Brain World

Chapter One

Supervisor Ronald Bronston and Probationary Agent Willy de Rudder of Section G, of the Bureau of Investigation, of the Department of Justice, of the Commissariat of Interplanetary Affairs, snaked over the top of the mountain crest and slid and slipped through gravel a dozen meters to where a rock overhang protected them from being spotted from above. They both wore insulated coveralls, and hoods of the same material, so that facial and physical characteristics couldn’t be made out.

Under the ledge, they both slid the straps from over their shoulders and worked the cloth containers to their laps. The containers looked like the sheaths in which fishermen carry their rods.

Ronny Bronston drew forth a plastic telescope. He said, “Winded?”

“Yeah,” Willy de Rudder said, and panted. “You know, I never thought we’d make it. Where’d you learn to climb mountains?”

“Back on Earth. Hobby. Mostly in the Swiss Alps, but some in northern India, and some in the Sierra Nevadas, in what they used to call California.”

“Why would anybody pick mountain climbing for a hobby?” the other panted.

“Nobody seems to know,” Ronny muttered, adjusting the spyglass and leveling it. “The saying goes that you climb a mountain because it is there. Catch your breath, Willy. The way this’s been figured, we have twenty minutes to go. By that time, your breathing is going to have to be down to normal if we’re going to make the hit.”

It didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for. “There it is,” Ronny said. “Almost exactly a kilometer.” He handed the glass over. “Down there on the edge of that little lake.”

Willy found the chalet without difficulty. “Holy Ultimate,” he breathed in admiration. “That must be the most beautiful setting on Neu Reich.”

Ronny Bronston nodded and reached for his container and began to draw objects from it. “They’ve got a regular fetish about this planet. The planetary engineers they used went all out to attempt to duplicate southern Bavaria. Even imported Earthside flora and fauna.”

Willy put down the telescope and pointed. “Look,” he said, excitement suppressed. “Helio-jet.”

“It’s okay,” Ronny told him, attaching a firing chamber to a plastic gun stock. “We figured on them. There’s at least two of them in the sky at all times when Number One is in residence at his retreat. But they can’t spot us because we’re under this ledge, and they can’t detect our body heat because of these special outfits, and they can’t detect any metal because we haven’t got any metal on us, nothing but plastic, pseudo-rubber and cloth. Give me the first section of the barrel.”

Willy de Rudder fished into his container and came out with a section of gun barrel about a meter in length. It, too, was of plastic, a very hard plastic. He handed it over and Bronston screwed it into the firing chamber.

“The other one,” he said.

Willy handed over another section, then he picked up the telescope and directed it at the chalet again. He said, “He’s not out on the terrace yet, but there’s a couple of men setting up a table. A table for one. I thought he was supposed to have guests.”

“According to our dope, he always eats breakfast alone. And our dope on Number One is accurate. We lost two agents, good men, friends of mine, getting it.” Ronny Bronston screwed the second section of the rifle barrel into the first. He reached into his container and brought forth a telescopic sight and slipped it into its groove atop the rifle. “How’s your breath coming?”

“Still a little hard. It’s partly the altitude.”

“We have time. Give me the bipod.”

The other brought forth a small two-legged rest from the container beside him and handed it over. Ronny attached it to the end of the two-meter-long barrel and studied out a spot to emplace the weapon.

Willy, at the telescope, said, with an edge of excitement in his voice, “I think this is him.”

“No hurry,” Ronny said, setting up the odd, ultra-long-barreled gun. He stretched out behind it and peered through the scope. “That’s him, all right. Even at this distance you can see how arrogant the funker is. Okay, Willy, it’s all yours. How long did you say they checked you out on this product of the Department of Dirty Tricks?”

“About three weeks. I could hit a fly at this range.”

Ronny rolled out of the way and took the telescope from the other. “Zero in on him.” He directed the plastic viewer on the chalet.

Willy lay down on his belly and got into comfortable position. He got the cross-hairs of his sights onto the body of the man who was just sitting down to the table, far below on the chalet terrace. Three others hovered in the background, obviously flunkies.

He brought a very small screwdriver from a pocket of the coveralls and began very delicately to adjust a screw on the scope’s side.

Ronny said quickly, “That’s not metal, is it? Once we go on the run, they could pick up any amount of metal at all and especially be suspicious of any that was in movement.”

“No. It’s a plastic gismo they gave me back at the Octagon.”

Ronny grunted, peering through his spyglass. “He’s seated facing us. Try to hit him in the chest. It doesn’t make too much difference. One hit, anywhere, and we’ve accomplished what we want. How’s your breath?”

“Much better.”

“Hold out your hand.”

Willy held out his right hand. It didn’t tremble.

“Wizard,” Ronny said. “But we’ll wait another ten minutes to be absolutely sure that you’re steady.”

For a time there was silence, then Willy said, his voice low, “When I was recruited into Section G I didn’t know that my activities would include political assassinations.”

“Neither did I, when I was recruited,” Ronny Bronston said wryly. “By the way, you weren’t recruited, you were suckered in.”

The other looked over at him. “How do you mean? I’ve had the dream of going into space, participating in the expansion of mankind into the stars, since I was a kid. Everything I did, studied, worked at, was with that in mind. I applied for a position that would take me into space.”

“Ummm,” Ronny said, still eyeing the scene on the chalet terrace below. “But Commissioner Ross Metaxa has a few hundred men going around at all times, seeking out potential Section G agents. When they get a cross on one they move in on him and he soon finds out that the only chance that he’ll get an appointment to get into space is by joining Section G. It usually takes about three years to check you out satisfactorily.”

Willy de Rudder was staring at him.

He said, “Why do you tell me that, especially at this time? What you’re saying is that I’m not my own man, that I’ve been maneuvered. And maneuvered into a position I never expected to find myself in. I don’t approve of political assassinations.”

“Neither do I,” Ronny said wearily. “Neither does Section G… ordinarily. This is an exception. Usually, crisping a dictator doesn’t do any good. You just get another dictator to take his place and the second one might be worse. I don’t know how well you’re acquainted with Earth history, but some time ago a radical named Lenin overthrew the government of Russia and became a dictator… of sorts. A member of an opposition party, the Social Democrats, got near enough to shoot him. It took him several semi-invalid years to die from the wound. When he did, another dictator named Stalin took over. The thing is, no matter how mistaken he might have been, Lenin was an idealist. Stalin was a monster. How many millions of deaths can be laid to his hands, we’ll never know. Ghengis Khan was a piker.”

“Then why is our mission to shoot Number One?”

Ronny looked over at him. “I wasn’t in on the decision making. I’m a supervisor in Section G. Policy is made by upper echelons in the Bureau of Investigation. I’m a field man.” That didn’t sound like sufficient answer to a valid question on the part of a tyro agent, so he added, “I have the dream, the United Planets dream. I take the orders of those who are working it out in detail.”

Willy de Rudder said, “But why is Number One, of this planet Neu Reich, any different than the one you mentioned, Lenin? How do we know but that a worse one won’t come to power?”

Ronny said, still wearily, “It would seem that he’s an exception. You see, Willy, most dictatorships aren’t really one man affairs. They’re a team. Alexander the Great didn’t destroy the Persian Empire and take everything all the way to India; his team did. A team recruited largely, by the way, by his father, Philip, who was a real military genius. Caesar too had a devoted team, a competent one. Certainly, Napoleon did. He rallied around him some of the outstanding military, political and even scientific capabilities of his time.”

“But Number One?”

“Is unique. It would seem that he alone carries the whole Neu Reich program on his shoulders. Finish him and their dreams of expanding into this section of the galaxy and absorbing other planets—planets now in the loose confederation we call United Planets—would probably go under.”

“But not certainly?”

“Few things are certain, Willy. How’s your breathing?”

“Almost normal. As an agent of Section G will I often find myself in a position such as this—waiting to murder a man who is in no position to defend himself?”

“I wouldn’t know.” Ronny Bronston put down the telescope he’d had trained on the dictator below, and turned to his somewhat younger companion. He said definitely, “Willy, all the chips are down now. There’s a very good chance that we won’t get out of here. Once we hit Number One, the manure will be in the fan. So I might as well check you out now, in all decency, on the full story. If we do get out, you’ll no longer be a probationary agent, you’ll be a first grade agent—may the Holy Ultimate have mercy on your soul, assuming that there is any such thing as a Holy Ultimate, and I doubt it.”

“Go on,” Willy said, his voice a little tight. He had taken his eye away from the scope sight, with its victim beyond.

Ronny said, “Let’s make it very basic. When underspace was discovered and it became practical for intergalactic expansion on the part of mankind, things became chaotic beyond belief. Man exploded into the stars like, well, Commissioner Metaxa once called it lemmings. They took off from the mother planet, Earth, in all directions and for every reason known to man nor beast. Political reasons—they wanted a true Utopian society, a true Socialist, Communist or perhaps Anarchist society. Or like the Pilgrims of American history, a planet where they could practice their religion without outside interference. In short, go to hell in their own way.

Some went for crackpot reasons such as getting back to nature and giving up all technological progress. All right, so who cared? If a couple of thousand cloddies got together and went looking for an Earth-type world where they could revive ancient paganism, including witchcraft, what business was it of anybody else? A loose confederation, based on Mother Earth, was formed for interplanetary cooperation. United Planets, in short. Willy, what are Articles One and Two of the United Planets Charter?”

The other looked at him, his hood masking his frown. “Why, anybody knows that. Article One: The United Planets organization shall take no steps to interfere with the internal political, socio-economic, or religious institutions of its member planets. Article Two: No member planet of United Planets shall interfere with the internal political socio-economic or religious institutions of any other member planets.”

Ronny nodded. “Right. And those two articles are the very basis of United Planets. However, there came a new development. Over a century ago one of our Space Forces scouts picked up a derelict, drifting, blasted and burnt out alien spacecraft. It was obviously military in nature, had been destroyed in some interplanetary conflict and it contained the charred remains of a life form—obviously intelligent. It was about the size of a monkey but with a larger head, and it had the equivalent of hands capable of handling delicate tools.

“All of a sudden, the highest echelons of United Planets realized that mankind was in the clutch. No longer could we be philosophical about those segments of our race that were not advancing scientifically, technologically. Sooner or later, man in his expansion into the galaxy, would come up against this intelligent life form, or possibly the other life form with which it had waged interplanetary conflict.

“When our engineers examined that burnt out one-man spacescout, they were scared silly. It was too far gone for them to be able to figure out any of the devices aboard, but they could learn enough to know that the little monkey-like creature was backed by a technology as far ahead of us as we are of Neanderthal man.”

Willy said unhappily, “Well, maybe this intelligent alien life form would prove friendly.”

“Wizard,” Ronny said wryly. “And maybe not. Remember it was a military craft the critter was in and it had been destroyed in a fight. It was obvious that mankind could no longer refrain from progressing in science and technology as rapidly as possible. We could no longer tolerate, in United Planets, worlds with crackpot political, socioeconomic, or even religious systems that prevented all-out development.

“So Section G was secretly organized to subvert Articles One and Two of the Charter. By any method found necessary, we pushed the member worlds ahead, even in spite of themselves. If there was a planet with a feudalistic social system, we undermined it and made efforts to establish a capitalistic one, under which progress would be the faster. If there was a dictatorship, where a self-proclaimed elite held up progress the better to milk the man in the street, we subverted it. It there was some religion that held up progress, we undermined it.”

Willy de Rudder said unhappily, “Why keep it all secret? Why not just come right out and inform the whole United Planets confederation about these aliens, and urge them to cooperate in all-out advance? The danger is a common one.”

Ronny peered through the telescope again, checking the terrace of the chalet. Number One was beginning to eat.

“How’s your breathing?” he said.

“Just about normal.”

“We’ll wait a few more minutes,” Ronny decided. “To go on with it, we can’t just come out and make a plea for unity in the face of a common potential foe, because there is nothing that man hangs onto more fanatically than his religious, political and socio-economic beliefs. The Christians died in the Roman arenas rather than give up their God. When the advent of the atomic bomb came along, did the United States and Soviet Russia, of those days, unite in the face of mutual destruction? Hell, no. They went into an arms race. Better dead than Red, the Americans said, and the Russians had similar slogans. Socioeconomics? You get an advocate of capitalism and one of socialism together and they’ll argue till hell freezes over before one will give in. No, Willy, we had to do it behind their backs. And that was, and still is, the basic reason for the existence of Section G, though complications have come up recently.”

He took a deep breath. “At any rate, that’s why we’re here on the planet Neu Reich. Number One stands in the way. This world isn’t even a member of United Planets and he’s rattling his scabbard, threatening to take over some of the other humanity-settled worlds in this sector.”

He reached into a pocket of his coveralls and brought forth an odd looking cartridge. It was quite long and even the case was of plastic.

Ronny handed it over. “All right, Willy, this is it,” he told the other.

Willy de Rudder took the bullet. He said, “Only one? Suppose I miss?”

“In the first place, you’d never get a chance to get another shot at him. That gobblydygook gun is a single shot deal and he’ll be away and into the chalet before you could reload. But besides that, this plastic weapon was designed with only one shot in mind. The barrel is ruined after only one. You’d be hard put to hit anything with it. No, we get only one chance.”

Ronny took up the telescope again and trained it on the dictator below. Willy snuggled up against the stock of the gawky rifle and brought his eye to the scope.

Ronny said, “Okay. Hit him smack in the middle of the chest. Or, at least, aim for it. That cartridge will do the job.”

The long barreled plastic rifle had two triggers. De Rudder pressed the first one, the set trigger, then very carefully brought his finger back to the hair trigger behind. He took a deep breath, held it and gently squeezed. The gun hissed and, in spite of the manner in which the stock was padded, the marksman’s shoulder was thrown back.

Ronny snapped, “You missed! Come on, let’s get the hell out of here!”