“Chief Moréri apologizes for fainting,” Chedka told them. “He said it was inexcusably bad manners.”
“Ah!” Maarten exclaimed. “His fainting might help us, after all—make him eager to repair his ‘impoliteness.’ Just as long as it was a fortuitous circumstance, unrelated to us—”
“Not,” Chedka said.
“Not what?”
“Not unrelated,” the Eborian said, curling up and going to sleep.
MAARTEN SHOOK the little linguist awake. “What else did the chief say? How was his fainting related to us?”
Chedka yawned copiously. “The chief was very embarrassed. He faced the wind from your mouth as long as he could, but the alien odor—”
“My breath?” Maarten asked. “My breath knocked him out?”
Chedka nodded, giggled unexpectedly, and went to sleep.
Evening came, and the long dim twilight of Durell merged imperceptibly into night. In the village, cooking fires glinted through the surrounding forest and winked out one by one. But lights burned within the spaceship until dawn. And when the sun rose, Chedka slipped out of the ship on a mission into the village. Croswell brooded over his morning coffee, while Maarten rummaged through the ship’s medicine chest.
“It’s purely a temporary setback,” Croswell was saying hopefully. “Little things like this are bound to happen. Remember that time on Dingoforeaba VI—”
“It’s little things that close planets forever,” Maarten said.
“But how could anyone possibly guess—”
“I should have foreseen it,” Maarten growled angrily. “Just because our breath hasn’t been offensive anywhere else—here it is!”
Triumphantly he held up a bottle of pink tablets. “Absolutely guaranteed to neutralize any breath, even that of a hyena. Have a couple.”
Croswell accepted the pills. “Now what?”
“Now we wait until—aha! What did he say?”
Chedka slipped through the entry port, rubbing his eves. “The chief apologizes for fainting.”
“We know that. What else?”
“He welcomes you to the village of Lannit at your convenience. The chief feels that this incident shouldn’t alter the course of friendship between two peace-loving courteous peoples.”
Maarten sighed with relief. He cleared his throat and asked hesitantly, “Did you mention to him about the forthcoming—ah—improvement in our breaths?”
“I assured him it would be corrected,” Chedka said, “although it never bothered me.”
“Fine, fine. We will leave for the village now. Perhaps you should take one of these pills?”
“There’s nothing wrong with my breath,” the Eborian said complacently.
They set out at once for the village of Lannit.
WHEN ONE deals with a primitive-pastoral people, one looks for simple but highly symbolic gestures, since that is what they understand best. Imagery! Clear-cut and decisive parallels! Few words but many gestures! Those were the rules in dealing with primitive-pastorals.
As Maarten approached the village, a natural and highly symbolic ceremony presented itself. The natives were waiting in their village, which was in a clearing in the forest. Separating forest from village was a dry stream bed, and across that bed was a small stone bridge.
Maarten advanced to the center of the bridge and stopped, beaming benignly on the Durellans. When he saw several of them shudder and turn away, he smoothed out his features, remembering his own injunction on facial contortions. He paused for a long moment.
“What’s up?” Croswell asked, stopping in front of the bridge.
In a loud voice, Maarten cried, “Let this bridge symbolize the link, now eternally forged, that joins this beautiful planet with—” Croswell called out a warning, but Maarten didn’t know what was wrong. He stared at the villagers; they had made no movement.
“Get off the bridge!” Croswell shouted. But before Maarten could move, the entire structure had collapsed under him and he fell bone-shakingly into the dry stream.
“Damnedest thing I ever saw,” Croswell said, helping him to his feet. “As soon as you raised your voice, that stone began to pulverize. Sympathetic vibration, I imagine.”
Now Maarten understood why the Durellans spoke in whispers. He struggled to his feet, then groaned and sat down again.
“What’s wrong?” Croswell asked.
“I seem to have wrenched my ankle,” Maarten said miserably.
Chief Moréri came up, followed by twenty or so villagers, made a short speech and presented Maarten with a walking stick of carved and polished black wood.
“Thanks,” Maarten muttered, standing up and leaning gingerly on the cane. “What did he say?” he asked Chedka.
“The chief said that the bridge was only a hundred years old and in good repair,” Chedka translated. “He apologizes that his ancestors didn’t build it better.”
“Hmm,” Maarten said.
“And the chief says that you are probably an unlucky man.”
He might be right, Maarten thought. Or perhaps Earthmen were just a fumbling race. For all their good intentions, population after population feared them, hated them, envied them, mainly on the basis of unfavorable first impressions.
Still, there seemed to be a chance here. What else could go wrong?
Forcing a smile, then quickly erasing it, Maarten limped into the village beside Moréri.
TECHNOLOGICALLY, the Durellan civilization was of a low order. A limited use had been made of wheel and lever, but the concept of mechanical advantage had been carried no further. There was evidence of a rudimentary knowledge of plane geometry and a fair idea of astronomy.
Artistically, however, the Durellans were adept and surprisingly sophisticated, particularly in wood carving. Even the simplest huts had bas-relief panels, beautifully conceived and executed.
“Do you think I could take some photographs?” Croswell asked.
“I see no reason why not,” Maarten said. He ran his finger lovingly over a large panel, carved of the same straight-grained black wood that formed his cane. The finish was as smooth as skin beneath his fingertips.
The chief gave his approval and Croswell took photographs and tracings of Durellan home, market, and temple decorations.
Maarten wandered around, gently touching the intricate bas-reliefs, speaking with some of the natives through Chedka and generally sorting out his impressions.
The Durrellans, Maarten judged, were highly intelligent and had a potential comparable to that of Homo sapiens. Their lack of a defined technology was more the expression of a cooperation with nature rather than a flaw in their makeup. They seemed inherently peace-loving and nonaggressive—valuable neighbors for an Earth that, after centuries of confusion, was striving toward a similar goal.
This was going to be the basis of his report to the Second Contact Team. With it, he hoped to be able to add, A favorable impression seems to have been left concerning Earth. No unusual difficulties are to be expected.
Chedka had been talking earnestly with Chief Moréri. Now looking slightly more wide awake than usual, he came over and conferred with Maarten in a hushed voice. Maarten nodded, keeping his face expressionless, and went over to Croswell, who was snapping his last photographs.
“All ready for the big show?” Maarten asked.
“What show?”
“Moréri is throwing a feast for us tonight,” Maarten said. “Very big, very important feast. A final gesture of good will and all that.” Although his tone was casual, there was a gleam of deep satisfaction in his eyes.
Croswell’s reaction was more immediate. “Then we’ve made it! The contact is successful!”
Behind him, two natives shook at the loudness of his voice and tottered feebly away.
“We’ve made it,” Maarten whispered, “if we watch our step. They’re a fine, understanding people—but we do seem to grate on them a bit.”
BY EVENING, Maarten and Croswell had completed a chemical
examination of the Durellan foods and found nothing harmful to humans. They took several more pink tablets, changed coveralls and sandals, bathed again in the degermifier, and proceeded to the feast.
The first course was an orange-green vegetable that tasted like squash. Then Chief Moréri gave a short talk on the importance of intercultural relations. They were served a dish resembling rabbit, and Croswell was called upon to give a speech.
“Remember,” Maarten whispered, “whisper!”
Croswell stood up and began to speak. Keeping his voice down and his face blank, he began to enumerate the many similarities between Earth and Durell, depending mainly on gestures to convey his message.
Chedka translated. Maarten nodded his approval. The chief nodded. The feasters nodded.
Croswell made his last points and sat down. Maarten clapped him on the shoulder. “Well done, Ed. You’ve got a natural gift for—what’s wrong?”
Croswell had a startled and incredulous look on his face. “Look!”
Maarten turned. The chief and the feasters, their eyes open and staring, were still nodding.
“Chedka!” Maarten whispered. “Speak to them!”
The Eborian asked the chief a question. There was no response. The chief continued his rhythmic nodding.
“Those gestures!” Maarten said. “You must have hypnotized them!” He scratched his head, then coughed once, loudly. The Durellans stopped nodding, blinked their eyes, and began to talk rapidly and nervously among themselves.
“They say you’ve got some strong powers,” Chedka translated at random. “They say that aliens are pretty queer people and doubt if they can be trusted.”
“What does the chief say?” Maarten asked.
“The chief believes you’re all right. He is telling them that you meant no harm.”
“Good enough. Let’s stop while we’re ahead.”
He stood up, followed by Croswell and Chedka.
“We are leaving now,” he told the chief in a whisper, “but we beg permission for others of our kind to visit you. Forgive the mistakes we have made; they were due only to ignorance of your ways.”
CHEDKA TRANSLATED, and Maarten went on whispering, his face expressionless, his hands at his sides. He spoke of the oneness of the Galaxy, the joys of cooperation, peace, the exchange of goods and art, and the essential solidarity of all human life.
Moréri, though still a little dazed from the hypnotic experience, answered that the Earthmen would always be welcome.
Impulsively, Croswell held out his hand. The chief looked at it for a moment, puzzled, then took it, obviously wondering what to do with it and why.
He gasped in agony and pulled his hand back. They could see deep burns blotched red against his skin.
“What could have—”
“Perspiration!” Maarten said. “It’s an acid. Must have an almost instantaneous effect upon their particular makeup. Let’s get out of here.”
The natives were milling together and they had picked up some stones and pieces of wood. The chief, although still in pain, was arguing with them, but the Earthmen didn’t wait to hear the results of the discussion. They retreated to their ship, as fast as Maarten could hobble with the help of his cane.
The forest was dark behind them and filled with suspicious movements. Out of breath, they arrived at the spaceship. Croswell, in the lead, sprawled over a tangle of grass and fell head-first against the port with a resounding clang.
“Damn!” he howled in pain.
The ground rumbled beneath them, began to tremble and slide away.
“Into the ship!” Maarten ordered.
They managed to take off before the ground gave way completely.
“IT MUST have been sympathetic vibration again,” Croswell said, several hours later, when the ship was in space. “But of all the luck—to be perched on a rock fault!”
Maarten sighed and shook his head. “I really don’t know what to do. I’d like to go back, explain to them, but—”
“We’ve outlived our welcome,” Croswell said.
“Apparently. Blunders, nothing but blunders. We started out badly, and everything we did made it worse.”
“It is not what you do,” Chedka explained in the most sympathetic voice they had ever heard him use. “It’s not your fault. It’s what you are.”
Maarten considered that for a moment. “Yes, you’re right. Our voices shatter their land, our expressions disgust them, our gestures hypnotize them, our breath asphyxiates them, our perspiration burns them. Oh, Lord!”
“Lord, Lord,” Croswell agreed glumly. “We’re living chemical factories—only turning out poison gas and corrosives exclusively.”
“But that is not all you are,” Chedka said. “Look.”
He held up Maarten’s walking stick. Along the upper part, where Maarten had handled it, long-dormant buds had burst into pink and white flowers, and their scent filled the cabin.
“You see?” Chedka said. “You are this, also.”
“That stick was dead,” Croswell mused. “Some oil in our skin, I imagine.”
Maarten shuddered. “Do you suppose that all the carvings we touched—the huts—the temple—”
“I should think so,” Croswell said.
Maarten closed his eyes and visualized it, the sudden bursting into bloom of the dead, dried wood.
“I think they’ll understand,” he said, trying very hard to believe himself. “It’s a pretty symbol and they’re quite an understanding people. I think they’ll approve of—well, at least some of the things we are.”
EARLY MODEL
Opening a new planet? Then take Bentley’s advice—invulnerability is a great thing, but make doubly sure you don’t overdo it!
THE landing was almost a catastrophe. Bentley knew his coordination was impaired by the bulky weight on his back; he didn’t realize how much until, at a crucial moment, he stabbed the wrong button. The ship began to drop like a stone. At the last moment, he overcompensated, scorching a black hole into the plain below him. His ship touched, teetered for a moment, then sickeningly came to rest.
Bentley had effected mankind’s first landing on Tels IV.
His immediate reaction was to pour himself a sizable drink of strictly medicinal scotch.
When that was out of the way, he turned on his radio. The receiver was imbedded in his ear, where it itched, and the microphone was a surgically implanted lump in his throat. The portable sub-space set was self-tuning, which was all to the good, since Bentley knew nothing about narrowcasting on so tight a beam over so great a distance.
“All’s well,” he told Professor Sliggert over the radio. “It’s an Earth-type planet, just as the survey reports said. The ship is intact. And I’m happy to report that I did not break my neck in landing.”
“Of course not,” Sliggert said, his voice thin and emotionless through the tiny receiver. “What about the Protec? How does it feel? Have you become used to it yet?”
BENTLEY said, “Nope. It still feels like a monkey on my back.”
“Well, you’ll adjust,” Sliggert assured him. “The Institute sends its congratulations and I believe the government is awarding you a medal of some sort. Remember, the thing now is to fraternize with the aborigines, and if possible to establish a trade agreement of some sort, any sort. As a precedent. We need this planet, Bentley.”
“I know.”
“Good luck. Report whenever you have a chance.”
“I’ll do that,” Bentley promised and signed off.
He tried to stand up, but didn’t make it on the first attempt. Then, using the handholds that had been conveniently spaced above the control board, he managed to stagger erect. Now he appreciated the toll that no-weight extracts from a man’s muscles. H? wished he had done his exercises more faithfully on the long trip out from Earth.
Bentley was a big, jaunty young man, over six feet tall, widely and solidly constructed. On Earth, he had weighed two hundred pounds and had moved with an athlete�
��s grace. But ever since leaving Earth, he’d had the added encumbrance of seventy-three pounds strapped irrevocably and immovably to his back. Under the circumstances, his movements resembled those of a very old elephant wearing tight shoes.
He moved his shoulders under the wide plastic straps, grimaced, and walked to a starboard porthole. In the distance, perhaps half a mile away, he could see a village, low and brown on the horizon. There were dots on the plain moving toward him. The villagers apparently had decided to discover what strange object had fallen from the skies breathing fire and making an uncanny noise.
“Good show,” Bentley said to himself. Contact would have been difficult if these aliens had shown no curiosity. This eventuality had been considered by the Earth Interstellar Exploration Institute, but no solution had been found. Therefore it had been struck from the list of possibilities.
The villagers were drawing closer. Bentley decided it was time to get ready. He opened a locker and took out his lingua-scene, which, with some difficulty, he strapped to his chest. On one hip, he fastened a large canteen of water. On the other hip went a package of concentrated food. Across his stomach, he put a package of assorted tools. Strapped to one leg was the radio. Strapped to the other was a medicine kit.
Thus equipped, Bentley was carrying a total of 148 pounds, every ounce of it declared essential for an extraterrestrial explorer.
The fact that he lurched rather than walked was considered unimportant.
THE natives had reached the ship now and were gathering around it, commenting disparagingly. They were bipeds. They had short thick tails and their features were human, but nightmare human. Their coloring was a vivid orange.
Bentley also noticed that they were armed. He could see knives, spears, lances, stone hammers and flint axes. At the sight of this armament, a satisfied smile broke over his face. Here was the justification for his discomfort, the reason for the unwieldy seventy-three pounds which had remained on his back ever since leaving Earth.
It didn’t matter what weapons these aboriginals had, right up to the nuclear level. They couldn’t hurt him.
That’s what Professor Sliggert, head of the Institute, inventor of the Protec, had told him.
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