Read Ebook: A Planet for Your Thoughts by Norman James Morey Leo Illustrator

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Ebook has 247 lines and 11279 words, and 5 pages

A PLANET FOR YOUR THOUGHTS

With the grape-headed Uvans acting as the brains of the Universe, Mankind no longer needed to think for itself. So when a freebooter like Bill Petrie began getting original ideas, he caused a crisis that threatened the cosmos.

Bill Petrie didn't attempt to move. He couldn't. His chafed neck and wrists were firmly clamped within the slots of a medieval pillory. As he hung there, sweltering in the heat, he wondered how long he had been unconscious and how long in the pillory. Somehow, it was hard to believe he actually was where he was.

"Uva, north-ecliptic tangent, electric buzzer," he muttered fuzzily.

It was generally known that there were natives on Uva whose heads resembled strange clusters of grapes and whose eyes had a disconcerting habit of never being in one regular place on their heads. Some years after the discovery of Uva by the Gonzales "space-shot" it was found that the Uvans had a peculiarly facile brain. They could take any problem, no matter how tough, and crack it down into simple formula. You gave them a problem and an equals sign--they gave you the answer. It was a wonderful discovery.

Brains were no longer at a premium. Uvans did all the thinking, technicians did the work and the Interworld Government did the administering. It was administrators that counted now.

Bill Petrie wasn't an administrator. He was a freebooter, one of that rare, declassed group who still clung to the idea that they could do their own thinking instead of having it done for them.

He squinted hard at the Uvans who crowded beneath the pillory and shuddered. Something was wrong. The Uvans were supposed to be very mild and not at all addicted to the use of ancient tortures. This time he shut his eyes and held them that way, cutting out sight while he tried to think back.

He recalled the first scene: shooting upward to the top offices of the Interworld Fuel Monopoly....

Bill worked for the Monopoly as a kind of glorified errand boy. Everyone worked for monopolies in this day and age, freebooter or not. As he rode upward, he had an inkling that something important was disturbing the smoothly regulated mechanism of the world. The entire IWFM building buzzed with feverish activity.

"Come in," said a voice. It was a smooth feminine voice, not Castlebottom's.

Bill entered and was stared at from behind a desk. The eyes that were fastened upon him were worried and balloon-like. They belonged to Castlebottom, a youngish, rotund individual with a great deal of front.

"So it's you at last," Castlebottom puffed. "Such delays! The crisis ... etheroel."

Bill sniffed, then jockeyed his eyes around, searching for the other voice. It was then that he caught his breath....

Kitty Carlton was the woman of the moment, the toast of three worlds--Mars, Venus and Earth. The Planetoids didn't count for they were just colonies. Kitty was the very capable chief of the giant Cosmetics Monopoly. But she wasn't toasted for that. It was her very trim, blonde, dimpled loveliness that did the trick. Dressed in leatherine white from head to foot, she resembled a snow queen.

"Petrie!" Castlebottom's strained voice jarred Bill back into the present. "Pay attention, please! That's the trouble with you freebooters. Minds always wander."

"Do you blame me?" Bill murmured.

"The matter in hand," Castlebottom said, frowning and paying no attention to the girl. "You know there's an etheroel crisis? We've tapped the last fuel sands on Venus. Our supply will be gone within a month. You know what that means?"

"Where do I fit in?" Bill asked.

Castlebottom was up from his desk. He disappeared into a side office.

"Freebooter, eh?" It was Kitty Carlton. She had crossed the room and now sat on the edge of Castlebottom's desk, looking at Bill with frank, deep-blue eyes. "Very interesting. You're the first one I've ever seen this close. You don't look very different."

"So you think," Bill grinned. "You ought to hear my side of the difference. How about lunch any one of these years?"

The girl's penciled brows knitted. "With a freebooter? No!" Her lips parted with a vague smile. "But if you were ... ah ... for example, a monopoly commissioner like Tubby--"

"Tubby?" asked Bill.

"Yes, Castlebottom, my fianc?."

"You'd give me a buzz?"

"Perhaps."

Castlebottom returned to the room, puffing with bureaucratic vigor. "Here are your credentials, Petrie," he said, handing Bill a metallic IWG diplomatic pass. "There's a Patrol cruiser waiting."

Bill took one look at Kitty Carlton and tossed the pass back upon the desk. "I'm not going!" he said.

"Not going!" Castlebottom exploded. "But the fuel crisis, man!"

"Get someone else. I said I'm staying. I'm working my way up to head a monopoly."

"You!" Castlebottom turned purple.

"Yeah, me. I'll think my way up. That's more than you ever did."

Castlebottom looked very threatening for a second. He clenched and unclenched his hands spasmodically, finally stabbing a pudgy finger at a pushbutton on his desk. He had the look of a conqueror as he stared toward the door.

Bill pivoted in time to see the three Monopoly Building policemen charge in. Each one was built on the order of an eight-gun space-destroyer and the result was about as devastating. Bill got in one sharp jab but a moment later the three destroyers carried him out. Bill's sandy hair was a bit mussed. His good-natured mouth was clamped tightly on a trickle of blood and the rest of his body felt like strenuously whipped eggs.

"Freebooter!" That was the last thing he heard Castlebottom saying. "Take him down to the cruiser."

Bill was in no condition to appreciate the next few days. He sensed the wallowing of the IWP Cruiser as it hit difficult gravs and felt his ears dulled by the hollow drumming of the rocket pumps. Sometimes a mess-boy brought in food but more often, icepacks. Between icepacks, Bill figured a dozen ways of evening the score with Commissioner Castlebottom.

The plans were all very good, but with one exception. The next day, the Patrol Cruiser hovered over a planetoid surface described by astronomers as Uva. Castlebottom was back on Earth.

A Junior Officer ferried Bill from the Cruiser to the planetoid in a small auxiliary plane.

"We'll pick you up in fifty hours," said the officer.

"Why will it be that long?" asked Bill.

"It'll take that long. You don't know the Uvans."

Bill made a wry face. "Why don't you come down and wait?"

"Can't," replied the officer noncommittally. "There's only one Interworld Government pass for landing on Uva. You've got it now. Even the Patrol is only allowed to land in cases of extreme emergency. They're strict about that. No visitors allowed."

The tiny plane settled quietly in what appeared to be the suburb of the only city on Uva. Bill dropped to the ground and breathed deeply of the somewhat muggy, compressed atmosphere of the little planetoid.

"The American Commissioner's place is straight up this street," said the officer. "So long!" He waved good-by and gunned the plane away. Bill watched it climb for a second, then turned, marching briskly up the street.

The germ of an idea--perhaps two ideas--chased around in his brain. "Maybe I'll get the Uvans to figure out a way for me to head a monopoly. Something quick," he thought. "If not, I can always hi-jack the synthetic etheroel formula they'll give me. Castlebottom will give plenty for it."

He quickened his pace. The Uvan city closed about him. Bill wasn't paying much attention to it. He gave half-hearted notice to the rather wild, idiotic arrangement of buildings and streets. Almost everything was done in amber. Streets stemmed off from the main drag, then suddenly stopped flush against a building as though some absent-minded architect had laid the city out.

Bill gasped. He felt dazed. Good Lord, these were the Uvans.

"Caviar?"

One of the grapes on the grape-cluster head of the Uvan flashed a yellow light. It blinked on and off like a busy signal on a telephone operator's switchboard. For an instant, the Uvan tried to look menacing.

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