Time passed and the ship went on over the rim of the planet. Orbital speed was impossible. The Starshine stayed almost within the atmosphere and moved eastward at no more than fifteen hundred miles an hour.
"Here it is," said Kim, at last.
The ship settled down once more. There was a thin, hazy overcast here, and clear vision came suddenly as they dropped below it. And the coast and the land before them brought an exclamation from Dona. The shoreline was magnificent, all beautiful bold cliffs with rolling hills behind them. There were mountains on farther yet and splendid vistas everywhere. But more than the land or the natural setting, it was what men had done which caused Dona to exclaim.
The whole terrain was landscaped like a garden. As far as the eye could reach—and the Starshine still flew high—every hillside and every plain had been made into artificial but marvelous gardens. There were houses here and there. Some were huge and gracefully spreading, or airily soaring upward, or simple with the simplicity of gems and yet magnificent beyond compare. There was ostentation here, to be sure, but there was surely no tawdriness. There was no city in sight. There was not even a grouping of houses, yet many of the houses were large enough to shelter communities.
"I—see," said Kim. "The workmen live near the factories or in their compounds. The owners have their homes safely away from the ugly part of commerce. They've a small-sized continent of country homes, Dona, and undoubtedly it is very pleasant to live here. Whom shall we deal with?"
DONA shook her head. Kim picked a magnificent residence at random. He slanted the Starshine down. Presently it landed lightly upon smooth lawn of incredible perfection, before a home that Dona regarded with shining eyes.
"It's—lovely!" she said breathlessly. "It is," agreed Kim.
He sat still, looking.
"It even has a feeling all its own," he said. "The palace of a king or a tyrant always has something of arrogance about it. It's designed to impress the onlooker. A pleasure-palace is always tawdry. It's designed to flatter the man who enters it. These houses are solid. They're the homes of men who are thinking of generations to follow them and, meanwhile, only of themselves. I've heard of the merchant princes of Spicus Five, and I'm prejudiced. I don't like those factories with the workmen's homes inside. But—I like this house. Do you want to come with me?"
Dona looked at the house—yearningly. At the view all about, every tree and every stone so placed as to constitute perfection. The effect was not that of a finicky estheticism, but of authentic beauty and dignity. But after a moment Dona shook her head.
"I don't think I'd better," she said slowly. "I'm a woman, and I'd want one like it. I'll stay in the ship and look at the view. You've a communicator?"
Kim nodded. He opened the airlock door and stepped out. He walked toward the great building.
Dona watched his figure grow small in its progress toward the mansion. She watched him approach the ceremonial entrance. She saw a figure in formalized rich clothing appear in that doorway and bow to him. Kim spoke, with gestures. The richly clothed servant bowed for him to go first into the house. Kim entered and the door closed.
Dona looked at her surroundings. Dignity and tranquility and beauty were here. Children growing up in such an environment would be very happy and would feel utterly safe. Wide, smooth, close-cropped lawns, with ancient trees and flowering shrubs stretched away to the horizons. There was the gleam of statuary here and there—rarely. A long way off she could see the glitter of water, and beside it a graceful colonnade, and she knew that it was a pleasure-pool.
Once she saw two boys staring at the space-ship. There was no trace of fear in their manner. But a richly-dressed servant—much more carefully garbed than the boys—led up two of the slim riding-sards of Phanis, and the boys mounted and their steeds started off with that sinuous smooth swiftness which only sards possess in all the first galaxy.
Time passed, and shadows lengthened. Finally Dona realized how many hours had elapsed since Kim's departure. She was beginning to grow uneasy when the door opened again and Kim came out followed by four richly clad servants. Those servants carried bundles. Kim's voice came over the communicator.
"Close the inner airlock door, Dona, and don't open it until I say so."
Dona obeyed. She watched uneasily. The four servants placed their parcels inside the airlock at a gesture from Kim. Then there was an instant of odd tension. Dona could not see the servants, but she saw Kim smiling mirthlessly at them. He made no move to enter. He spoke sharply and she heard them file out of the air lock. Dona could see them again.
Kim stepped into the spaceship and closed the door.
"Take her up, Dona—fast!"
The Starshine shot upward, with the four servants craning their necks to look at it. It was out of sight of the ground in seconds. It was out of the atmosphere before Kim came into the control-room from the lock.
"Quite a civilization," he said. "You'd have liked that house Dona. There's a staff of several hundred servants, and it is beautiful inside. The man who owns it is also master of one of the bigger industrial plants. He doesn't go to the plant, of course. He has his offices at home, with a corps of secretaries and a television-screen for interviews with his underlings. Quite a chap."
"Were those four men servants?" Dona asked.
"No, they were guards," said Kim drily. "There are no proletarians around that place, and none are permitted. Guards stand watch night and day. I'd told my friend that the Starshine was packed with lethal gadgets with which Ades had won at least one war, and he's in the munitions business, so I wasn't going to let his guards get inside. They wanted to, badly, insisting they had to put their parcels in the proper place. He'd have paid them lavishly if they could have captured a ship like the Starshine."
He laughed a little.
"I was lucky to pick a munition maker. There aren't many wars in the ordinary course of events, but he turns out weapons for palace guards, mobile fighting-beam projectors, and so on. All the equipment for a planet ruler who wants a fancy army for parades or a force with a punch to fight off any sneak attack via matter-transmitter.
That's what your average ruler is afraid of, and what he keeps an army to defend himself against. Of course the disciplinary circuit takes care of his subjects."
CHAPTER VI
Vanished World
AHEAD of them loomed the sun, Spicus, many millions of miles away, while beneath them lay the planet, Spicus Five, a vast hemisphere which was rapidly shrinking into the distance. Kim moved over beside Dona and stared reflectively at the instrument board.
"I got frightened, Kim," the girl said. "You were gone so long."
"I was bargaining," Kim answered. "I told him I came from Ades. I'd a space-ship, so he could believe that. Then I told him what had happened. Selling munitions, he should have known about it beforehand, and I think he did. He doubted that I'd come from Ades as quickly as I said, though, until I recited the names of some of the gracious majesties who are making a grab of planets. Then he was sure. So he wanted to strike a bargain with me for Terranova. He'd supply it with arms, he said, in exchange for a star-cluster of his own in the Second Galaxy. If I'd set up a private matter-transmitter for him. . . ."
Kim laughed without mirth.
"He could colonize a couple of planets himself, and make a syndicate to handle the rest. He saw himself changing his status from that of a merchant princeling to that of a landed proprietor with half a dozen planets as private estates, and probably a crown to wear on week-ends and when he retired from business on Spicus Five. There are precedents, I gather."