Charlie thought he was alone there with a possibly hostile native.
All he had to do was make one small slip and he would be dead. Yet,
so far, he had followed the pattern we had used at the other colony
exactly.
Instantly I realized that it _must_ be a mistake to follow the other
pattern with this second group of aliens, if Charlie Baxter did it.
* * * * *
At first I couldn't understand why the pattern should be wrong for this
group if it was right for the first. They were close enough so that
there must have been intercourse between them, and if customs were
violently different, there would probably be a state of warfare between
them and none was apparent.
I finally realized why warfare would be almost impossible and why the
customs of the separated colonies might be extremely at odds.
The colonies were three months apart by fastest transportation, which
was longer than a generation of the natives. No one could live long
enough to reach a second colony, so each culture developed in isolation
along entirely random lines.
I felt like yelling at Charlie. There was literally no way of telling
how he might be offending and antagonizing this Moranite by treating
him as we had learned to treat the others.