League newsreel, in a minor key, mocking. The screen showed the night sky, caught the Moon, and dissolved into a familiar moonscape—the view from the Tycho observatory.

  “Out there,” Dinkuhl said, “along with mystery, there is beauty. Let us look not at a new planet but at the —the—new comet.”

  The screen was patterned with brilliant stars; the bright smudge of the comet was central, beneath Jupiter.

  “More than two thousand years ago this great comet last swept in its parabola round the sun. While eighty generations of men have come and gone, while the human race has climbed so painfully to its present eminence, that majestic luminary has been plodding round a course trillions of miles away in the outer dark.”

  The camera came back to Dinkuhl’s own face. He lowered his head so that light gleamed from the bald patch at the crown, and smiled up from under bushy eyebrows.

  “I suggest you get up out of that goddam chair, and go outside and have a look for yourself. Channel KF proposes to help you on your way by closing down for half an hour. We are going out on the roof to have a look at the comet ourselves. Good-bye.”

  The screen went blank. Charles got up, found his field-glasses and went out into the night air, damp and a little frosty.

  He made his way down the path to the point, beyond the arbor, where his view of the sky would be uninterrupted. He raised his glasses and found the comet. He looked at it until his arm began to ache and his hand shook the glasses. Nothing much—a smear of whiteness, with one of the planet's moons set in it like a pearl.

  He was preparing to go back to the house when he heard the loud ring of the call amplifier; automatically he quickened his step and then, deliberately, slowed again. He pressed the door open, and cut the amplifier out. The din dropped to the usual persistent buzz.

  In the lounge, he pressed the button for the information panel on the callscreen. The letters sprang into being at the left-hand side, ran across, and jerked back again, in a never-ending series:

  GRAYNER FROM LEDBETTER—UC DIV HQ DETROIT—URGENT URGENT—PERSONAL—GRAYNER FROM LEDBETTER—

  Ledbetter. He wasted no time in putting the callscreen on reply circuit. While his Accept call was going out he pulled a chair over and sat down. He tried to be at ease, reminding himself that at thirty-eight he was past the stage of being upset by unexpected calls from HQ. At least, he should be.

  It was not Ledbetter, of course, who took the call. A young man, with a sleek look and the little rubylite badges on his lapels, spelling out United Chemicals, smiled.

  “Grayner?” he said. "We haven't met, have we? I'm Official Paulton.”

  “Glad to know you,” Charles said evenly.

  “Manager Ledbetter wants to see you; he asked me to fix an appointment. Can you get here in the morning?”

  “All right.”

  “Ten hundred. Look me up first. My room is F 73. You know your way around the place, I take it?”

  “I’ve been there before.”

  “See you then.”

  Paulton let his smile fade into a look of sober concentration, and then switched off. The callscreen blanked. Charles sat where he was for several minutes. The first thing he told himself was that there was no point at all in trying to work out possible reasons for the call to see Ledbetter. From that stage, nevertheless, he went on to do precisely that.

  His niche in the Saginaw laboratories was a small but apparently secure one. If this were a demotion—a removal back, perhaps, to the general lab—it was difficult to see why he should be called urgently in to Detroit to be informed of it. That was a routine matter and would be dealt with through routine channels. It would not need an interview with Ledbetter to confirm it.

  The same argument applied to the suggestion that there might be a promotion for him. There could be no justification. Sixteen years’ research in the radioactive properties of diamonds had not, he knew, fitted him for the control of any larger project. One assistant and two lab boys. After sixteen years you could do that, and that was all you could do.

  That left him up in the air. No demotion, no promotion-then why the call to Detroit?

  At precisely ten hundred the follo
wing morning Paulton looked puzzled when he saw Charles’ face. Charles was standing in the corridor outside room 73 on F floor and the small inset callscreen transmitted his features to the panel on the wall facing Paulton’s desk. Then Paulton’s face cleared.

  “Grayner, of course! Come on in.”

  The door beside him slid open, and closed after him as he went through. Paulton had genuine interest and recollection on his face when they met in the flesh. His control, Charles reflected, was admirable; many would have overdone the forgetfulness. He shook hands with a warm grip. Ledbetter’s rooms, of course, were on B. Paulton led him through to the room marked Manager G. D. Ledbetter, and whistled at the door. It opened, and they went in. Ledbetter was talking into a dictaphone. He looked up grimly as they entered, but went on to finish the stenoflip he was engaged on. Then he said to Paulton:

  “I propose to have the sound-key changed on that door. When I do I shall make a point of not letting you in on the new one. Who’s this?”

  “Grayner,” Paulton said. “It won’t make a lot of difference—about the door. Grayner. You told me to get him here to see you.”

  Ledbetter said: “Yes, of course. All right, you can go, Harry. Next time you come in, use the callscreen.” Paulton, retreating, said: “I’ll try to remember.” Charles had been studying Ledbetter. He had seen him on newsreels and in the UC telezine, but those had been formal occasions. Now he was entirely friendly and relaxed. He had got his managership young and his present seniority had been reached in a vault over several more likely shoulders. He said to Charles: “You’ll be wondering why I’ve got you to come along here.”

  Charles said: “Well, naturally. And the notice was rather short.”

  Ledbetter nodded. “The reason I wanted to see you is that I am in the middle of the usual thing that new Area Managers go in for. I’m having a reorganization.” He looked directly at Charles. “You will have noticed some of the earlier changes in your own plant?”

  Charles nodded. “I’d hoped maybe I was in too small a niche to be noticed.”

  From one of the drawers in his desk Ledbetter produced a microfilm capsule and clipped it into the projector. The telescreen on the wall lit up and displayed what was immediately recognizable as one of Charles’ own recent reports—The effect of zeta irradiation on the photoelectric properties of a type II diamond (Cape white).

  “You write a very fair report. But you’re not ambitious?”

  “You have my psychoplan.”

  Ledbetter smiled. “Frankly, an error was made in your case. You aren’t really the dead-end type.”

  “You didn’t call me in simply to offer condolences— official or otherwise?”

  Ledbetter said: “Now, let’s get it straight and lay it on the table. Alpha—I’m in a mood for change. Beta—you should never have been tossed into that lab in the first place. Gamma’s the rub. Gamma—you’ve spent sixteen years messing around with radio-active diamonds. That restricts the possibilities of what we can do with you to a somewhat startling extent.”

  Charles said: “Very interesting. Delta?”

  “Coincidence,” said Ledbetter, “rears its ungainly but attractive head. There’s a little place going at a spot called San Miguel. South of San Diego. Area HQ is at Los Angeles—a guy called Mettrill. You’ll like him. And you will be picking up some interesting threads. This for instance.”

  He removed the microfilm of Charles* report and replaced it with another. The report unfolded itself before them. In the list of references at the end there were half a dozen papers of his own. He looked at Ledbetter.

  “Where was this published?”

  “It hasn’t been.”

  “Because?”

  “Because that is one of the advantages of your new post. Don’t publish if you don’t want to. You might call yourself a scientific hobo, with endowment.”

  Charles’ mind had been engaged with the paper that had just been projected for him. Things began to click into place.

  "Do I come under Contact Section?” he asked. Ledbetter smiled. "No.”

  Charles said patiently: "Then it will be all right for me to publish whatever I want?”

  "I didn’t say that. The new job is restricted. You are under San Diego for admin but any reports you make go direct to Graz.”

  "To Tapron?”

  "To Nikko-Tsi, for Preston.”

  “And what do they want me to turn out?”

  "I’m not in the secret. This report of Humayun’s you’ve just seen—it doesn’t mean anything to me because it’s not my line, but I suspect that there isn’t anything vital in it anyway, or I wouldn’t have been given it to show you.”

  Charles said: "It’s fairly routine stuff, as a matter of fact. Bombardment conductivity; we’ve done a certain amount at Saginaw.” Ledbetter nodded his appreciation. "There are one or two points in it, though—”

  "They, I take it, were meant to whet your appetite. Do they?”

  "Yes.” He hesitated before he shot the next question at the Manager. "What became of my predecessor? Radiation poisoning or the managerial variety?”

  "A good question. Humayun, I understand, was by way of being an amateur sailor like myself—plenty of scope in a place like that as I’ve indicated. I don’t know the details of what happened, except that his boat came back, keel upwards, and he didn’t. It’s a tricky coast, I understand.” Charles thought for a moment that he looked at him oddly, but there wasn’t enough in it to get hold of a meaning. "A very tricky coast. I should stay away from it when the flow tide’s getting near the turn.” Charles nodded. "When do you want me to start?” Ledbetter glanced at the note-pad inset on the desk under his right hand. "You will be turning your gyro in at Saginaw. We’ll pick you up with your things in the morning and you’ll join the ten hundred stratoliner here. By the way, in your new position you are up five hundred a month. You qualify for a Cat C gyro and limousine, too. One other triviality—you don t object to ex-Siraqis?”

  Charles looked at him with some surprise. "How many of them?”

  “Only one. Humayun was, and he picked one for his assistant. I have the impression that a lot of the valuable side of Humayun's work may only be traceable through her.”

  “I don't see any reason why I should want to get rid of her.”

  “That's fine, then.” Ledbetter glanced at the chronometer on the wall. “You'll have some packing to do, so I won't keep you any longer.”

  Charles left the UC HQ building in the first place because he wanted to drop in, for the last time, on Stone's, the little gramophone record exchange at the comer of 27th and Main. He browsed through the shelves of assorted records near the door. He found a set of the Munich John Passion, with one record missing, and wondered whether it was worth while taking it in the hope of filling in the gap sometime in the future. But it was priced too low; that represented Stone's own considered opinion that the odds against were very high. He put the records back as someone came into the shop.

  He recognized Dinkuhl, of course. The odd thing was that Dinkuhl recognized him; they had been introduced once, some years before, in circumstances that were now vague.

  The proprietor of Channel KF said: “Charlie Grayner! Nice to find you again. Having a last look round before you light out for the land of sunshine?”

  They shook hands. Charles said:

  “You astonish me.”

  Dinkuhl grinned. “You don't show it.”

  “You do, though. I suppose it would be rude to ask you where you got your information from?”

  “It must be six or seven years since I saw you.” Dinkuhl shook his head, clearly delighted with his own powers of recollection. “At the Sullivan place, before they got a transfer to Melbourne. It is you who are going to California, isn’t it? I thought it must be. Source of information? That, Charlie, is one thing you never ask a TV man. Come back with me and have a glass of something.”

  Charles nodded. “Thanks.”

  Dinkuhl's house, about
a mile away, overlooking Lake Erie, was twentieth-century Scandinavian in architecture, but had apparently been more soundly constructed than the average. Dinkuhl led Charles upstairs to a large room on the first floor, with a view on to the lake, and brought him a drink in a very fine-looking wide-bowled glass.

  Dinkuhl held his own glass up. “Cheers,” he said.

  They drank. The taste was odd. Charles held the glass up in inquiry.

  “What is it, Manager?”

  “Call me Hiram,” Dinkuhl said. "You like it? It’s a little something I knocked up myself. Turnip-and-tomato wine. Not bad, though? Not at all bad.”

  Answering his own question, he simultaneously topped up both their glasses. He fished out of one pocket the old-fashioned spectacles he sometimes wore in the studio and put them on to study Charles more closely.

  “Well, then,” he said. “What are you going to do for culture in the Far West? You’re one of the customers— you wrote me a letter about a month back.”

  “I can give up TV,” Charles said. He smiled. “Even KF. I might take up reading.”

  “It is an unhappy fact,” Dinkuhl said, “that the only people who can give up TV are precisely those who commonly patronize KF. Well, I guess it may last out my time.”

  “I never did understand why Telecom let you keep running.”

  “For only one reason, but a good one. Our charter got incorporated, in some strange way, in their constitution. I give the credit to my then predecessor, a guy called Bert White. The proprietorship of KF is a self-perpetuating office for which the chief qualification is low cunning, but White was exceptional. Short of rewriting their own constitution, a desperate step that might stir up a regular horde of hibernating skeletons, they've got to go on giving us rights of telecasting. They just have to get what satisfaction they can from watching us slowly fade away; but since we represent one of the few remaining strands of capitalism in the modem world, there’s one line I can try. Under managerialism, were sunk. So I shall try switching us to the one tiny oasis where managerialism doesn’t send its camels—to Siraq.” “Well, good luck.” Charles thought about it for a moment. “Not very hopeful, is it?”