“Why don’t you go yourself? I thought you would have been straining at the leash, Joe. Something wrong?”
“No, nothing wrong,” said Duluth innocently. “Only I’d like someone else to find out if these boys are cannibals. ... Be a pal, and bring back some more free samples. I got an idea Trans-Solar won’t worry about a few kilograms—not where I put ’em.”
Five minutes later, Lukas was trailing across the sand belt toward the forest, walking with the old hominid at the head of the column.
Alsdorf watched the procession silently for a while, then said, “Did he take a machine pistol?”
Chirico began to examine the curious pattern on his bowl. “He didn’t take anything, Kurt. At least, I don’t think so.”
“He must have the death wish,” said Alsdorf genially. He turned to Duluth. “How about improving your muscle tone, Joe? There’s a lot of gear to be stowed in the tractor.”
The village proved to be a couple of dozen two-room huts with adobe walls and thatches woven of thin branches and fronds. It stood in a small clearing by a stream in the forest, about three kilometers from the Henri Poincare.
In his own way, Lukas had previously tended to romanticize the “noble savage.” In discussions with Alsdorf throughout the long star voyage, he had based his arguments relating to the decadence of civilization on the assumption that primitive man had in him some heroic element—a crude innocence, perhaps—that had slowly been depraved by the development of synthetic power. By synthetic power, he meant the output of all machinery whose energy did not derive directly from man himself. Because terrestrial humanity no longer lived by the sweat of its brow, but learned to rely upon steam, petroleum, atomic energy, and solar power to take care of the donkey work, Lukas had felt that some vital, indefinable force had been irrevocably lost. Secretly Lukas despised himself as the product of a machine culture. Secretly he despised the fascination space travel had for him, because it was the ultimate in reliance upon machines. As a child he had read stories, half-legend, half-fact, of the extinct races— the North American Indians, the Eskimos, the Polynesians. Their starkly primitive existence had enthralled him. Their eventual extinction—the work of modem man—had dealt a sharp blow to his early and conventional faith in the benefits of science. Ever since, he had regarded his own aptitude and affinity for machines with a mixture of guilt and hate. And though he turned out to be a first-class pilot, he both distrusted his skill and was ashamed of it. He was still unconsciously yearning for the simple life.
The village to which the hominids led him came as a small shock. It was squalid and it stank. He knew then that he had expected something better.
The women as well as the men were entirely naked. Their slack bellies, their pendulous breasts sagged wearily as they struggled with pitchers of water from the stream or returned from the morning’s forage with a basket of fruit and a couple of rickety children dancing at their heels. The overwhelming atmosphere was one of lassitude, almost of exhaustion.
He took in the scene with a feeling that perhaps Alsdorf was right, after all. Perhaps Fomalhaut Three would benefit by the commercially “civilizing” ventures of Trans-Solar Chemicals, even if all the hominids were reduced to the status of coolies. At least Trans-Solar would give them medical aid and clean living conditions, and rectify any deficiency of vitamins.
The old hominid who had presented the platinum bowls and then offered his pathetic hospitality was called Masumo. He led Lukas into one of the adobe huts and invited him to squat on the sanded floor. Presently they were served with bowls of vegetable milk and sliced yams by an old crone. Lukas stared at the refreshment distastefully, but decided to risk it. After all, he supposed it was possible even for an apelike creature in a jungle slum to feel insulted.
Surprisingly, Masumo’s main interest lay in getting Lukas to talk—not the hominid tongue, but his own language. By a complicated amalgam of signs, gestures, and sounds, he indicated his wish for Lukas to talk of his own world, of cities and spaceways. It was some time before the general idea became apparent, and Lukas obliged only with reluctance, feeling that it was going to be like talking to a blank wall.
But after a while he began to warm up to his subject. He almost forgot Masumo’s presence in the queer sensation that he was talking something out of himself. He described the vast metropolitan culture that had developed on Earth, the slow convergence of East and West, the origin of the Federated World Government after the first and last atomic war, the exploration of the solar planets, and the race for the stars.
And as he talked, an obscure pattern seemed to be taking shape at the back of his mind.
It was nearly sunset by the time Lukas got back to the ship. Duluth was waiting for him, but the others were still out with the tractor.
“Hello, Mike. Been making whoopee with the village maidens? How did it go?”
Lukas told him.
The engineer stared at him incredulously. “Boy, one of us has sunstroke, and I’m feeling all right. You say you spent most of the time talking English?”
“That’s what the old boy wanted.” He scratched his head and frowned slightly. “Somehow, it seemed perfectly natural once I got started. You should see that village, Joe. It’s an education. ... Well, what have you been doing with yourself?”
Duluth grinned. “I played truant. Things were so damn quiet around here, I fixed up the monowheel and went for a run. Covered about a hundred kilometers, I guess.”
“See anything of Kurt and Tony?”
“Nope. I went north. Funny thing, Mike, you’d think there’d be a hell of a lot of wild life about, wouldn’t you?”
“So?”
“So there just isn’t, that's all. When I’d done about fifteen kilometers, I got fed up with the sand and went for a spin in the forest. Saw a few birds, squirrels, and something that looked like a rabbit. But no big game. What do you make of that?”
“Nothing. What should I make of it?”
“I don’t know. It just seems mighty peculiar. Come to think of it, this whole damn setup is mighty peculiar. . . . Too stinking quiet.”
Lukas suddenly remembered the peculiar feeling he had when Masumo presented him with the platinum bowl that morning. He was about to mention it to Duluth, but was distracted by a flashing pencil beam of light over toward the forest line. “Here they come,” said Lukas. “Kurt has the headlights on.”
A few minutes later, Alsdorf and Chirico clambered up to the mess deck. The geophysicist’s eyes were gleaming with satisfaction.
“Palladium and platinum,” he said, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice. “Concentrated alluvial deposits! You can fill your pocket with nuggets without taking a dozen steps. Here, take a look at these.” He passed a few small, irregular blackish stones for inspection.
“Looks to me like small slag,” said Duluth, unimpressed.
“They’re covered with iron oxide,” explained Alsdorf impatiently. “There is more platinum to the square kilometer here than the entire output of the solar planets! We have made history. This thing is going to be so big—”
“I’ll bet that fills the hominids with joy,” said Lukas dryly.
Alsdorf laughed. “We found a few of their crude artifacts lying around. Fiber shovels and picks. Imagine it, they have platinum and palladium, but they don’t have iron.” His laughter was uproarious.
Chirico stared at Lukas intently. “You look down in the mouth, Mike. Is something wrong?”
“Negative,” said Lukas with a faint smile.
Alsdorf collected his precious nuggets and put them back into his pocket. “How did the party go, Mike? Did they try to poison you?”
“Didn’t need to. That village of theirs is one unholy stinkpot.”
The German shrugged. “What did you expect? In a couple of years there won’t be any village. We will introduce the hominids to the concept of organized effort. They don’t know it yet, but they’re going to build a spaceport.”
Lukas ga
ve a wry grin. “You think they’ll be enthusiastic?”
“We’ll convert them.” Alsdorf was full of confidence, full of the civilized man’s self-assurance, secure in the knowledge that—as so often before—machines and psychological warfare would make the domination of a tribe of savages no problem at all.
The following morning, after an early meal, Alsdorf and Chirico set out in the tractor to continue their survey. Duluth stayed in the ship, doing a few small maintenance jobs. But by midday he had finished, and suggested that he and Lukas go for a spin in the monowheel.
“Not for me, Joe,” said Lukas, staring moodily through a transparent panel on the navigation deck. “Among other things, I’m going to bring the log up to date. Haven’t had time for it so far.”
“Suit yourself,” said Duluth. “I’m going to shoot me a squirrel if I can’t find anything bigger. . . . Maybe I’ll take a look at shantytown on the way back.”
He went down the companion ladder. Presently Lukas saw the monowheel hurtling along at high speed over the smooth sand belt. He watched till it became a small speck, then turned to the chart table and reached for the star log. He began to make concise entries in a neat, steady handwriting.
He had been working for about twenty minutes when a voice said softly in his ear: “Masumo would speak with Lukas of the sky-machine."
Lukas jumped as if he’d been stung. He spun around, but there was no one else on deck. Then he looked through the observation panel and saw down below a small, naked figure in the distance. It was coming toward the Henri Poincare. Puzzled, Lukas went down to meet it.
“Did you talk to me while I was in the sky-machine?” he asked abruptly.
But Masumo only smiled, raised his leathery arm in greeting, and offered the traditional salutation in his own language. Lukas returned it, and together they walked back to the ship.
Oddly enough, Lukas had already forgotten about the voice, and did not remember it until much later. Suddenly he wanted to show Masumo the interior of the ship, wanted to see his reaction to the wonders of terrestrial science.
He gestured toward the ladder. The hominid smiled and scrambled up it with incredible speed. Lukas followed and began the conducted tour.
If he expected a violent reaction—a display of superstition, dread, or near-worship—he was disappointed. Masumo looked at volatility tubes, pile drives, Kirchhausen units, refrigerators, contour berths, electronic cookers, and motion picture projectors with the same bland smile. It was as if, thought Lukas, the old hominid was on guard against something—too much on guard to remember that he ought to be suitably astounded.
Only once did Masumo forget himself. They were on the navigation deck, and Lukas had just shown him the manual telescope, pointing it toward the forest line and letting him look through. But even the glass that made things magically near did not shake Masumo. He treated it with that same unwavering smile.
Baffled, Lukas turned his attention to the small transceiver, intending to make radio contact with the tractor and see if Masumo would react to voices that he would recognize. He tried five hundred kilocycles, the agreed frequency, and called repeatedly. But as there was no answer, he concluded that Alsdorf and Chirico were out working on foot. As Lukas got up from the radio bench, he suddenly saw Masumo staring with poorly repressed excitement at a star chart. He stood still and watched for a moment, noting the quick, alert interest and the way Masumo swiftly moved his skinny finger from one constellation to another.
Then, aware that Lukas was staring at him, Masumo seemed to withdraw once more into his role of ignorant savage. The bland smile settled over his face like a mask.
“Masumo, you know what those are, don’t you?” demanded Lukas, pointing to the star charts.
But the hominid affected not to understand, and said in his own tongue, “Talk to me, man of the sky. Talk to me of your voyage across the ocean of many suns.”
Certain now that Masumo was practicing some elaborate deception, Lukas wanted to shake the truth out of him. Instead, he found himself obeying the old hominid with a strange sense of emotional submission—as if his willpower had been paralyzed.
Masumo left the Henri Poincare a little before sunset—long enough to give him a sufficient light to get back to the village. A few minutes after the hominid had gone, Lukas managed to rouse himself from a mental and emotional stupor. He had the sensation of awakening from some peculiar dream. He lit a cigarette, poured himself a stiff drink, and tried to consider the events of the afternoon calmly.
He was still puzzling the situation out when Duluth returned from his trip in the monowheel. The engineer found Lukas on the mess deck, looking—as Duluth remarked—like a pile of ectoplasm left over from a phony seance.
“What’s eating you, Mike? Somebody been making nasty faces through the window?”
Lukas pulled himself together and gave a laconic account of Masumo’s visit. Duluth pursed his lips and let out a long, low whistle.
“I had a feeling those simple-minded characters were too good to be true,” he said slowly. “I got something else for us to think about as well. In case you haven’t noticed it, they never talk to each other. They make plenty of gibberish for our benefit, but they don’t use it among themselves. I looked in at shantytown to say hello on my way back this afternoon. I was there a couple of hours, maybe. There was plenty of noise, all right—and all of it directed at me. ... I thought there was something mighty fishy, but it didn’t dawn on me what it was until I was heading back to the ship.”
Lukas sat up suddenly. “Joe, you’ve hit it! These creatures have been taking us—for a ride. They’re natural telepaths.”
Duluth shrugged. “If they’re so goddam clever, why do they look like a gorilla’s next of kin? Why do they live the way they do?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out.”
At that moment they heard sounds down below indicating that Alsdorf and Chirico had returned with the tractor. Duluth went down to meet them. A few moments later, Alsdorf hurried up the companion ladder. There was a curious, strained look on his face.
“Mike, what is your opinion of witchcraft?” he asked abruptly.
Lukas raised his eyebrows. “I haven’t any. You’d better tell me the worst.”
The German slumped onto a bench. His gaze fell on the newly opened bottle of whiskey. He reached for it and took a deep draught—straight from the bottle. Lukas was intrigued. This was the first time he had ever seen Alsdorf lose his smooth sangfroid.
“Palladium and platinum deposits,” said Alsdorf, coughing a little. “They’ve completely disappeared.”
“What!”
The geophysicist nodded emphatically. “Not a trace. They might never have existed. Nothing disturbed, no sign of interference. But not a trace of nuggets, ore, or any damn thing. . . . Acres and acres of it, Mike, and the whole lot wiped clean out of existence.” The shock to his scientific soul was such that he seemed about to burst into tears.
Lukas stared at him. “But the thing is impossible. You’re sure—”
Alsdorf slammed the bottle down. “Don’t ask me if I’m sure it’s the right place. Tony and I nearly went crazy making sure. How could it happen, Mike? It’s impossible!”
“It was impossible, you mean.” Lukas stood up. “It looks as if this is our big day, doesn’t it?” He gazed through the observation panel at the darkening sky over the forest line and began to tell Alsdorf about Masumo’s visit.
By the time he had finished, the geophysicist had regained control of himself. “Tonight,” he said somberly, “we will make our plans. Tomorrow we will take the tractor and pay these hominids a visit—with machine pistols, grenades, and gas bombs.” He laughed mirthlessly. “The experiment will be conducted under scientific conditions. We will see if they are—vulnerable.”
“Are you proposing to blast them to glory?” demanded Lukas quietly. “Because if so, you can think again. This is their planet, not ours.”
Alsdorf gave h
im a sour grin. “Still the adolescent idealist, Mike. . . . Why don’t you grow up?”
“Don’t worry, I am,” retorted Lukas. “Meanwhile, don’t think I’m going to let you intimidate a bunch of defenseless savages.”
“I get the impression that they are not so defenseless or so ignorant as we thought,” remarked Alsdorf pleasantly. “And while I have no intention of being dramatic, I’m damn well going to find out what’s happened to our platinum.”
“Our platinum?” Lukas stared at him.
“Ours by right of conquest,” amended Alsdorf dryly. “We have the superior culture, the superior tools, and the superior weapons.”
Lukas suddenly laughed. “But we aren’t telepaths, and we can’t do vanishing tricks with large platinum deposits. Don’t get overconfident, Kurt.”
Chirico came up the companion ladder, preceded by a loud blast of invective.
“Those lousy stinking aboriginals! Those sons of a venereal ape! Hi, Mike. I hear you’ve been having fun, too. What beats me is how they could possibly—”
Duluth, who had followed him, said calmly, “I have a theory.” The three men turned and stared at him.
Duluth helped himself to a cigarette and lit it. “Yeah,” he said with an air of profundity, “they do it with mirrors.”
After the evening meal a formal conference was held on the navigation deck. Alsdorf opened it by proposing to make a lightning swoop on the village to capture Masumo, with the logical aim of holding him as a hostage and finding out what he knew. Lukas, as captain of the ship, and therefore the person responsible for the safety of the expedition, promptly vetoed the proposal.
“Are you suggesting, Mike, that we do nothing, that we just hang around waiting to see what happens next?” Alsdorf was scathing.
“Keep your shirt on. Leaving aside the ethics of the thing, I’m merely pointing out that we can’t afford to start anything unless we’re sure we can finish it. If Masumo is a telepath, we’d be fools to have him in the ship. It’s possible he would be able to report back on every move we made.”
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