A slavering sound reached Dan's ear. He sprinted after the Milbuns,
burst through the crowd in a headlong bolt for the cove, then swam as
fast as he could to keep up with them as they raced for the opposite
shore. They crawled out, strangling and gasping, and dragged themselves
up on the sand. Dan lay, heaving in deep breaths, then rolled over and
sat up.
The air around them was split by screams, laced through with sobs,
curses and groans. On the shore opposite, a mad dog darted across
the crowded beach and emptied people into the cove. In the cove, a
glistening black sweep of hide separated the water for an instant, then
sank below. People thrashed, fought and went under.
Dan looked up. On the wooden building beyond the cove and the beach was
a broad sign:
PORCYS PLANET
REJUVENATION CENTER
Dan read the sign three times. If this was rejuvenation, the Porcyns
could have it.
Beside Dan, Milbun stood up, still struggling for breath, and pulled
his wife and Mavis to their feet.
"Come on," he said. "We've _got_ to get through the swamp ahead of the
grayboas!"
* * * * *
The rest of the day, they pushed through slimy muck up to their knees
and sometimes up to their necks. Behind them, the crowd screamingly
thinned out.
That night, they washed in icy spring water, tore chunks of meat from
a huge broiled creature turning on a spit and went to sleep in tents
to the buzz and drone of creatures that shot their long needle noses
through the walls like drillers hunting for oil.
The following day, they spent carefully easing from crevice to narrow
toehold up the sheer face of a mountain. Food and shelter were at the
top. Jagged rocks and hungry creatures were at the bottom. That night,
Dan slept right through an urgent buzz from Kielgaard. The next night,
he woke enough to hear it, but he didn't have the strength to answer.
Where, he thought, is the rejuvenation in this?
Then he had a sudden glimmering. It was the Porcyn _race_ that was
rejuvenated. The unfit of the Porcyns died violently. It took stamina
just to live from one day to the next.
Even the Milbuns were saying that this was the worst vacation ever.
Trails slid out from under them. Trees fell toward them. Boulders
bounded down steep slopes at them.
At first, the Milbuns tried to remember forgotten sins for which all
this might be repayment. But when there was the dull _boom_ of an
explosion and they narrowly escaped a landslide, Milbun looked at the
rocks across the trail with sunken red eyes. He sniffed the air and
growled, "Undevised."
That afternoon, Dan and the Milbuns passed three average-looking men
hanging by their hands from the limb of a tree beside the trail.
The faces of the hanging men bore a surprised expression. They hung
perfectly still and motionless, except for a slight swaying caused by
the wind.
Dan and the Milbuns reached a mataform station late that afternoon.
A very hard-eyed guard in an orange cape, barred across the shoulders
in black, let them through and they found themselves in another
spaceship, bound for Fumidor, the mining planet.
* * * * *
Dan sat back exhausted and fell asleep. He was awakened by a determined
buzz.
"_Dan!_" said Kielgaard's voice.
"Yes." Dan sat up. "Go ahead."
"Trans-Space is going to try to take over Porcys. There's nothing you
can do about that, but they've landed agents on Vacation Planet to pick
you off. Look out."
Dan told Kielgaard what had happened to the agents on Vacation Planet,
such as the "undevised" explosion and being hung up by the hands.
Kielgaard whistled. "Maybe the Porcyns can take care of themselves.
Trans-Space doesn't think so."
"How did you find out?"
The tiny voice held a note of grim satisfaction. "They ran an agent in
on us and he gave himself away. He went back with an organo-transmitter
inside him, and a memory bank. The bank stores up the day's
impressions. The transmitter squirts them out in one multi-frequency
blast. The agent is poorly placed for an informant, but we've learned a
lot through him."
"How are they going to take over Porcys?"
"We don't know. They think they've found the Porcyns' weak point, but
if so, we don't know what it is."
"Listen," urged Dan, "maybe _we_ ought to put a lot of agents on
Porcys."
"No," said Kielgaard. "That's the wrong way to play it. If we go in
now, we'll be too late to do any good. We're still counting on you."
"There's not very much I can do by myself."
"Just do your best. That's all we can ask."
Dan spent the next week chipping out pieces of a radioactive ore. At
night, Kielgaard would report the jubilant mood of Trans-Space. On
the following days, Dan would chop at the ore with vicious blows that
jarred him from his wrists to his heels.
The steady monotonous work, once he was used to it, left his mind free
to think and he tried furiously to plan what he would do when he got
out. But he found he didn't really know enough about Porcys to make a
sensible plan. Then he began trying to organize what he had seen and
heard during his stay on the planet. At night, Kielgaard helped him and
together they went over their theories, trying to find those that would
fit the facts of Porcys.
"It all hinges on population pressure," said Kielgaard finally. "On
most planets we know of, overpopulation leads to war, starvation,
birth control or emigration. These are the only ways. At least, they
were, till we discovered Porcys."
* * * * *
"All right," agreed Dan. "Grant that. The Porcyns plainly don't have
any of those things, or not to any great extent. Instead, they have
institutions such as we've never seen before. They have 'sweepers,'
so-called 'vacations' and a rope from building to building. All these
things cut down population."
"Don't forget their 'truth chairs,'" said Kielgaard.
"Where you either tell the truth or get converted to ashes--yes. But
how does it all fit in?"
"Let's take one individual as an example. Start at birth."
"He's born," said Dan. "Probably they have nurseries, but we know they
stick together as families, because we have the Milbuns to go by. He
grows up, living at his parents' place. He goes with other children to
school or to see different parts of his city. A lion--which he calls a
'dog'--protects him."
"Yes," said Kielgaard. "It protects him from sweepers. But most
grownups don't need protection. Only those whose charge is low."
"Of course. The boy hasn't been on vacation yet. He's not radioactive.
Apparently you have to be radioactive to open doors. At the apartment
house, the boy comes in a small door to one side. The lions, or what
resemble lions, like the children but don't like the sweepers. And the
sweepers are afraid of them. All right. But what about when he grows
up?"
"Well, for one thing, he has to use the regular doors now. And they
won't open unless he's been on vacation. And if he hasn't been on
vacation and if his charge isn't high, the sweepers will go out and
grab him. That must be what that sign you saw meant. 'Swept' was a
warning that there was no escape in that direction."
"I begin to see it," said Dan. "I was safe on that road because the
birth rate in that section wasn't high. But in the city, the birth rate
_was_ high, so, to keep the population down, the standards were raised.
Apparently the sweepers were fed less and got more hungry. People had
to go on vacation more often. But what about the rope?"
* * * * *
"I don't think we really know enough to understand the rope," said
Kielgaard, "but maybe it's a face-saving device. People who don't think
they're in good enough shape to get through 'vacation,' and who don't
want to die a slow death avoiding sweepers and waiting to go through
locked doors, can go across on the rope. Or perhaps it's a penance. If
a man has done something wrong and he's afraid to deny it in the truth
chair, perhaps he's allowed to confess and go so many times across the
rope as punishment. The people cheered. That must mean it's honorable."
"That makes sense," Dan agreed. "All right, but why don't they just
ship their surplus population to the other two planets?"
"We've studied that back here," said Kielgaard. "We think it's because
they wouldn't dare. They've got their little mainland allotted and
rationed down to the last blade of grass. They can do that because it's
small enough to keep control of. Now suppose they try to enforce the
same system on a new planet with a hundred times the land area--what's
going to happen? They'll have unknown, uncontrollable factors to deal
with. Their system will break down. That statue of theirs shows they
know it, too. The man in the blue cape 'devises' and his strong right
hand does nothing but keep the circle--their system--from flying apart.
What puzzles me is that they're satisfied with it."
"There's another point," Dan said, "but I think I see it now. They've
got a caste system, but people must be able to move from one caste to
another. There must be a competitive exam or some system of choice.
The vacation advisor said Mr. Milbun was 'at present' a merchant. His
wife was 'now' a housewife. And no one ever asked my name, though I
told it voluntarily to Milbun. It was always 'Yes, Devisement,' or 'Is
it time to take your vacation, Devisement?' There were no personal
titles like 'Sir Moglin,' or 'First Magistrate Moglin,' such as we've
encountered on other planets."
Kielgaard grunted. "That would explain the differently colored capes,
too. No one would care if a man was a street-cleaner ten years ago.
They'd see his cape was blue and give him immediate, automatic respect."
"Yes," said Dan. "That's it. And no one would dare _cheat_ about
the color of the cape he wore, because, regardless of his position,
sooner or later his charge would be gone. Then he would have to go on
vacation. And to do _that_, he _has_ to sit in the truth chair and tell
the truth or get incinerated." Dan stopped suddenly and sucked in a
deep breath.
"What's wrong?" asked Kielgaard.
"_That's_ the weak point."