[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction October 1950.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Minos was such a lovely planet. Not a thing
seemed wrong with it. Excepting the food,
perhaps. And a disease that wasn't really.
It was like an Earth forest in the fall, but it was not fall. The
forest leaves were green and copper and purple and fiery red, and a
wind sent patches of bright greenish sunlight dancing among the leaf
shadows.
The hunt party of the _Explorer_ filed along the narrow trail, guns
ready, walking carefully, listening to the distant, half familiar cries
of strange birds.
A faint crackle of static in their earphones indicated that a gun had
been fired.
"Got anything?" asked June Walton. The helmet intercom carried her
voice to the ears of the others without breaking the stillness of the
forest.
"Took a shot at something," explained George Barton's cheerful voice
in her earphones. She rounded a bend of the trail and came upon Barton
standing peering up into the trees, his gun still raised. "It looked
like a duck."
"This isn't Central Park," said Hal Barton, his brother, coming into
sight. His green spacesuit struck an incongruous note against the
bronze and red forest. "They won't all look like ducks," he said
soberly.
"Maybe some will look like dragons. Don't get eaten by a dragon,
June," came Max's voice quietly into her earphones. "Not while I still
love you." He came out of the trees carrying the blood sample kit, and
touched her glove with his, the grin on his ugly beloved face barely
visible in the mingled light and shade. A patch of sunlight struck a
greenish glint from his fishbowl helmet.
* * * * *
They walked on. A quarter of a mile back, the space ship _Explorer_
towered over the forest like a tapering skyscraper, and the people of
the ship looked out of the viewplates at fresh winds and sunlight and
clouds, and they longed to be outside.
But the likeness to Earth was danger, and the cool wind might be death,
for if the animals were like Earth animals, their diseases might be
like Earth diseases, alike enough to be contagious, different enough to
be impossible to treat. There was warning enough in the past. Colonies
had vanished, and traveled spaceways drifted with the corpses of ships
which had touched on some plague planet.
The people of the ship waited while their doctors, in airtight
spacesuits, hunted animals to test them for contagion.
The four medicos, for June Walton was also a doctor, filed through the
alien homelike forest, walking softly, watching for motion among the
copper and purple shadows.
They saw it suddenly, a lighter moving copper patch among the darker
browns. Reflex action swung June's gun into line, and behind her
someone's gun went off with a faint crackle of static, and made a hole
in the leaves beside the specimen. Then for a while no one moved.
This one looked like a man, a magnificently muscled, leanly graceful,
humanlike animal. Even in its callused bare feet, it was a head taller
than any of them. Red-haired, hawk-faced and darkly tanned, it stood
breathing heavily, looking at them without expression. At its side hung
a sheath knife, and a crossbow was slung across one wide shoulder.
They lowered their guns.
"It needs a shave," Max said reasonably in their earphones, and he
reached up to his helmet and flipped the switch that let his voice be
heard. "Something we could do for you, Mac?"
The friendly drawl was the first voice that had broken the forest
sounds. June smiled suddenly. He was right. The strict logic of
evolution did not demand beards; therefore a non-human would not be
wearing a three day growth of red stubble.
Still panting, the tall figure licked dry lips and spoke. "Welcome to
Minos. The Mayor sends greetings from Alexandria."
"English?" gasped June.
"We were afraid you would take off again before I could bring word to
you.... It's three hundred miles.... We saw your scout plane pass
twice, but we couldn't attract its attention."
* * * * *
June looked in stunned silence at the stranger leaning against the
tree. Thirty-six light years--thirty-six times six trillion miles
of monotonous space travel--to be told that the planet was already
settled! "We didn't know there was a colony here," she said. "It is not
on the map."
"We were afraid of that," the tall bronze man answered soberly. "We
have been here three generations and yet no traders have come."
Max shifted the kit strap on his shoulder and offered a hand. "My name
is Max Stark, M.D. This is June Walton, M.D., Hal Barton, M.D., and
George Barton, Hal's brother, also M.D."
"Patrick Mead is the name," smiled the man, shaking hands casually.
"Just a hunter and bridge carpenter myself. Never met any medicos
before."
The grip was effortless but even through her airproofed glove June
could feel that the fingers that touched hers were as hard as padded
steel.
"What--what is the population of Minos?" she asked.
He looked down at her curiously for a moment before answering. "Only
one hundred and fifty." He smiled. "Don't worry, this isn't a city
planet yet. There's room for a few more people." He shook hands with
the Bartons quickly. "That is--you are people, aren't you?" he asked
startlingly.
"Why not?" said Max with a poise that June admired.
"Well, you are all so--so--" Patrick Mead's eyes roamed across the
faces of the group. "So varied."
They could find no meaning in that, and stood puzzled.
"I mean," Patrick Mead said into the silence, "all these--interesting
different hair colors and face shapes and so forth--" He made a vague
wave with one hand as if he had run out of words or was anxious not to
insult them.
"Joke?" Max asked, bewildered.
June laid a hand on his arm. "No harm meant," she said to him over the
intercom. "We're just as much of a shock to him as he is to us."
She addressed a question to the tall colonist on outside sound. "What
should a person look like, Mr. Mead?"