Muttering to himself, he walked over to the ship and called one of the
crewmen. They dragged a bag out of the ship's hold. Puffing, they laid
it at my feet. I tossed it to Ztul.
"Count it," I ordered out loud, "and if there's any missing, no one
leaves this planet alive." I snarled ferociously.
Everybody laughed. It was part of the act.
"You will notice," Sam announced as we led the way down the street,
"that the _Gchi_ are all about the same size. No young ones among them.
We don't know whether this is because they reproduce differently from
us, or because they have concealed their offspring."
"The children must be dear little creatures," the toothy female gushed.
"If even the adults are cute when they're seven or eight feet tall,
the little ones must be simply precious.... Tell me, Chief, do you have
any children?"
"Don't understand," I grunted. "Concept unfamiliar. Not know what
children is."
"Funny," remarked the scientist, "he was speaking perfectly good
English before."
"Watch yourself, kid," Ppon ideated warningly to me.
"Children are ..." she began and stopped. "They're--well, how do you
reproduce?"
* * * * *
Ppon, the _oosh_-head, took it upon himself to answer. "If you'll just
step into my hut, madam, I'll be delighted to show you."
"If you ask me," the scientist stated, "these are frauds."
"Whaddya mean frauds?" Sam demanded indignantly.
"Human beings dressed up as extraterrestrials. They speak too good an
English. Their concepts are too much like ours. Their sense of humor is
equally vul--too similar."
"You and your big mouth!" I projected to Ppon.
"Look who's thinking!" he excogitated back. I could see I'd have to
give him a mind-lashing later.
It was up to me to save the situation. "If you would like to examine me
more closely, sir," I addressed the scientist, "you will see that I
am not a human being."
He approached me dubiously.
"Closer," I said, looking him in the eye, as I bared my teeth and
growled. "I have five eyes, sir, and you will notice that I am looking
at you with each one of them. I have seven arms, sir--" here I reached
out to grab him "--and you will notice that they are all living tissue."
"No, you couldn't be a human being," he agreed, backing away as soon as
I released my grip, "but the whole thing is ... odd. Very odd."
"If anthropologists on Earth can't explain all the customs of the
primitives there," Sam tried to placate him, "how can we explain the
behavior of extraterrestrials? Let's go into some of the houses. The
chief has kindly given us his permission to look around."
"Our houses are your houses," I stated, bowing graciously.
As always, the tourists grew extremely enthusiastic about the
furniture in our simple dwellings. "What lovely--er--things you have,"
squirrel-tooth commented. "What are they used for?"
"Well, the _pryu_ is for the _mrach_, of course," I explained glibly,
"and the _wrooov_ is much used for _cvrking_ the _budz_, although the
_ywrl_ is preferred by the less discriminating.
"Oh," she said. "How I should love to have one of the--'_wroov_' I
think it was you said, for my very own. I wonder whether...."
By a curious coincidence, Hsoj arrived at this point, carrying a tray
full of things and stuff.
"Artifacts!" he shouted. "Nice artifacts! Who wants to buy artifacts?"
* * * * *
All the tourists did. They were pretty good artifacts, if I do say
so myself. I'd made them out of the junk I rescued from our dustbins
before the disintegration unit got to work. Honestly, I can't
understand how the old ones can complain about our being wasteful and
then go and throw away all sorts of perfectly useful things.
"You must pay the natives in metal," the guide explained. "They accept
only coins."
"Why?" the stout female wanted to know. "Do they really eat metal?"
"I doubt it. One of them ate a couple of pounds of Earth candy a
tourist gave him last time and he seemed to enjoy it without ill
effects."
"Without ill effects!" Ppon excogitated. "You should have seen Ztul
afterward, boy!"
"Look, Mac." A short fat human offered Hsoj a small silver coin and
then five larger brown ones. "Which would you rather have?"
"Them." Hsoj pointed unhesitatingly to the brown coins.
A smile rippled covertly through the tourists.
"They're a simple and child-like people, but really so good-natured,"
Sam footnoted.
All of us gave simple good-natured smiles as Hsoj accepted the gift of
the brown coins.
"Keep up the good work," I projected. "We can use all the copper we can
get."
"You like metal, dear?" a female asked Hsoj. She unfastened a belt from
around her waist. "Would you take this in exchange for some of your
pretty things?"
"Say 'yes,'" I conceptualized. "That's steel. Old and worthless to her,
but not to us."
"I know, I know," Hsoj ideated impatiently. "What makes you think
you're the only one who knows anything?"
Never had we got such a big haul before, because everybody seemed to
have all sorts of metal stuff on him that he valued less than coins.
Now came the sad part of the spiel. "Remember, folks, these simple,
honest individuals you see before you are but the scanty remnants of a
once-proud race who spanned the skies. For their ancestors must have
been godlike indeed to have erected such edifices as that commanding
structure over there." Sam pointed to the portable atmosphere machine
which was set up several _yebil_ away to give our playground proper
air. "Once glorious, now fallen into ruin and decay."
"You're going to catch _muh_ from the old ones," Ppon ideated, "when
they find out you haven't been keeping the machine clean."
"Don't be a silly _oosh_," I thought back with a mental grin. "I'm
using the atmosphere machine to create atmosphere."
"You're getting to be as stupid as a human," he thought in disgust.
"May we go inside?" the scientific passenger asked Sam.
"No, indeed," I said hastily. "It is our temple, sacred to the gods. No
unbeliever may set foot in it."
"What are the basic tenets of your religion?" the scientist wanted to
know.
"We do not talk about it," I said with dignity. "It is tabu. Bad form."
* * * * *
"And now," announced the guide, glancing at his watch, "we have just
time for the war dance before we leave for Vesta."
"Against whom are they planning a war?" asked a small passenger,
turning pale.
"It's a vestigial ritual," Sam explained quickly, "dating back to the
days when there were other--er--when there was somebody to fight. Just
an invocation to the gods ... general stuff like that ... nothing to be
afraid of. Isn't it so, Qan?"
"Quite so," I replied, folding all my arms across my mother's cloak.
"Come in peace, go in peace. Our motto."
We started the dance. It wouldn't have got us a passing mark in first
grade, where we'd learned it _rffi_ ago, but our version of the dance
of the _zkuchi_ was plenty good enough for the tourists.
"If I ever visit Earth, _Janna_ forbid," I thought to Ppon as we
executed an intricate caracole, "I'm going to wear earplugs all the
time."
The dance finished.
"Now everybody get together!" Sam shouted, clapping his hands to round
up his charges. "We are about to leave little _Gchik_."
"He should only know what _gchik_ means," Ppon sniggered mentally.
"Little _Gchik_ is barren, dying, its past glories all but forgotten,"
Sam almost sobbed, "but still its simple, warm-hearted inhabitants
carry on bravely...."
"Couldn't we _do_ something for them?" suggested the stout female.
Everybody murmured assent. This contingency arose all too often--a
result of our being just too lovable.
"No one can help us," I said in a deep voice, pulling the cloak over
my face. The _idzik_ feathers trimming it tickled like crazy. "We must
dree our own weird alone. Besides, the air of _Gchik_ has a deleterious
effect upon human beings if they're exposed to it for longer than four
hours."
There was a mad scramble to reach the ship.
"Stand by the atmosphere machine, Hsoj," I instructed, "to poison a
little air in case anybody wants to take a sample."
The scientist actually did, in a little bottle he seemed to have
brought along for the purpose; but he got off the "asteroid" as rapidly
as the rest of them, after that.
We watched the spaceship dwindle to a silver mote in the distance.
"Whew," Ppon thought, sinking to the surface. "That war dance sure
takes a lot out of a fellow."
* * * * *
Then he conceptualized indignantly as he--as well as the rest of
us--floated off the top level. "Somebody's cut the gravity!"
"Must be Grandfather," I mentalized. "I suppose he thinks we've been
out long enough, so he's warning us, just as if we were a bunch of
infants. I guess we'd better go inside, though. Let's not forget to
turn off the atmosphere, fellows. It uses too much energy and the old
ones won't let us play topside any more."
"You know everything, don't you, Qan?" Ppon sneered.
I ignored him. "Pretty good haul," I excogitated as I hefted the bags
of metal. "Here, Ztul, catch!"
"You always make me carry everything!" he complained.
Grandfather caught us as we lowered ourselves from the airlock. I
figured he must have been getting suspicious or otherwise he'd never
have left his beloved engines.
"What's this you youngsters have?" he wanted to know, pouncing on
our bags. "Metal, eh? I suppose you were going to make another fake
meteorite out of it for me, were you?"
"I thought you wanted metal, Grandfather," I sulked. He could have been
more appreciative.
"Certainly I want metal. You know I need it to get the drive working
again. But what I want to know is where you got it from. I'd think you
stole it, but how could even little _muhli_ like you steal out here in
space?"
"They have always brought you metal from time to time, Father," Mother
projected, coming out as she overthought us. "So clever of them, I
always thought."
"Yes, but I've been thinking that their encountering so many meteorites
was a singularly curious coincidence. And they were curious meteorites,
too. I suppose the young ones made them themselves."
"But out of what, Father? You know we don't have any spare metal on
the ship. That's why you haven't been able to get the repairs finished
before. Where else could they get the metal but from meteorites?"
"I don't know where they get their metal from, but certainly not from
meteorites. These pieces here are artifacts. Look, the metal has been
more or less refined and roughly formed into shapes with crude designs
upon them. Tell me the truth, Qan, where did you get these?"
"Some people gave them to us," I replied sullenly.
"People?" asked my mother. "What are people?"
"Natives of this solar system. They call themselves people."
"Nonsense!" my grandfather interjected. "It's just another one of your
fantasies. You know what the astronomers say--none of the planets of
this little system is capable of supporting life."
"They come from the third planet," I persisted, trying to keep from
disgracing myself by _fllwng_ in front of the other young ones. "There
is life there. All of us have seen them. Besides, there is the metal."
My companions chorused agreement.
"You see, Father," my mother smiled, stroking my head with three hands,
"the wise ones are not always right."
* * * * *
My grandfather nodded his head slowly. "It is not impossible, I
suppose. I hope it is true that these--people _gave_ you and your
friends the metal, Qan."
"Oh, yes, Grandfather," I thought anxiously. "Of their own free will."
"Well--" he continued, not altogether convinced--"this lot should be
enough to repair the engines. Perhaps, when we take off, we should have
a look at the youngsters' third planet on the way home."
"But this trip has taken such a long time already, Father," my mother
protested. "Almost a _rff_; the young ones have missed nearly two
semesters of school. And Qan has been getting some very peculiar
ideas--from those _people_, I suppose."
"But if there is some sort of intelligent life," Grandfather thought,
"it's our duty to visit it. Next time we need to stop the ship for
repairs, it might be more convenient to put in at this third planet
instead of just hanging out there in space. And the young ones say the
natives seem to be friendly."
"I'd like to see Sam's face when he comes back and finds his 'asteroid'
gone," I conceptualized.
"Yes," Ppon agreed, with the edge of his mind, but his main channel was
turned in another direction. "That is the end of this game now, you
know. In the next game _I_ shall be leader."
"Oh, yes?" I thought back. "I'm the leader and I'm staying leader,
because I am the biggest and cleverest."
"Children!" my mother protested, distressed. "I'm afraid you've picked
up some really unpleasant concepts from those dreadful natives."
"Come, come, Qana," Grandfather ideated, "we mustn't be intolerant."
"Perhaps not," she replied with heat, "and I know the natives probably
don't know any better, but I am not going to have my young one or
anyone else's contaminated. Visit the third planet if you wish, but not
this time. You'll have to make a special trip for it. I'm not going to
let you stop off there while the young ones are aboard. It's obviously
no fit place for children."