Strangers No More

by Isaac Asimov, Philip José Farmer,Marion Zimmer Bradley

  The canvas was off but they were just watching. The ground meat, Slim noticed, hadn’t been touched.

  Slim said, “Aren’t you going to do something?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “You found them.”

  “It’s your turn, now.”

  “No, it isn’t. You found them. It’s your fault, the whole thing. I was watching.”

  “You joined in, Slim. You know you did.”

  “I don’t care. You found them and that’s what I’ll say when they come here looking for us.”

  Red said, “All right for you.” But the thought of the consequences inspired him anyway, and he reached for the cage door.

  Slim said, “Wait!”

  Red was glad to. He said, “Now what’s biting you?”

  “One of them’s got something on him that looks like it might be iron or something.”

  “Where?”

  “Right there. I saw it before but I thought it was just part of him. But if he’s ‘people,’ maybe it’s a disintegrator gun.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I read about it in the books from Beforethewars. Mostly people with spaceships have disintegrator guns. They point them at you and you get disintegratored.”

  “They didn’t point it at us till now,” pointed out Red with his heart not quite in it.

  “I don’t care. I’m not hanging around here and getting disintegratored. I’m getting my father.”

  “Cowardy-cat. Yellow cowardy-cat.”

  “I don’t care. You can call all the names you want, but if you bother them now you’ll get disintegratored. You wait and see, and it’ll be all your fault.”

  He made for the narrow spiral stairs that led to the main floor of the barn, stopped at its head, then backed away.

  Red’s mother was moving up, panting a little with the exertion and smiling a tight smile for the benefit of Slim in his capacity as guest.

  “Red! You, Red! Are you up there? Now don’t try to hide. I know this is where you’re keeping them. Cook saw where you ran with the meat.”

  Red quavered, “Hello, ma!”

  “Now show me those nasty animals? I’m going to see to it that you get rid of them right away.”

  It was over! And despite the imminent corporal punishment, Red felt something like a load fall from him. At least the decision was out of his hands.

  “Right there, ma. I didn’t do anything to them, ma. I didn’t know. They just looked like little animals and I thought you’d let me keep them, ma. I wouldn’t have taken the meat only they wouldn’t eat grass or leaves and we couldn’t find good nuts or berries and cook never lets me have anything or I would have asked her and I didn’t know it was for lunch and—”

  He was speaking on the sheer momentum of terror and did not realize that his mother did not hear him but, with eyes frozen and popping at the cage, was screaming in thin, piercing tones.

  X

  The Astronomer was saying, “A quiet burial is all we can do. There is no point in any publicity now,” when they heard the screams.

  She had not entirely recovered by the time she reached them, running and running. It was minutes before her husband could extract sense from her.

  She was saying, finally, “I tell you they’re in the barn. I don’t know what they are. No, no—”

  She barred the Industrialist’s quick movement in that direction. She said, “Don’t you go. Send one of the hands with a shotgun. I tell you I never saw anything like it. Little horrible beasts with—with—I can’t describe it. To think that Red was touching them and trying to feed them. He was holding them, and feeding them meat.”

  Red began, “I only—”

  And Slim said, “It was not—”

  The Industrialist said, quickly, “Now you boys have done enough harm today. March! Into the house! And not a word; not one word! I’m not interested in anything you have to say. After this is all over, I’ll hear you out and as for you, Red, I’ll see that you’re properly punished.”

  He turned to his wife, “Now whatever the animals are, we’ll have them killed.” He added quietly once the youngsters were out of hearing, “Come, come. The children aren’t hurt and, after all, they haven’t done anything really terrible. They’ve just found a new pet.”

  The Astronomer spoke with difficulty. “Pardon me, ma’am, but can you describe these animals?”

  She shook her head. She was quite beyond words.

  “Can you just tell me if they—”

  “I’m sorry,” said the Industrialist, apologetically, “but I think I had better take care of her. Will you excuse me?”

  “A moment. Please. One moment. She said she had never seen such animals before. Surely it is not usual to find animals that are completely unique on an estate such as this.”

  “I’m sorry. Let’s not discuss that now.”

  “Except that unique animals might have landed during the night.”

  The Industrialist stepped away from his wife. “What are you implying?”

  “I think we had better go to the barn, sir!”

  The Industrialist stared a moment, turned and suddenly and quite uncharacteristically began running. The Astronomer followed and the woman’s wail rose unheeded behind them.

  XI

  The Industrialist stared, looked at the Astronomer, turned to stare again.

  “Those?”

  “Those,” said the Astronomer. “I have no doubt we appear strange and repulsive to them.”

  “What do they say?”

  “Why, that they are uncomfortable and tired and even a little sick, but that they are not seriously damaged, and that the youngsters treated them well.”

  “Treated them well! Scooping them up, keeping them in a cage, giving them grass and raw meat to eat? Tell me how to speak to them.”

  “It may take a little time. Think at them. Try to listen. It will come to you, but perhaps not right away.”

  The Industrialist tried. He grimaced with the effort of it, thinking over and over again, “The youngsters were ignorant of your identity.”

  And the thought was suddenly in his mind: “We were quite aware of it and because we knew they meant well by us according to their own view of the matter, we did not attempt to attack them.”

  “Attack them?” thought the Industrialist, and said it aloud in his concentration.

  “Why, yes,” came the answering thought. “We are armed.”

  One of the revolting little creatures in the cage lifted a metal object and there was a sudden hole in the top of the cage and another in the roof of the barn, each hole rimmed with charred wood.

  “We hope,” the creatures thought, “it will not be too difficult to make repairs.”

  The Industrialist found it impossible to organize himself to the point of directed thought. He turned to the Astronomer. “And with that weapon in their possession they let themselves be handled and caged? I don’t understand it.”

  But the calm thought came, “We would not harm the young of an intelligent species.”

  XII

  It was twilight. The Industrialist had entirely missed the evening meal and remained unaware of the fact.

  He said, “Do you really think the ship will fly?”

  “If they say so,” said the Astronomer, “I’m sure it will. They’ll be back, I hope, before too long.”

  “And when they do,” said the Industrialist, energetically, “I will keep my part of the agreement. What is more I will move sky and earth to have the world accept them. I was entirely wrong, Doctor. Creatures that would refuse to harm children under such provocation as they received, are admirable. But you know—I almost hate to say this—”

  “Say what?”

  “The kids. Yours and mine. I’m almost proud of them. Imagine seizing these creatures, feeding them or trying to, and keeping them hidden. The amazing gall of it. Red told me it was his idea to get a job in a circus on the strength of them. Imagine!”

  The Astronom
er said, “Youth!”

  XIII

  The Merchant said, “Will we be taking off soon?”

  “Half an hour,” said the Explorer.

  It was going to be a lonely trip back. All the remaining seventeen of the crew were dead and their ashes were to be left on a strange planet. Back they would go with a limping ship and the burden of the controls entirely on himself.

  The Merchant said, “It was a good business stroke, not harming the young ones. We will get very good terms; very good terms.”

  The Explorer thought: Business!

  The Merchant then said, “They’ve lined up to see us off. All of them. You don’t think they’re too close, do you? It would be bad to burn any of them with the rocket blast at this stage of the game.”

  “They’re safe.”

  “Horrible looking things, aren’t they?”

  “Pleasant enough, inside. Their thoughts are perfectly friendly.”

  “You wouldn’t believe it of them. That immature one, the one that first picked us up—”

  “They call him Red,” provided the Explorer.

  “That’s a queer name for a monster. Makes me laugh. He actually feels bad that we’re leaving. Only I can’t make out exactly why. The nearest I can come to it is something about a lost opportunity with some organization or other that I can’t quite interpret.”

  “A circus,” said the Explorer, briefly.

  “What? Why, the impertinent monstrosity.”

  “Why not? What would you have done if you had found him wandering on your native world; found him sleeping on a field on Earth, red tentacles, six legs, pseudopods and all?”

  XIV

  Red watched the ship leave. His red tentacles, which gave him his nickname, quivered their regret at lost opportunity to the very last, and the eyes at their tips filled with drifting yellowish crystals that were the equivalent of Earthly tears.

  WARRIOR RACE

  ROBERT SHECKLEY

  They never did discover whose fault it was. Fannia pointed out that if Donnaught had had the brains of an ox, as well as the build, he would have remembered to check the tanks. Donnaught, although twice as big as him, wasn’t quite as fast with an insult. He intimated, after a little thought, that Fannia’s nose might have obstructed his reading of the fuel guage.

  This still left them twenty light-years from Thetis, with a cupful of transformer fuel in the emergency tank.

  “All right,” Fannia said presently. “What’s done is done. We can squeeze about three light-years out of the fuel before we’re back on atomics. Hand me The Galactic Pilot—unless you forgot that, too.”

  Donnaught dragged the bulky microfilm volume out of its locker, and they explored its pages.

  The Galactic Pilot told them they were in a sparse, seldom-visited section of space, which they already knew. The nearest planetary system was Hatterfield; no intelligent life there. Sersus had a native population, but no refueling facilities. The same with Illed, Hung and Porderai.

  “Ah-ha!” Fannia said. “Read that, Donnaught. If you can read, that is.”

  “Cascella,” Donnaught read, slowly and clearly, following the line with a thick forefinger. “Type M sun. Three planets, intelligent (AA3C) human-type life on second. Oxygen-breathers. Non-mechanical. Religious. Friendly. Unique social structure, described in Galactic Survey Report 33877242. Population estimate: stable at three billion. Basic Cascellan vocabulary taped under Cas33b2. Scheduled for resurvey 2375A.D. Cache of transformer fuel left, beam coordinate 8741 kgl. Physical descript: Unocc. flatland.”

  “Transformer fuel, boy!” Fannia said gleefully. “I believe we will get to Thetis, after all.” He punched the new direction on the ship’s tape. “If that fuel’s still there.”

  “Should we read up on the unique social structure?” Donnaught asked, still poring over The Galactic Pilot.

  “Certainly,” Fannia said. “Just step over to the main galactic base on Earth and buy me a copy.”

  “I forgot,” Donnaught admitted slowly.

  “Let me see,” Fannia said, dragging out the ship’s language library. “Cascellan, Cascellan . . . Here it is. Be good while I learn the language.” He set the tape in the hypnophone and switched it on. “Another useless tongue in my overstuffed head,” he murmured, and then the hypnophone took over.

  Coming out of transformer drive with at least a drop of fuel left, they switched to atomics. Fannia rode the beam right across the planet, locating the slender metal spire of the Galactic Survey cache. The plain was no longer unoccupied, however. The Cascellans had built a city around the cache, and the spire dominated the crude wood-and-mud buildings.

  “Hang on,” Fannia said, and brought the ship down on the outskirts of the city, in a field of stubble.

  “Now look,” Fannia said, unfastening his safety belt. “We’re just here for fuel. No souvenirs, no side-trips, no fraternizing.”

  Through the port, they could see a cloud of dust from the city. As it came closer, they made out figures running toward their ship.

  “What do you think this unique social structure is?” Donnaught asked, pensively checking the charge in a needler gun.

  “I know not and care less,” Fannia said, struggling into space armor. “Get dressed.”

  “The air’s breathable.”

  “Look, pachyderm, for all we know, these Cascellans think the proper way to greet visitors is to chop off their heads and stuff them with green apples. If Galactic says unique, it probably means unique.”

  “Galactic said they were friendly.”

  “That means they haven’t got atomic bombs. Come on, get dressed.” Donnaught put down the needler and struggled into an oversize suit of space armor. Both men strapped on needlers, paralyzers, and a few grenades.

  “I don’t think we have anything to worry about,” Fannia said, tightening the last nut on his helmet. “Even if they get rough, they can’t crack space armor. And if they’re not rough, we won’t have any trouble. Maybe these gewgaws will help.” He picked up a box of trading articles—mirrors, toys and the like.

  Helmeted and armored, Fannia slid out the port and raised one hand to the Cascellans. The language, hypnotically placed in his mind, leaped to his lips.

  “We come as friends and brothers. Take us to the chief.”

  The natives clustered around, gaping at the ship and the space armor. Although they had the same number of eyes, ears and limbs as humans, they completely missed looking like them.

  “If they’re friendly,” Donnaught asked, climbing out of the port, “why all the hardware?” The Cascellans were dressed predominantly in a collection of knives, swords and daggers. Each man had at least five, and some had eight or nine.

  “Maybe Galactic got their signals crossed,” Fannia said, as the natives spread out in an escort. “Or maybe the natives just use the knives for mumblypeg.”

  The city was typical of a non-mechanical culture. Narrow, packed-dirt streets twisted between ramshackle huts. A few two-story buildings threatened to collapse at any minute. A stench filled the air, so strong that Fannia’s filter couldn’t quite eradicate it. The Cascellans bounded ahead of the heavily laden Earthmen, dashing around like a pack of playful puppies. Their knives glittered and clanked.

  The chief ’s house was the only three-story building in the city. The tall spire of the cache was right behind it.

  “If you come in peace,” the chief said when they entered, “you are welcome.” He was a middle-aged Cascellan with at least fifteen knives strapped to various parts of his person. He squatted cross-legged on a raised dais.

  “We are privileged,” Fannia said. He remembered from the hypnotic language lesson that “chief ” on Cascella meant more than it usually did on Earth. The chief here was a combination of king, high priest, deity and bravest warrior.

  “We have a few simple gifts here,” Fannia added, placing the gewgaws at the king’s feet. “Will his majesty accept?”

  “No,” the king said. “We a
ccept no gifts.” Was that the unique social structure? Fannia wondered. It certainly was not human. “We are a warrior race. What we want, we take.”

  Fannia sat cross-legged in front of the dais and exchanged conversation with the king while Donnaught played with the spurned toys. Trying to overcome the initial bad impression, Fannia told the chief about the stars and other worlds, since simple people usually liked fables. He spoke of the ship, not mentioning yet that it was out of fuel. He spoke of Cascella, telling the chief how its fame was known throughout the Galaxy.

  “That is as it should be,” the chief said proudly. “We are a race of warriors, the like of which has never been seen. Every man of us dies fighting.”

  “You must have fought some great wars,” Fannia said politely, wondering what idiot had written up the galactic report.

  “I have not fought a war for many years,” the chief said. “We are united now, and all our enemies have joined us.”

  Bit by bit, Fannia led up to the matter of the fuel.

  “What is this ‘fuel?’” the chief asked, haltingly because there was no equivalent for it in the Cascellan language.

  “It makes our ship go.”

  “And where is it?”

  “In the metal spire,” Fannia said. “If you would just allow us—”

  “In the holy shrine?” the chief exclaimed, shocked. “The tall metal church which the gods left here long ago?”

  “Yeah,” Fannia said sadly, knowing what was coming. “I guess that’s it.”

  “It is sacrilege for an outworlder to go near it,” the chief said. “I forbid it.”

  “We need the fuel.” Fannia was getting tired of sitting cross-legged. Space armor wasn’t built for complicated postures. “The spire was put here for such emergencies.”

  “Strangers, know that I am god of my people, as well as their leader. If you dare approach the sacred temple, there will be war.”

  “I was afraid of that,” Fannia said, getting to his feet.

  “And since we are a race of warriors,” the chief said, “at my command, every fighting man of the planet will move against you. More will come from the hills and from across the rivers.”