* * * * *
The search, of course, was unproductive. I didn't expect that it would
be anything else. I was pretty certain that Alex was a casualty. I'd
felt people die while wearing menticoms, and the same blank sense of
emptiness had blotted out Alex. It was a bad deal all around. I liked
that kid.
But Alex's death had provided data. This world was inhabited and the
inhabitants weren't friendly. So I had the crew stake out a perimeter
which we could energize with the ship's engines, and activated a
couple of autoguards for patrol duty. Alex wasn't a pleasant thought,
but we weren't equipped to retrieve bodies. So I wrote him in the log
as missing and let it go at that.
I had to correct the entry a week later when Alex came walking up to
the perimeter as large as life and just as healthy, wearing a mild
sunburn, a sheepish expression, and nothing else.
The autoguard announced his coming and I headed the delegation that met
him. I read him the riot act, and after I'd finished chewing on him he
was pinker than ever.
"Okay, sir--so I was a fool," he said. "But they didn't hurt me. Scared
me half to death, but once they realized I was intelligent there was no
trouble. They were fascinated by my clothes." Alex grinned ruefully.
"And they're pretty strong. They peeled me."
"Obviously," I said coldly.
"They have a village back in the woods." He pointed vaguely behind him.
"It'd pay to take a look at it."
"_Mister_ Baranov," I said. "If I don't throw you in the brig for
what you've done, it's only because you may have brought back some
information we can use. What are these natives like? What did they do
to you besides making you a strip-tease artist? What cultural level
are they? How many of them do you estimate there are? What do they
look like? Get up to the ship and report to Lieutenant Warren for
interrogation and draw new clothing." I had the same half exasperated,
half angry tone that a relieved mother has when one of her youngsters
returns home late but unharmed.
* * * * *
Alex must have recognized it, because he grinned as he went off.
I contacted Warren on the intercom. "Dan," I said, "Baranov's
back--apparently unharmed. I want him given the works. When you've
gotten everything you can get, have a man detailed to watch him. If he
so much as looks suspicious, heave him in the brig."
Warren's answering projection had a laugh in it. "Always cautious, hey,
Skipper? Okay, I'll see that he gets the business."
It turned out that Alex didn't have much real information except for a
description of the natives, their village, and their attitude toward
him. It was about what you'd expect from a kid, interesting but far
from helpful.
The delegation of natives showed up a half hour later. They came
walking across the open space between the ship and the forest as though
they hadn't a care in the world. Four of them--big hairy humanoids,
carrying spears. They were naked as animals. Not that they needed
clothes with all that hair, but just the same their appearance gave me
a queasy feeling--like I was looking at man's early ancestors suddenly
come to life.
If you can imagine a furry humanoid seven feet tall, with the face of
an intelligent gorilla and the braincase of a man, you'll have a rough
idea of what they looked like--except for their teeth. The canines
would have fitted better in the face of a tiger, and showed at the
corners of their wide, thin-lipped mouths, giving them an expression of
ferocity.
They came trotting straight across the plain, moving with grace
and power. All external signs pointed to them being a carnivorous,
primitive race. Hunters, probably. The muscles of my scalp twitched as
some deep-buried instinct inside me whispered, "_Competition!_"
* * * * *
I've met plenty of humanoids, but these were the first that roused any
emotion other than curiosity. Perhaps it was their fierce appearance,
or the bright, half-contemptuous intelligence in their eyes, or the
confident arrogance in their approach, or merely that they looked more
like us than the others I had met. Whatever it was, it was strong, and
I had the impression that the feeling was mutual.
"Stop!" I said as they approached the periphery.
"Why should we?" the foremost native replied in perfect Terran.
"Because that barrier'll burn you to a nice crisp cinder if you don't."
"That's a good reason," the native said, nodding.
Then the delayed reaction took over and the shock nearly floored me,
until I saw that he was wearing Alex's menticom. Well, that explained
the language and the feeling of mutual distrust--and it could explain
why I thought Alex had died back there in the jungle. A mental
communicator snatched from its wearer's head can give that impression.
But it raised an entirely new set of questions. Where did this savage
learn to operate the circlet and how did he recognize its purpose? I
guess I wasn't too smart, because the native was tuned to me and I
wasn't shielding my thoughts at all.
He chuckled--it sounded like the purr of a cat. "We are not stupid,
Earthman."
"So I see," I said uneasily.
"I am K'wan, chief of this segment. I wish to know why you are here."
"To survey your world. We are members of the Bureau of Extraterrestrial
Exploration. It is our job to make surveys of planets."
"Why?"
"For trade, colonization, and exploitation," I answered. There was
no sense in giving him a dishonest explanation. With him wearing that
communicator, it would have done no good to try.
"And what have you decided about us?"
"That's not our job. We just investigate and report. What happens next
is not our affair. But if you're worrying--don't. There are plenty of
worlds available without bothering inhabited places. Since you are
intelligent, we would probably like to trade with you, if you have
anything to trade--but that, of course, is up to you. We never intrude
where we are not wanted, as long as we are treated with respect. If
we are attacked, however, that is a different story." It was the old
respect-and-threat routine that worked with primitive races. But I
wasn't at all sure it was working now.
"Strange," K'wan said. "I would have sworn you were a predatory race.
You are enough like us to be our little cousins." He scratched his
head with a surprisingly human gesture. "In your position I would have
attacked to show my power and inspire respect. Perhaps you are telling
the truth."
"A predator can grow soft when he has too much prey," I said.
"Aye, there is truth in that. But what is too easy and how much is too
much? And does a man change his habits of eating just because he is
fat?"
"You can find out."
"I do not think that would be wise," the native said. "Although you
are physically weak, you sound confident. Therefore you are strong.
And strength is to be respected. Let us be friends. We will make an
agreement with you."
* * * * *
I shook my head. "It is not our place to make agreements. We only
observe."
"You have not done much of that," he said pointedly. "You sit here and
send your machines over our seas and forests, but you do not see for
yourselves. You cannot learn this way."
"We learn enough," I said shortly.
"We have talked of you at our council," K'wan continued, "and we think
that you should know more before you depart. So we have come to make
you an offer. Let four of your men come with me, and four of mine will
stay with you. We will exchange--and you can see our ways while we see
yours. That would help us understand each other."
It sounded reasonable. An exchange of hostages--or call it a cultural
exchange, if you'd prefer. I told him that I'd think it over and to
come back tomorrow. He nodded, turned, and together with his retinue
disappeared into the jungle.
* * * * *
We hashed K'wan's proposal over at a board meeting that night and
decided that we'd take it. The exact status of Lyranian culture worried
us. It is a cardinal rule never to underestimate an alien culture or to
judge it by surface appearances. So we organized a team that would form
our part of the "cultural exchange."
I would go, of course. If K'wan could visit us, I could hardly stay
back. Alex was selected partly because he was an engineer, mostly
because he'd been over the ground before. Ed Barger, our ecologist, and
Patrick Allardyce, our biologist, made up the remainder of the party.
I'd have liked to take the padre and Doc, but Doc was more valuable at
base, and if I could have only four men, I wanted fighting men.
"Now," I said, "we'll take along a tight-beam communicator. Coupled to
our menticoms, it should be able to reach the ship and put what we see
and what happens on permanent record." Then I turned to Dan Warren. "If
anything goes wrong, don't try to rescue us. Finish your observations
and get out. You understand? And get those exchange natives into
Interrogation. Condition them to the eyeballs with cooperation
dogma. We may need some friends here when the second echelon makes a
landfall."
Warren nodded. I didn't have to elaborate.
The native village was about what I expected from our reconnaissance
flights. It was beautifully camouflaged. You couldn't tell it from
the rest of the forest except that the trees were larger and were
hollow--apparently hewn out with patient care to make a comfortable
living space inside. Lyranians lived in one place, if what I could see
of their dwellings was any criterion. I wanted to look inside, but
K'wan hustled us down the irregular "street" that wound through the
grove of giant trees until we finally came to the granddaddy of them
all, a trunk nearly forty feet in diameter.
K'wan gestured at the tree. "Your house while you are here. We made
it for you Earthmen." His voice came over my menticom and was duly
recorded on the ship, since we were in constant contact, giving our
impressions of the place. So far it was strictly SOP.
"Thanks," I said. "We appreciate it." I was really touched at this
tribute. K'wan had probably evacuated his own house to furnish us
quarters where we could be together. The size of it indicated that
it must be the chief's residence. But like all primitives he had to
lie a little and the fiction of making this place for us was a way of
salvaging pride in the face of our technological superiority.
He walked inside and we followed, expecting to find a gloomy hole--but
instead the room glowed with a soft light that came from the walls
themselves. The air was cool and comfortable, a pleasing contrast to
the heat outside.
"What the--" I began, but Allardyce was already peering at the walls.
"A type of luminous fungus," he said. "A saprophyte. Lives on the wood
of this tree and gives off light. Clever."
I shut my mouth and looked around. There were other rooms opening off
this one and along one wall a knobby imitation of a staircase led
upward to a hole overhead.
"Hmmm, a regular skyscraper," Ed Barger commented, noting the direction
of my gaze. "Well, we should not be crowded, at any rate."
I had been noticing something was wrong without realizing it. You
know the feeling you get when you've lost something, but can't quite
remember what it was. Then my neurons made connections and I realized
that the communicator and the menticom were both as dead as if we were
in a lead box.
Quietly I moved to the door--and Dan's voice hammered in my ears:
"Skipper! Answer me! What's wrong?"
"Nothing, Dan," I said. "We just went into the quarters they assigned
us. Something about them blocks transmission and reception. We're all
fine."
"Oh." Dan sounded relieved. "For a minute I was worried."
"One of the boys'll call in every two hours," I assured him. "If you
don't hear from us then, it'll be time to do something."
"Okay, Skipper, but what'll I do?"
"That'll be your decision," I said. "You'll be ranking officer."
Dan's chuckle was humorless. "Thanks, but I hope we keep on hearing
from you."
"Don't worry--you will. These people look worse than they really are.
At least they have been nice so far."
"They'd better stay that way," Dan replied grimly.
It was my turn to chuckle. "Keep calm and keep your blasters dry. I'm
going inside now. You'll hear from us in two hours."
* * * * *
Ed Barger looked at me a trifle oddly as I came through the doorway. "A
while ago you were laughing at that story K'wan was telling us about
making this house for us. I caught your undertone."
"Sure. What about it?"
"Well, I'm not so sure he was lying."
"Huh?"
"Take a look around you."
I did. It was a nice room, considering its origin--low benches around
the walls, a table and four chairs in the center, a soft, thick floor
covering that was a pleasure to the feet.
"See anything unusual?" Ed asked.
"No," I said.
"What about those benches?"
"They're part of the walls," I said, "cut out of the tree when it was
hollowed out."
"Cut to _our_ size?"
I did a double take. Barger was right. The Lyranians were seven feet
tall and long-legged, but the benches were precisely right for human
sitting, and the table in the center was only three feet above the gray
floor. Suddenly I didn't feel so good.
"And those rooms--there are four of them--scaled to people _our_ size?"