Charlie said, "I've heard of men biting dogs, but earrings wearing
people is a new one. Hank, I hate to say it--but just consider it said."
Anyway, I had their attention. And now was as good a time as any.
I said, "If you read about the trip, you know we left Earth about
eight months ago, for a six-months' round trip. There were six of us
in the M-94; me and two others made up the crew and there were three
specialists to do the studying and exploring. Not the really top-flight
specialists, though, because the trip was too risky to send them. That
was the third ship to try for Ganymede and the other two had cracked
up on outer Jovian satellites that the observatories hadn't spotted
from Earth because they are too small to show up in the scopes at that
distance.
"When you get there you find there's practically an asteroid belt
around Jupiter, most of them so black they don't reflect light to speak
of and you can't see them till they hit you or you hit them. But most
of them--"
"Skip the satellites," Blake interrupted, "unless they wore earrings."
"Or unless earrings wore _them_," said Charlie.
"Neither," I admitted. "All right, so we were lucky and got through
the belt. And landed. Like I said, there were six of us. Lecky, the
biologist. Haynes geologist and mineralogist. And Hilda Race, who loved
little flowers and was a botanist, egad! You'd have loved Hilda--at a
distance. Somebody must have wanted to get rid of her, and sent her on
that trip. She gushed; you know the type.
"And then there was Art Willis and Dick Carney. They gave Dick
skipper's rating for the trip; he knew enough astrogation to get us
through. So Dick was skipper and Art and I were flunkies and gunmen.
Our main job was to go along with the specialists whenever they left
the ship and stand guard over them against whatever dangers might pop
up."
"And did anything pop?" Charlie demanded.
"I'm coming to that," I told him. "We found Ganymede not so bad, as
places go. Gravity low, of course, but you could get around easily and
keep your balance once you got used to it. And the air was breathable
for a couple of hours; after that you found yourself panting like a dog.
"Lot of funny animals, but none of them were very dangerous. No
reptilian life; all of it mammalian, but a funny kind of mammalian if
you know what I mean."
* * * * *
Blake said, "I don't want to know what you mean. Get to the natives and
the earrings."
I said, "But of course with animals like that, you never _know_ whether
they're dangerous until you've been around them for a while. You can't
judge by size or looks. Like if you'd never seen a snake, you'd never
guess that a little coral snake was dangerous, would you? And a Martian
zeezee looks for all the world like an overgrown guinea-pig. But
without a gun--or with one, for that matter--I'd rather face a grizzly
bear or a--"
"The earrings," said Blake. "You were talking about earrings."
I said, "Oh, yes; earrings. Well, the natives wore them--for now, I'll
put it that way, to make it easier to tell. One earring apiece, even
though they had two ears. Gave them a sort of lopsided look, because
they were pretty fair-sized earrings--like hoops of plain gold, two or
three inches in diameter.
"Anyway, the tribe we landed near wore them that way. We could see the
village--a very primitive sort of place made of mud huts--from where
we landed. We had a council of war and decided that three of us would
stay in the ship and the other three go to the village. Lecky, the
biologist, and Art Willis and I with guns. We didn't know what we might
run into, see? And Lecky was chosen because he was pretty much of a
linguist. He had a flair for languages and could talk them almost as
soon as he heard them.
* * * * *
"They'd heard us land and a bunch of them--about forty, I guess--met
us half-way between the ship and the village. And they were friendly.
Funny people. Quiet and dignified and acting not at all like you'd
expect savages to act toward people landing out of the sky. You know
how most primitives react--either they practically worship you or else
they try to kill you.
"We went to the village with them--and there were about forty more
of them there; they'd split forces just as we did, for the reception
committee. Another sign of intelligence. They recognized Lecky as
leader, and started jabbering to him in a lingo that sounded more like
a pig grunting than a man talking. And pretty soon Lecky was making an
experimental grunt or two in return.
"Everything seemed on the up and up, and no danger. And they weren't
paying much attention to Art and me, so we decided to wander off for a
stroll around outside of the village to see what the country in general
was like and whether there were any dangerous beasties or what-not.
We didn't see any animals, but we did see another native. He acted
different from the others--very different. He threw a spear at us and
then ran. And it was Art who noticed that this native didn't wear an
earring.
"And then breathing began to get a bit hard for us--we'd been away from
the ship over an hour--so we went back to the village to collect Lecky
and take him to the ship. He was getting along so well that he hated to
leave, but he was starting to pant, too, so we talked him into it. He
was wearing one of the earrings, and said they'd given it to him as a
present, and he'd made them a return present of a pocket slide-rule he
happened to have with him.
"'Why a slide-rule?' I asked him. 'Those things cost money and we've
got plenty of junk that would make them happier.'
"'That's what you think,' he said. 'They figured out how to multiply
and divide with it almost as soon as I showed it to them. I showed them
how to extract square roots, and I was starting on cube roots when you
fellows came back.'
"I whistled and took a close look to see if maybe he was kidding me.
He didn't seem to be. But I noticed that he was walking strangely
and--well, acting just a bit strangely, somehow, although I couldn't
put my finger on what it was. I decided finally that he was just a
bit over-excited. This was Lecky's first trip off Earth, so that was
natural enough.
"Inside the ship, as soon as Lecky got his breath back--the last
hundred yards pretty well winded us--he started in to tell Haynes
and Hilda Race about the Ganymedeans. Most of it was too technical
for me, but I got that they had some strange contradictions in them.
As far as their way of life was concerned, they were more primitive
than Australian bushmen. But they had brains and a philosophy and a
knowledge of mathematics and pure science. They'd told him some things
about atomic structure that excited hell out of him. He was in a dither
to get back to Earth where he could get at equipment to check some of
those things.
"And he said the earring was a sign of membership in the tribe--they'd
acknowledged him as a friend and compatriot and what-not by giving it
to him."