"Yeah, I know," snorted Johnny, rising to stretch. "The head-shrinker
always does it the hard way. You can't just dislike rice pudding; it has
to be a sister-syndrome. If the shortest distance is from here to there,
don't take it--remember your Uncle Oedipus."
Captain Anderson chuckled. "Cut your jets, Johnny. Maybe Paresi's
tortuous reasoning does seem out of order on such a nice day. But
remember--eternal vigilance isn't just the price of liberty, as the old
books say. It's the price of existence. We know we're here--but we don't
know where 'here' is, and won't until after we get back. This is
_really_ Terra Incognita. The location of Earth, or even of our part of
the galaxy, is something that has to be concealed at all costs, until
we're sure we're not going to turn up a potentially dangerous, possibly
superior alien culture. What we don't know can't hurt Earth. No
conceivable method could get that information out of us, any more than
it could be had from the squeak-box that Survey dropped here.
"Base all your thinking on that, Johnny. If that seems like leaning over
backwards, it's only a sample of how careful we've got to be, how many
angles we've got to figure."
"Hell," said the pilot. "I know all that. I was just ribbing the
bat-snatcher here." He thumbed a cigarette out of his tunic, touched his
lighter to it. He frowned, stared at the lighter, tried it again. "It
doesn't work. _Damn_ it!" he barked explosively, "I don't like things
that don't work!"
Paresi was beside him, catlike, watchful. "Here's a light. Take it easy,
Johnny! A bum lighter's not that important."
Johnny looked sullenly at his lighter. "It doesn't work," he muttered.
"Guaranteed, too. When we get back I'm going to feed it to Supply." He
made a vivid gesture to describe the feeding technique, and jammed the
lighter back into his pocket.
"Heh!" Ives' heavy voice came from the communications desk. "Maybe the
natives are primitives, at that. Not a whisper of any radio on any band.
No powerline fields, either. These are plowboys, for sure."
Johnny looked out at the sleeping valley. His irritation over the
lighter was still in his voice. "Imagine that. No video or trideo. No
jet-races or feelies. What do people do with their time in a place like
this?"
"Books," said Hoskins, almost absently. "Chess. Conversation."
"I don't know what chess is, and conversation's great if you want to
tell somebody something, like 'bring me a steak'," said Johnny. "Let's
get out of this fire-trap," he said to the Captain.
"In time," said the Captain. "Ives, DX those radio frequencies.
If there's so much as a smell of radiation even from the other
side of this planet, we want to know about it. Hoskins, check the
landing-suits--food, water, oxygen, radio, everything. Earth-type planet
or no, we're not fooling with alien viruses. Johnny, I want you to
survey this valley in every way you can and plot a minimum of three
take-off vectors."
The crew fell to work, Ives and Hoskins intently, Johnny off-handedly,
as if he were playing out a ritual with some children. Paresi bent over
a stereomicroscope, manipulating controls which brought in samples of
air-borne bacteria and fungi and placed them under its objective.
Captain Anderson ranged up beside him.
"We could walk out of the ship as if we were on Muroc Port," said
Paresi. "These couldn't be more like Earth organisms if they'd been
transplanted from home to delude us."
The Captain laughed. "Sometimes I tend to agree with Johnny. I never met
a more suspicious character. How'd you ever bring yourself to sign your
contract?"
"Turned my back on a couple of clauses," said Paresi. "Here--have a
look."
At that moment the usually imperturbable Ives uttered a sharp grunt that
echoed and re-echoed through the cabin. Paresi and the Captain turned.
Hoskins was just coming out of the after alleyway with an oxygen bottle
in his hand, and had frozen in his tracks at the sharp sound Ives had
made. Johnny had whipped around as if the grunt had been a lion's roar.
His back was to the bulkhead, his lean, long frame tensed for fight or
flight. It was indescribable, Ives' grunt, and it was the only sound
which could have had such an effect on such a variety of men--the same
shocked immobility.
Ives sat over his Communications desk as if hypnotized by it. He moved
one great arm forward, almost reluctantly, and turned a knob.
A soft, smooth hum filled the room. "Carrier," said Ives.
Then the words came. They were English words, faultlessly spoken, loud
and clear and precise. They were harmless words, pleasant words even.