Part 1

DOWN TO THE WORLDS OF MEN

BY ALEXEI PANSHIN

The ancient rule was sink or swim--swim in the miasma of a planet without spaceflight, or sink to utter destruction!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, July 1963. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

I

The horses and packs were loaded before we went aboard the scoutship. The scout bay is no more than a great oversized airlock with a dozen small ships squatting over their tubes, but it was the last of the Ship that I might ever see, so I took a long final look from the top of the ramp.

There were sixteen of us girls and thirteen boys. We took our places in the seats in the center of the scout. Riggy Allen made a joke that nobody bothered to laugh at, and then we were all silent. I was feeling lost and just beginning to enjoy it when Jimmy Dentremont came over to me. He's red-headed and has a face that makes him look about ten. An intelligent runt like me.

He said what I expected. "Mia, do you want to go partners if we can get together when we get down?"

I guess he thought that because we were always matched on study I liked him. Well, I did when I wasn't mad at him, but now I had that crack he'd made about being a snob in mind, so I said, "Not likely. I want to come back alive." It wasn't fair, but it was a good crack and he went back to his place without saying anything.

My name is Mia Havero. I'm fourteen, of course, or I wouldn't be telling this. I'm short, dark and scrawny, though I don't expect that scrawniness to last much longer. Mother is very good looking. In the meantime, I've got brains as a consolation.

After we were all settled, George Fuhonin, the pilot, raised the ramps. We sat there for five minutes while they bled air out of our tube and then we just ... dropped. My stomach turned flips. We didn't have to leave that way, but George thinks it's fun to be a hot pilot.

Thinking it over, I was almost sorry I'd been stinking to Jimmy D. He's the only competition I have my own age. The trouble is, you don't go partners with the competition, do you? Besides, there was still that crack about being a snob.

The planet chosen for our Trial was called Tintera. The last contact the Ship had had with it--and we were the ones who dropped them--was almost 150 years ago. No contact since. That had made the Council debate a little before they dropped us there, but they decided it was all right in the end. It didn't make any practical difference to us kids because they never tell you anything about the place they're going to drop you. All I knew was the name. I wouldn't have known that much if Daddy weren't Chairman of the Council.

I felt like crawling in a corner of the ship and crying, but nobody else was breaking down, so I didn't. I did feel miserable. I cried when I said good-by to Mother and Daddy--a real emotional scene--but that wasn't in public.

* * * * *

It wasn't the chance of not coming back that bothered me really, because I never believed that I wouldn't. The thought that made me unhappy was that I would have to be on a planet for a whole month. Planets make me feel wretched.

The gravity is always wrong, for one thing. Either your arches and calves ache or every time you step you think you're going to trip on a piece of fluff and break your neck. There are vegetables everywhere and little grubby things just looking for _you_ to crawl on. If you can think of anything creepier than that, you've got a real nasty imagination. Worst of all, planets stink. Every single one smells--I've been on enough to know that. A planet is all right for a Mud-eater, but not for me.

We have a place in the Ship like that--the Third Level--but it's only a thousand square miles and any time it gets on your nerves you can go up a level or down a level and be back in civilization.

When we reached Tintera, they started dropping us. We swung over the sea from the morning side and then dropped low over gray-green forested hills. Finally George spotted a clear area and dropped into it. They don't care what order you go in, so Jimmy D. jumped up, grabbed his gear and then led his horse down the ramp. I think he was still smarting from the slap I'd given him.

In a minute we were airborne again. I wondered if I would ever see Jimmy--if he would get back alive.

It's no game we play. When we turn fourteen, they drop us on the nearest colonized planet and come back one month later. That may sound like fun to you, but a lot of us never come back alive.

Don't think I was helpless. I'm hell on wheels. They don't let us grow for fourteen years and then kick us out to die. They prepare us. They do figure, though, that if you can't keep yourself alive by the time you're fourteen, you're too stupid, foolish or unlucky to be any use to the Ship. There's sense behind it. It means that everybody on the Ship is a person who can take care of himself if he has to. Daddy says that something has to be done in a closed society to keep the population from decaying mentally and physically, and this is it. And it helps to keep the population steady.

I began to check my gear out--sonic pistol, pickup signal so I could be found at the end of the month, saddle and cinches, food and clothes. Venie Morlock has got a crush on Jimmy D., and when she saw me start getting ready to go, she began to check her gear, too. At our next landing, I grabbed Ninc's reins and cut Venie out smoothly. It didn't have anything to do with Jimmy. I just couldn't stand to put off the bad moment any longer.

The ship lifted impersonally away from Ninc and me like a rising bird, and in just a moment it was gone. Its gray-blue color was almost the color of the half-overcast sky, so I was never sure when I saw it last.

II

The first night was hell, I guess because I'm not used to having the lights out. That's when you really start to feel lonely, being alone in the dark. When the sun disappears, somehow you wonder in your stomach if it's really going to come back. But I lived through it--one day in thirty gone.

I rode in a spiral search pattern during the next two days. I had three things in mind--stay alive, find people and find some of the others. The first was automatic. The second was to find out if there was a slot I could fit into for a month. If not, I would have to find a place to camp out, as nasty as that would be. The third was to join forces, though not with that meatball Jimmy D.

No, he isn't really a meatball. The trouble is that I don't take nothing from nobody, especially him, and he doesn't take nothing from nobody, especially me. So we do a lot of fighting.

I had a good month for Trial. My birthday is in November--too close to Year End Holiday for my taste, but this year it was all right. It was spring on Tintera, but it was December in the Ship, and after we got back we had five days of Holiday to celebrate. It gave me something to look forward to.

In two days of riding, I ran onto nothing but a few odd-looking animals. I shot one small one and ate it. It turned out to taste pretty good, though not as good as a slice from Hambone No. 4, to my mind the best meat vat on the Ship. I've eaten things so gruey-looking that I wondered that anybody had the guts to try them in the first place and they've turned out to taste good. And I've seen things that looked good that I couldn't keep on my stomach. So I guess I was lucky.

On the third day, I found the road. I brought Ninc down off the hillside, losing sight of the road in the trees, and then reaching it in the level below. It was narrow and made of sand spread over a hard base. Out of the marks in the sand, I could pick out the tracks of horses and both narrow and wide wheels. Other tracks I couldn't identify.

One of the smartest moves in history was to include horses when they dropped the colonies. I say "they" because, while we did the actual dropping, the idea originated with the whole evac plan back on Earth. Considering how short a time it was in which the colonies were established, there was not time to set up industry, so they had to have draft animals.

The first of the Great Ships was finished in 2025. One of the eight, as well as the two that were being built then, went up with everything else in the Solar System in 2041. In that sixteen years 112 colonies were planted. I don't know how many of those planets had animals that _could_ have been substituted but, even if they had, they would have had to be domesticated from scratch. That would have been stupid. I'll bet that half the colonies would have failed if they hadn't had horses.

* * * * *

We'd come in from the west over the ocean, so I traveled east on the road. That much water makes me nervous, and roads have to go somewhere.

I came on my first travelers three hours later. I rounded a tree-lined bend, ducking an overhanging branch, and pulled Ninc to a stop. There were five men on horseback herding a bunch of the ugliest creatures alive.

They were green and grotesque. They had squat bodies, long limbs and knobby bulges at their joints. They had square, flat animal masks for faces. But they walked on their hind legs and they had paws that were almost hands, and that was enough to make them seem almost human. They made a wordless, chilling, lowing sound as they milled and plodded along.

I started Ninc up again and moved slowly to catch up with them. All the men on horseback had guns in saddle boots. They looked as nervous as cats with kittens. One of them had a string of packhorses on a line and he saw me and called to another who seemed to be the leader. That one wheeled his black horse and rode back toward me.

He was a middle-aged man, maybe as old as my Daddy. He was large and he had a hard face. Normal enough, but hard. He pulled to a halt when we reached each other, but I kept going. He had to come around and follow me. I believe in judging a person by his face. A man can't help the face he owns, but he can help the expression he wears on it. If a man looks mean, I generally believe that he is. This one looked mean. That was why I kept riding.

He said, "What be you doing out here, boy? Be you out of your head? There be escaped Losels in these woods."

I told you I hadn't finished filling out yet, but I hadn't thought it was that bad. I wasn't ready to make a fight over the point, though. Generally, I can't keep my bloody mouth shut, but now I didn't say anything. It seemed smart.

"Where be you from?" he asked.

I pointed to the road behind us.

"And where be you going?"

I pointed ahead. No other way to go.

He seemed exasperated. I have that effect sometimes. Even on Mother and Daddy, who should know better.

We were coming up on the others now, and the man said, "Maybe you'd better ride on from here with us. For protection."

He had an odd way of twisting his sounds, almost as though he had a mouthful of mush. I wondered whether he were just an oddball or whether everybody here spoke the same way. I'd never heard International English spoken any way but one, even on the planet Daddy made me visit with him.

One of the other outriders came easing by then. I suppose they'd been watching us all the while. He called to the hard man.

"He be awfully small, Horst. I doubt me a Losel'd even notice him at all. We mought as well throw him back again."

The rider looked at me. When I didn't dissolve in terror as he expected, he shrugged and one of the other men laughed.

The hard man said to the others, "This boy will be riding along with us to Forton for protection."

I looked down at the plodding, unhappy creatures they were driving along and one looked back at me with dull, expressionless golden eyes. I felt uncomfortable.

I said, "I don't think so."

What the man did then surprised me. He said, "I do think so," and reached for the rifle in his saddle boot.

I whipped my sonic pistol out so fast that he was caught leaning over with the rifle half out. His jaw dropped. He knew what I held and he didn't want to be fried.

I said, "Ease your rifles out and drop them gently to the ground."

They did, watching me all the while with wary expressions.

When all the rifles were on the ground, I said, "All right, let's go."

They didn't want to move. They didn't want to leave the rifles. I could see that. Horst didn't say anything. He just watched me with narrowed eyes. But one of the others held up a hand and in wheedling tones said, "Look here, kid...."

"Shut up," I said, in as mean a voice as I could muster, and he did. It surprised me. I didn't think I sounded _that_ mean. I decided he just didn't trust the crazy kid not to shoot.

After twenty minutes of easy riding for us and hard walking for the creatures, I said, "If you want your rifles, you can go back and get them now." I dug my heels into Ninc's sides and rode on. At the next bend I looked back and saw four of them holding their packhorses and the creatures still while one beat a dust-raising retreat down the road.

I put this episode in the "file and hold for analysis" section in my mind and rode on, feeling good. I think I even giggled once. Sometimes I even convince myself that I'm hell on wheels.

III

When I was nine, my Daddy gave me a painted wooden doll that my great-grandmother brought from Earth. The thing is that inside it, nestled one in another, are eleven more dolls, each one smaller than the last. I like to watch people when they open it for the first time.

My face must have been like that as I rode along the road.

The country leveled into a great rolling valley and the trees gave way to great farms and fields. In the fields, working, were some of the green creatures, which surprised me since the ones I'd seen before hadn't seemed smart enough to count to one, let alone do any work.

But it relieved me. I thought they might have been eating them or something.

I passed two crossroads and started to meet more people, but nobody questioned me. I met people on horseback, and twice I met trucks moving silently past. And I overtook a wagon driven by the oldest man I've seen in my life. He waved to me, and I waved back.

Near the end of the afternoon I came to the town, and there I received a jolt that sickened me.

By the time I came out on the other side, I was sick. My hands were cold and sweaty and my head was spinning, and I wanted to kick Ninc to a gallop.

I rode slowly in, looking all around, missing nothing. The town was all stone, wood and brick. Out of date. Out of time, really. There were no machines more complicated than the trucks I'd seen earlier. At the edge of town, I passed a newspaper office with a headline pasted in the window--INVASION! I remember that. I wondered about it.

But I looked most closely at the people. In all that town, I didn't see one girl over ten years old and no grown-up women at all. There were little kids, there were boys and there were men, but no girls. All the boys and men wore pants, and so did I, which must have been why Horst and his buddies assumed I was a boy. It wasn't flattering; but I decided I'd not tell anybody different until I found what made the clocks tick on this planet.

But that wasn't what bothered me. It was the kids. My God! They swarmed. I saw a family come out of a house--a father and _four_ children. It was the most foul thing I've ever seen. It struck me then--these people were Free Birthers! I felt a wave of nausea and I closed my eyes until it passed.

* * * * *

The first thing you learn in school is that if it weren't for idiot and criminal people like these, Earth would never have been destroyed. The evacuation would never have had to take place, and eight billion people wouldn't have died. There wouldn't have _been_ eight billion people. But, no. They bred and they spread and they devoured everything in their path like a cancer. They gobbled up all the resources that Earth had and crowded and shoved one another until the final war came.

I am lucky. My great-great-grandparents were among those who had enough foresight to see what was coming. If it hadn't been for them and some others like them, there wouldn't be any humans left anywhere. And I wouldn't be here. That may not scare you, but it scares me.

What happened before, when people didn't use their heads and wound up blowing the Solar System apart, is something nobody should forget. The older people don't let us forget. But these people had, and that the Council should know.

For the first time since I landed on Tintera, I felt _really_ frightened. There was too much going on that I didn't understand. I felt a blind urge to get away, and when I reached the edge of town, I whomped Ninc a good one and gave him his head.

I let him run for almost a mile before I pulled him down to a walk again. I couldn't help wishing for Jimmy D. Whatever else he is, he's smart and brains I needed.

How do you find out what's going on? Eavesdrop? That's a lousy method. For one thing, people can't be depended on to talk about the things you want to hear. For another, you're likely to get caught. Ask somebody? Who? Make the mistake of bracing a fellow like Horst and you might wind up with a sore head and an empty pocket. The best thing I could think of was to find a library, but that might be a job.

I'd had two bad shocks on this day, but they weren't the last. In the late afternoon, when the sun was starting to sink and a cool wind was starting to ripple the tree leaves, I saw the scoutship high in the sky. The dying sun colored it a deep red. Back again? I wondered what had gone wrong.

I reached down into my saddlebag and brought out my contact signal. The scoutship swung up in the sky in a familiar movement calculated to drop the stomach out of everybody aboard. George Fuhonin's style. I triggered the signal, my heart turning flips all the while. I didn't know why he was back, but I wasn't really sorry.

The ship swung around until it was coming back on a path almost over my head, going in the same direction. Then it went into a slip and started bucking so hard that I knew this wasn't hot piloting at all, just plain idiot stutter-fingered stupidity at the controls. As it skidded by me overhead, I got a good look at it and knew that it wasn't one of ours. Not too different, but not ours.

One more enigma. Where was it from? Not here. Even if you know how, and we wouldn't tell these Mud-eaters how, a scoutship is something that takes an advanced technology to build.

* * * * *

I felt defeated and tired. Not much farther along the road, I came to a campsite with two wagons pulled in for the night, and I couldn't help but pull in myself. The campsite was large and had two permanent buildings on it. One was a well enclosure and the other was little more than a high-walled pen. It didn't even have a roof.

I set up camp and ate my dinner. In the wagon closest to me were a man, his wife and their three children. The kids were running around and playing, and one of them ran close to the high-walled pen. His father came and pulled him away.

The kids weren't to blame for their parents, but when one of them said hello to me, I didn't even answer. I know how lousy I would feel if I had two or three brothers and sisters, but it didn't strike me until that moment that it wouldn't even seem out of the ordinary to these kids. Isn't that horrible?

About the time I finished eating, and before it grew dark, the old man I had seen earlier in the day drove his wagon in. He fascinated me. He had white hair, something I had read about in stories but had never seen before.

When nightfall came, they started a large fire. Everybody gathered around. There was singing for awhile, and then the father of the children tried to pack them off to bed. But they weren't ready to go, so the old man started telling them a story. In the old man's odd accent, and sitting there in the campfire light surrounded by darkness, it seemed just right.

It was about an old witch named Baba Yaga who lived in the forest in a house that stood on chicken legs. She was the nasty stepmother of a nice little girl, and to get rid of the kid, she sent her on a phony errand into the deep dark woods at nightfall. I could appreciate the poor girl's position. All the little girl had to help her were the handkerchief, the comb and the pearl that she had inherited from her dear dead mother. But, as it turned out, they were just enough to defeat nasty old Baba Yaga and bring the girl safely home.

I wished for the same for myself.

The old man had just finished and they were starting to drag the kids off to bed when there was a commotion on the road at the edge of the camp. I looked but my eyes were adjusted to the light of the fire and I couldn't see far into the dark.

A voice there said, "I'll be damned if I'll take another day like this one, Horst. We should have been here hours ago. It be your fault we're not."

Horst growled a retort. I decided that it was time for me to leave the campfire. I got up and eased away as Horst and his men came up to the fire, and cut back to where Ninc was parked. I grabbed up my blankets and mattress and started to roll them up. I had a pretty good idea now what they used the high-walled pen for.

I should have known that they would have to pen the animals up for the night. I should have used my head. I hadn't and now it was time to take leave.

I never got the chance.

* * * * *

I was just heaving the saddle up on Ninc when I felt a hand on my shoulder and I was swung around.

"Well, well. Horst, look who we have here," he called. It was the one who'd made the joke about me being beneath the notice of a Losel. He was alone with me now, but with that call the others would be up fast.

I brought the saddle around as hard as I could and then up, and he went down. He started to get up again, so I dropped the saddle on him and reached inside my jacket for my gun. Somebody grabbed me then from behind and pinned my arms to my side.

I opened my mouth to scream--I have a good scream--but a rough smelly hand clamped down over it before I had a chance to get more than a lungful of air. I bit down hard--5000 lbs. psi, I'm told--but he didn't let me go. I started to kick, but Horst jerked me off my feet and dragged me off.

When we were behind the pen and out of earshot of the fire, he stopped dragging me and dropped me in a heap. "Make any noise," he said, "and I'll hurt you."

That was a silly way to put it, but somehow it said more than if he'd threatened to break my arm or my head. It left him a latitude of things to do if he pleased. He examined his hand. There was enough moonlight for that. "I ought to club you anyway," he said.

The one I'd dropped the saddle on came up then. The others were putting the animals in the pen. He started to kick me, but Horst stopped him.

"No," he said. "Look through the kid's gear, bring the horse and what we can use."

The other one didn't move. "Get going, Jack," Horst said in a menacing tone and they stood toe to toe for a long moment before Jack finally backed down. It seemed to me that Horst wasn't so much objecting to me being kicked, but was rather establishing who did the kicking in his bunch.

But I wasn't done yet. I was scared, but I still had the pistol under my jacket.

Horst turned back to me and I said, "You can't do this and get away with it."

He said, "Look, boy. You may not know it, but you be in a lot of trouble. So don't give me a hard time."

He still thought I was a boy. It was not time to correct him, but I didn't like to see the point go unchallenged. It was unflattering.