"The Bird can follow him like a hawk. I want them to follow him like
men."
"They are as good at the job as I am," Bronoski reassured me.
"I think," I said quickly, "that I had better go down to Communications
and follow Baxter myself."
The Bird was an electronic device. It looked like a local life-form
that was actually a flying mammal. Inside the thing was was a sensitive
video camera and a self-propulsion unit.
The Bird homed in on Baxter's electroencephalograph waves.
The view on the screen in front of the lounging chairs was clear but
monotonous.
Charlie made his way across the landscape, woods on this side of the
continent, not jungle, without incident. He did fall down like a wet
laundry bag every so often, but that, as you'd figure, amounted to
traveling across country without incident. He'd have done the same on a
smooth pavement.
I had a cigarette in my mouth, futilely pounding my pockets for the
lighter I didn't have, when Charlie met the alien.
There was only one native this time, the same thin form, but more
lightly clothed here. I shifted uneasily and hoped the two guards were
close. There was only one this time, but it was useless to suppose
Charlie could handle him himself.
"Greetings," Charlie said. "I am Big Brother of a new Family."
There was no sound equipment in the Bird, but the translator circuits
in the control board read Baxter's lips and produced their sound
patterns for us. They would also translate the native's language, but
just then he wasn't saying anything.
He walked around the Prone leisurely, as if considering buying him.
Charlie shifted the straps of his pack. He hadn't been convinced of his
own abilities enough to take along a gun or any other kind of weapon.
He would be almost sure to kill himself with it.
Or would he?
I suddenly wondered if Charlie doubted himself enough to commit
outright suicide. He had had plenty of close calls, yet he had always
survived. If his goal was self-destruction, he surely would have
reached it after this many opportunities.