Our voices must have reached them, for they sprang apart and rose to
their feet facing us.
"Like youngsters," I supplied.
"We have no kids with us," Benson reminded me. He began to move forward,
slowly, as though stalking a wild animal.
"Wait, Phil," I said. "The planet is uninhabited. They can't be--"
He continued shuffling ahead, and I followed. Within 20 paces I knew he
was right. Whoever they were they hadn't come with us!
Benson stopped so quickly I bumped into him. "Look, Sam! Their hands and
feet! Four digits and--no thumbs!"
I could now make out the details. The two forms were not quite human.
The toes were long and prehensile. The fingers, too, were exceptionally
long, appearing to have an extra joint, but as Benson mentioned, there
was no opposing thumb.
They stood well apart now, the female seeking no protection from the
male. Curiosity was written in their faces, and when we stopped
advancing they began edging forward until they were only five yards
away.
Their outlines, instead of becoming clearer, had fuzzed up more as they
approached. Now it was evident that their bodies were lightly covered
with a silky hair, some two or three inches long. It had already dried
out in the warm sun and was standing out away from their skins like
golden haloes.
They stood well under five feet tall, and in every detail, except the
body hair and digits, appeared to be miniature adults, complete with
navels.
Even in the midst of the shock of surprise, I was taken by their
remarkable beauty. "They're true mammals!" I exclaimed.
"Without a doubt," Benson said, eyeing the full contours of the lithe
little female. Her pink flesh tones were a full shade lighter than those
of the male. Both had well-spaced eyes under broad foreheads. Their fine
features were drawn into fearless, half-quizzical, half-good-natured
expressions of deep interest. They stood relaxed as if waiting for a
parley to begin.
"This," said Benson, "is one hell of a note!"
They cocked their heads at the sound like robins. I said, "Why? They
don't appear very vicious to me."
"Neither does man," Benson replied. "It's his brain that makes him
deadly. Look at those skulls, the ear placement, the eyes and forehead.
If I know my skull formations, I think man has met his intellectual
equal at last--maybe, even, his superior."
"What makes you think they may have superior minds?" As a psychologist I
felt Benson was jumping to a pretty quick conclusion.
"The atmosphere. Forty percent oxygen. Invariably, on other planets,
that has meant higher metabolisms in the fauna. In a humanoid animal
that strongly implies high mental as well as physical activity."
As if to prove his point, the two little creatures tired of the
one-sided interview, bent slightly at the knees and leaped at a
forty-five degree angle high into the tree branches. The female caught
the first limb with her long fingers and swung out of sight into the
foliage. The male hung by his long toes for a moment, regarding us with
an inverted impish expression, then he, too, vanished.
I grunted with disappointment. Benson said, "Don't worry, they'll be
back. Soon enough."
* * * * *
As we returned to the clearing Jane Benson and Susan, my wife, came to
meet us. Although both brunettes rated high in feminine charms among the
forty women of our group, somehow they appeared a little ungainly and
uncommonly tall against my mental image of the little people we had just
left. Their faces were pale from the long interment in the ship, and
bright spots of sunburn on cheekbones and forehead gave them a clownish,
made-up appearance.
"We've sorted and identified the fruits," Sue called to us. "The
handbook is right. They're delicious! We've got a feast spread. Just
wait until you--" She caught our expressions. "What's wrong?"
Benson shrugged. "You girls go on ahead and get the crowd together. I
have an important announcement to make." Jane pouted a little and
hesitated, but Benson insisted. "Run along now, please. I want to gather
my thoughts."
We trailed after them slowly. I didn't like Benson's moody reaction to
our discovery of an intelligent life-form. To me it was exciting. What
fabulous news I would have to send back with the first liaison ship to
contact us four years hence! And it would be entirely unexpected,
because the original exploration party had failed to make the discovery.
That in itself was an intriguing mystery. How could twenty-two
scientists, bent on a minute examination of a planet's flora and fauna,
overlook the most fabulous creation of all--an animal virtually in men's
image? The only guess I could make was that they must belong to a
nomadic tribe small enough to escape discovery.
Benson broke silence as the narrow beach strip began to widen into the
grassy plain where our ship squatted like a hemispherical cathedral.
"This poses so many problems," he said shaking his head.
I said, "Phil, I think you're taking your job too seriously. You just
can't plan every detail of organizing our community down to the
rationing of tooth-powder."
"Planning never hurt any project," Benson said.
"I disagree," I told him. "You've had too long to dwell on your plans.
Now the first unpredictable incident throws you into an uproar. Relax,
Phil. Take your problems one at a time. We don't even know that we'll
ever see the little creatures again. Maybe they're shy."
He scarcely heard me. He was a large, well-muscled man of 46 years, an
ex-college president and an able administrator. He and Jane, his wife,
were the only two of our party older than the 35-year age limit. His
background as a sociologist and anthropologist and his greater maturity
were important factors in stabilizing a new colony, but his point of
view had grown excessively conservative, it seemed to me.
A crew of craftsmen with their busy little power saws had constructed a
sloping ship's ramp of rough planks sawed from the nearest trees. We
stepped through and over the assembled people who were lying around in
the grass at the base of the ramp, and Benson mounted twenty feet above
us at the entrance to the ship.
Everyone was in high spirits, and a light cheer rippled through the
assembly. Benson, however, ignored it and bent a thoroughly serious gaze
out over his "flock".
"Please give me your closest attention," he began and waited until
everyone was quiet. "Until further notice, we must proceed under a
yellow alert during daylight hours and a red alert at night. All work
parties leaving the ship will check with the scribe every hour on the
hour. We will resume sleeping in the ship. Women are restricted to
within 100 yards of the ship at all times. Men will go armed and will
please inform themselves of their position on the security watch list
which will be posted tonight." He squinted in the bright sunlight. "For
the moment, you men with sidearms, post yourselves around the ship.
Sound off loud if you sight anything larger than a rabbit."
The men named got slowly to their feet, fingering their light hunting
pistols self-consciously. Benson continued, "You may appreciate these
precautions when I tell you that Sam Rogers and I just encountered two
remarkably humanoid animals on the beach less than half a mile from
here."
Tension replaced levity, as Benson described our meeting with the
natives. I thought he gave it a needlessly grim emphasis with such terms
as, "_quicker than cats_", and "_devilishly intelligent_", but I held my
peace.
He summarized, "I do not want to alarm anyone unduly, but we must face
up to the fact that we are totally unprepared for such a contingency.
The exploration group failed us badly in overlooking these creatures.
They may not be inimical to our culture, but until this is established
we must consider them prime threats. That is all," he concluded.
No one grumbled aloud, but their faces showed keen disappointment at the
resumption of quartering in the ship. Reluctantly, the women began
rolling up the still-deflated air-mattresses that were scattered about
the soft, deep grass. Sue complained, "Sam, if these people don't get a
little privacy pretty soon we'll turn into an ant colony. There'll be
lovin' in the streets."
"It's not my idea," I said. "I'll be nailed to a table at the foot of
the ramp all day making check marks. Phil is taking this entirely too
big. The little people are really charming. He neglected to mention that
they are beautifully formed and quite gentle in their--their actions."
"Actions?" she said. "What happened, really?"
I described the conditions under which we first saw the natives, and she
laughed a little strainedly. "I can just imagine the look on Phil
Benson's face."
I knew what she meant. In trying to enforce the shipboard rule of
segregation of the sexes, our leader had developed an oversensitive
attitude toward certain aspects of modesty. In the unutterable boredom
of space, the pledge we had all taken to complete continence for the
voyage was a severe test to all forty couples.
Had propriety and space considerations been the only reasons for the
infamous "no-romance" regulation, it would never have held up. But all
concerned realized the problem of childbirth in space under the
jam-packed living conditions, tight water and food rationing and the
fetid, recirculated air.
Now the second honeymoons were over before they started. It was back to
the ship and the night-life of monks and nuns.
That night, Sue and I joined the four ship's officers, their wives,
Phillip Benson and Jane in the navigation cupola atop our doomed ship
that had become a "fortress". The small control room was the only
semi-private room in the ship, and even Benson was admitted by
invitation only. The meeting was a council of war, so to speak, and the
officers were pressed into service to organize and operate the security
guard.
When the guard watch was worked out for a week in advance, I spoke up.
"I think we're getting off on the wrong foot, Phil. We can't stay penned
up like animals at night and expect to function as humans."
Benson argued: "We are a carefully balanced group, Sam. We can't afford
casualties. Look at our medical corps, two doctors and four nurses.
Suppose we were attacked and lost them?"
Captain Spooner, whose authority had lapsed when we touched down, backed
up Benson. "I see no great hardship in the precautions. Inconvenience,
yes, but nothing that the danger doesn't fully justify."
He was a cocky, virile, bald-headed little terrier of 35 years. His very
young wife and the wives of the other three officers seemed only lightly
perturbed at the prospects of continuing celibacy, which confirmed my
suspicions.
I said, "That's gritty of you, Captain, but remember, the rest of us
haven't had the relative privacy of the bridge. If this restriction
continues long I predict violations of the discipline, and probably some
serious behaviour problems."
My position as colony psychologist had become somewhat obscured under
the snowstorm of paperwork that my secondary job as official scribe had
brought. Benson seemed now to recall that mental health _was_ my
concern. He said, "I thought you reported high morale upon arrival."
"I did, but the tensions are there, and it's foolish to draw them too
tightly. We have a well-picked, highly adaptable group of people. Let's
keep them that way. The quicker we hit a more normal existence the less
risk we run of emotional disturbances."
"They'll take it," Benson said positively, and Spooner nodded in
arrogant agreement.
* * * * *
My 20-hour wristwatch, geared to the shorter rotation of Sirius XXII,
said nine o'clock, one hour before noon, when the women began
undressing.
There had been an air of conspiracy among them all morning, a studied
casualness as they wandered around near the ship, forming small
conversational eddies, dispersing and reforming elsewhere. I had just
finished checking in the 11-man fruit-gathering detail. I looked up from
my roster in time to see the first motions of the "great disrobing".
Zippers unzipped, snaps popped open, slacks, skirts, blouses and jumpers
fell to the grass, and a dazzling spectacle of space-bleached feminine
epidermis burst into view.
The ladies were very calm about it, but a chorus of yips sounded and
swelled into a circus of cheers from the male working parties.
Before I could fathom it Benson came charging down the ramp followed by
his fruit-stowing detail. He stopped at the foot of the ramp, mouth open
and eyes pinched with annoyance.
[Illustration]
He spotted Jane and Sue. "What is going on out here?" he demanded
loudly.
Our two wives waved at us and strolled over, doing a splendid job of
acting unconcerned. "Just a little sun-bathing," Jane said, shooing a
small insect from a pale shoulder.
Susan refused to meet my eye. She was watching two birds soar overhead.
"It's fantastic," she said. "If you don't look at things too closely,
you'd never know we weren't at a summer camp up in Wisconsin--except for
the fruits. They remind me more of Tahiti. It's marvelous! The
mosquitoes don't even bite."
"They will," I said, "as soon as they get a good taste of human blood.
And baby, you're sure making it easy for them."
Benson was distracted from the conversation by the converging male
colonists, who were whooping and yelling like a horde of school boys. He
backed up the ramp and ordered, "Let's get on with the work. You've seen
your wives in the altogether before."