handling fire, and that during the present dry seasoneven the green foliage might take off in a holocaust if ignited in thisrich, oxygen air.
Even as he spoke, a long, slender pole, flaming at one end, toppled fromthe settling fire and rolled near Joe. With scarcely a pause to debate,he leaped to his feet, grabbed the pole by the cool end and waved italoft like a torch.
With a triumphant yell he plunged through us and out across the fieldbearing his prize aloft trailing sparks.
I tried to shoot low, but my light caliber pellet caught him rather highin the thigh. He dived to the ground senseless in a shower of sparks.His fellow creatures immediately gathered around him. When we closed into retrieve the fire-wand and stamp out the sparks, the other nativesfaded away, crinkling their noses. They made no effort to remove Joe,but cast many admiring glances back at the fire he had stolen.
Sue came up storming at me. "You didn't have to _shoot_ him." Shestarted to kneel down beside him, but Dr. Bailey restrained her.
"Easy, Susan. Remember the quarantine."
"We can't let him lie there and bleed to death," I said, feelingunaccountably ashamed for my deed, although there was scarcely analternative.
Benson came up, "Nice shot, Sam."
I said, "Phil, I want permission to enter quarantine with Joe, here. Letme have the instruments, and I'll probe for the bullet and take care ofhim."
Benson shook his head. "We can't take that chance. We couldn't spare youif you caught something."
"Who could you spare better?" I demanded. "See here, we've got to findout sooner or later whether these little fellows carry anythingcontagious. If they do, well, then we have a decision to face, but wecan't decide anything until we know."
Sue was at my side now. She said. "You have a dozen people who can puncha micro-writer. Sam and I aren't indispensable. Besides, it was he whocrippled the poor little fellow."
Without waiting for an answer she called out, "Larson, where are you?"The lucky carpenter tried to draw back in the shadows, knowing full wellwhat she had in mind.
Benson stared at me for a minute. He said gruffly, "Very well, if youcan talk Larson out of his cottage, go ahead, play hero!"
I didn't feel very heroic right then. Two hours later, when we had thebullet out of Joe and had him bedded down comfortably for the night, Suecosied up to me in our double sleeping silks and murmured, "What a guyhas to go through out here to get a little privacy!"
Poor Larson!
* * * * *
Bailey and Sorenson set up their lab outside our cabin door. Joe's woundwas seriously infected, and none of our cautiously applied remedieswould control the raging fever with which he awoke the first morning. Helay, apathetic, eyes half closed, murmuring, "Tala! Tala!"
The doctors seized the opportunity to launch a study of Sirian microbes,diseases and earth molds. Sue and I took cultures from Joe's wound, andthe medics experimented with the effects of local mold products similarto the penicillin series. By force-feeding we managed to keep Joe aliveuntil Bailey, one morning, held up a hypo full of clear liquid and toldus how to administer it.
Joe responded at once. The following day he began sitting up andvociferously demanding, "Tala, Tala!"
"Must be his wife or girl-friend," Sue deduced. She was wrong. Joe beganmaking motions of a person lifting a vessel and drinking. When weoffered him water he refused, repeating, "Tala!" and making moredrinking motions. He tried to rise, but the pain in his swollen thighstopped him. He sank back licking his lips like a man dying of thirst,and in spite of his general improvement, he stayed in a sullen, subduedattitude.
As his wound closed and the swelling reduced, Joe's temperature, whichhad reached a fabulous 142 degrees F., stabilized at 137 F., therebyconfirming Benson's prediction that the natives would display a muchhigher metabolism. Sue, who had spent hours stroking the fevered brow,had grown used to Joe's hot-bloodedness, and she teased me about myrelative "frigidity".
Until Joe got his "tala" I made disappointing progress at teaching himour language. He picked up our words for those few items that pertainedto his comfort, such as food, drink, bedpan and pillow--he revelled inthe luxury of our down-filled pillows. But at first he evinced littleinterest in communication.
Then one morning we arose to find him standing and clinging weakly tothe door jamb, searching the perimeter of the clearing with franticeyes.
We scolded him, but he ignored us. He spotted a fellow native examiningone of the unfinished huts, which were going up at the rate of one aday. He called out in a loud, clear voice, and the little goldencreature came running over to investigate.
It was a lovely little female, and I told Sue, "We have a reunion on ourhands. Must be his mate."
But Joe was quite indifferent to her charms. She seemed tolerably happyto see him, touched his bandages with long, gentle fingers, then hurriedoff to the forest as if in response to his commands. Joe made no effortto follow. He seemed still to realize that he was in good hands and wasprofiting by the care he was receiving.
However, he chafed for the ten minutes or so before her return. Wewaited with high curiosity. I bet Sue that we were about to learn what"tala" was. When the female approached again we were mystified. "Whyit's just a mango," Sue said. Indeed, the yellow-skinned, kidney-shapedfruit which the little native bore carefully in both hands appeared tobe one of the over-sized specimens we had named after its smaller Earthcounterpart.
Joe reached greedily for the fruit, poked a hole in the rind with apointed forefinger and drank deeply. Watching from the door of ourbedroom, we could smell a delightful, tangy scent that was only vaguelytypical of the Sirian mangoes we had eaten.
To our surprise, as Joe drank, the skin collapsed like a plastic bag."It must be a different species, or else it's much riper than any we'vegathered," Sue said.
When Joe paused to breathe, the female took the fruit from him andsucked at it enthusiastically. They sank down on Joe's bed and tookturns drinking the juice until the quart-sized skin was crumpled andempty.
I fear I interrupted an incipient romance in order to retrieve thediscarded skin. The female wrinkled her nose and made for the door. Iwatched her roll unsteadily across the clearing with eccentric littlelurches. The bland smile on Joe's handsome face deepened my suspicion. Ipointed to the skin and asked, "Tala?"
He nodded, patted his stomach and repeated, "Tala!"
From that moment our relations improved immensely. Joe enlisted the helpof various females to keep him supplied with skins of tala, and with thesatiation of his craving he took a completely new interest in life.
* * * * *
We spent hours every day working out our language difficulties. Helearned so rapidly that I abandoned learning his language in favor ofteaching him ours. Even such abstract concepts as time and space provedno obstacles. He grasped the purpose of my wristwatch after a singleday's demonstration of its relationship to the passage of Sirius acrossthe sky.
Using a pencil I had managed to convey our symbols for large numbers.Joe could count up to any number now, and he seemed actually tounderstand the open-end nature of our system of enumeration.
It made possible a mutual agreement on such matters as the number of"days" in a year, which he was mildly interested to learn numbered 440on his planet. Then a startling piece of information came from him whenI asked how long his people lived.
"Two years. Maybe three," he replied. Because of the shorter days, aSirian year about equalled an Earth year, and I found it difficult tobelieve that these wonderful little animals lived only two or threeyears. He persisted until I believed him.
He was strangely vague when I tried to determine the common manner ofdeath. Indeed, personal death was a concept either so hazy ordistasteful to him that he refused to dwell on it. The most he wouldconvey was that there were always new faces in the tribe, and the oldfaces rarely remained more than three years. At this time, he describedhimself as being more than a year old.
There was no such thing as monogamy or even polygamy. True, at nightwhen the air was cooler, they paired off, male and female, and each malechose from among several favorites. But there was no formal norpermanent mating arrangement.
Benson, who had set up a sheltered desk outside Joe's window in order tolisten in with an anthropologist's avid interest, posed the questionwhich grew into quite a mystery. Under such fruitful conditions andideal environment, why hadn't
The Test Colony Page 4