Borden nodded. He regarded Sattell with a weary, worried frown,
while Jerry readied the test. The situation was bad, but Sattell was
troublesome too.
Two months ago, while the drive was still in process of repair, Borden
had heard a strangled cry from Ellen. He found her struggling to scream
as she fought Sattell.
Borden's appearance had ended the struggle, of course. Sattell had been
confined to his bunk for two weeks before he was able to move about
again. But Borden hadn't been able to kill an unconscious man then,
and he couldn't kill Sattell in cold blood now. But Sattell could kill
anybody. And he would, if he got the chance.
"It's the devil, Sattell," Borden said somberly. "If I didn't think you
were a rat I could make a bargain to forget what's happened until we
get the ship safely home. But I don't think you'd keep a bargain."
Sattell snarled at him and turned away. Jerry looked up from the tiny
air-testing cabinet. He'd drawn in a sample of outer air and a silent
discharge had turned its oxygen to ozone, which a reagent absorbed. A
hot silver wire stayed bright, and so proved the absence of chlorine or
sulphur, CO_{2} tested negligible, and hot magnesium took up nitrogen.
The remnant of the sample did not react with reagent after reagent, so
it had to be noble gases.
"It seems all right, sir," said Jerry. "If I may, I'll go in the
air-lock and take a direct sniff. May I, sir?"
"Unless Sattell wants to volunteer," Borden observed. "I would think
better of you, Sattell, if you volunteered for first landing."
Sattell laughed shrilly. "Oh, yes! I'll walk out on a hostile planet,
and let you take off and leave me! Even if you can't leave the planet,
you can come down ten thousand miles away. You'd like to do that, too!"
"Meaning," Borden said, "that _you_ would.... All right, Jerry. Go
ahead."
"Yes, sir." Jerry went out. They heard the inner air-lock door open.
Borden said heavily, "It would be sensible to lock you up while we're
aground, Sattell. I can't leave the ship with you inside and free.
You've already said what you'd do if you could--take off and maroon us."
Jerry's voice came from the air-lock through a speaker.
"Mr. Borden, sir, the air's wonderful! You don't realize what canned
air is like until you breathe fresh again. Wonderful, sir! I'm going
out."
Borden nodded to Ellen. She moved over to watch through a port as Jerry
made the first landing on this unnamed planet of an unnamed sun. She
could see the straggling ground-cover vegetation, and the thing that
looked like a cactus except that it wasn't, and the trees. She saw
Jerry step to the ground and look about, breathing deeply.
Behind her, Borden said bitterly:
"We were blasted at without challenge. But it was with a sun-mirror
that was not too efficient. The local race may not have any other power
than sunlight. If so, they won't be up here by the ice-cap! If we
weren't spotted by radar as we landed, we may make good repairs, raise
food, and get back to space without our presence being known--because
they should think they had wiped us out."
* * * * *
Ellen gasped suddenly from the port: "Dee! Natives! They've seen Jerry!
They're coming close!"
Borden moved quickly to look over her shoulder. Sattell took a second
port. They stared out at the strange world about the _Danaë_.
Jerry had kicked a hole in the sod and picked up a bit of it to examine
closely. And, not sixty yards from him, three creatures were regarding
him with intense curiosity.
They were furry bipeds. They stood as erect as penguins, not bending
forward in the least. They had enormously long arms which almost
reached to the ground beside them. From what should have been their
chins, single tentacles drooped--like the trunk of an elephant, except
that it was beneath the mouth opening instead of above it. They stared
at Jerry with manifest mounting excitement, making gestures to each
other with their trunks and arms.
Borden moved to warn Jerry through the outside speaker. But Jerry
looked up directly at the creatures. He spoke to them quietly.
At the sound of his voice their manner changed. Borden thought
irrelevantly of the way a dog flattens his ears when his master speaks
to him. But these creatures flattened all their fur. Jerry spoke
again. He waved his hand. He glanced at the _Danaë_'s port and nodded
reassuringly.
The three creatures moved hesitantly toward him. Two of them stopped
some forty yards distant. One came on. Suddenly it wriggled with an
odd effect of embarrassment. The flattening of its fur became more
noticeable.
A fourth creature of the same kind came loping over a rise in the
ground. It used its long arms to balance itself as an ape might do,
but an ape does not run upright. This creature did. It saw Jerry and
stopped short, staring.
The creature which had advanced toward Jerry appeared to be more and
more embarrassed. Jerry moved to meet it. When he was ten feet away the
creature lay down on the ground and rolled over on its back. It waved
its trunk wildly, as if supplicating approval.
Jerry bent over and scratched the furry body as if he knew exactly what
it wanted. The two others who had been its companions loped forward,
plunged to the ground, rolled over on their backs and waved their
trunks as wildly as the first. Jerry scratched them.
The fourth creature, which had stared wide-eyed, suddenly waved its
arms and burst into a headlong rush. Its haste seemed frantic. It
scuttled frenziedly, made a leap, turned over as it soared, landed on
its back two yards from Jerry and slid to his feet.
When Jerry scratched it, it wriggled ecstatically. Its trunk waved as
though it were experiencing infinite bliss.
Borden said slowly, "Something on this planet tried to burn us down
with a heat-ray not half an hour ago. We land--and this happens! What
sort of place is this, anyhow?"