Chief Moreri 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 Moreri.
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 fingers 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 Durellans, 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 Moreri. 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?”
“Moreri 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 Moreri 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.
Moreri, 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 headfirst 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 h
ypnotize 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.”
TRAP
Samish, I am in need of assistance. The situation is potentially dangerous, so come at once.
It shows how right you were, Samish, old friend. I should never have trusted a Terran. They are a sly, ignorant, irresponsible race, just as you have always pointed out.
Nor are they as stupid as they seem. I am beginning to believe that the slenderness of the tentacle is not the only criterion of intelligence.
What a sorry mess, Samish! And the plan seemed so foolproof...
Ed Dailey saw a gleam of metal outside his cabin door, but he was still too sleepy to investigate. He had awakened shortly after daybreak and tiptoed outside for a glimpse at the weather. It was unpromising. There had been a heavy rain during the night and water dripped from every leaf and branch of the surrounding forest. His station wagon had a drowned look and the dirt road leading up the mountainside was a foot thick in mud.
His friend Thurston came to the door in pajamas, his round face flushed with sleep and Buddha-like in its placidity.
“It always rains on the first day of a vacation,” Thurston stated. “Rule of nature.”
“Might be a good day for trout,” Dailey said.
“It might. But it is a better day for building a roaring fire in the fireplace and drinking hot buttered rum.”
For eleven years, they had been taking a short autumn vacation together, but for different reasons.
Dailey had a romantic love for equipment. The clerks in New York’s fancier sports shops hung expensive parkas on his high, stooped shoulders, parkas such as one would wear on the trail of the Abominable Snowman in the fastnesses of Tibet. They sold him ingenious little stoves that would burn through a hurricane and wickedly curved knives of the best Swedish steel.
Dailey loved to feel a lean canteen against his side and a blued- steel rifle over his shoulder. But the canteen usually contained rum and the rifle was used against nothing deadlier than tin cans. For in spite of his dreams, Dailey was a friendly man, with no malice toward bird or beast.
His friend Thurston was overweight and short of wind, and burdened himself only with the lightest of fly rods and the smallest of shotguns. By the second week, he usually managed to steer the hunt to Lake Placid, to the cocktail lounges that were his true environment. There, with an incredible knowledge of spoor and lair, he placidly hunted the pretty vacationing girls instead of the brown bear, the black bear, or the mountain deer.
This mild exercise was more than adequate for two soft and successful businessmen on the wrong side of forty, and they returned to the city tanned and refreshed, with a new lease on life and a renewed tolerance for their wives.
“Rum it is,” Dailey said. “What’s that?” He had noticed the gleam of metal near the cabin.
Thurston walked over and poked the object with his foot “Odd- looking thing.”
Dailey parted the grass and saw an open framework box about four feet square, constructed of metal strips, and hinged on top. Written boldly on one of the strips was the single word TRAP.
“Where did you buy that?” Thurston asked.
“I didn’t.” Dailey found a plastic tag attached to one of the metal strips. He pulled it loose and read: “Dear Friend, this is a new and revolutionary design in a TRAP. To introduce the TRAP to the general public, we are giving you this model absolutely free! You will find it a unique and valuable device for the capture of small game, provided you follow precisely the directions on the other side. Good luck and good hunting!”
“If this isn’t the strangest thing,” Dailey said. “Do you suppose it was left during the night?”
“Who cares?” Thurston shrugged. “My stomach is rumbling. Let’s make breakfast.”
“Aren’t you interested in this?”
“Not particularly. It’s just another gadget. You’ve got a hundred like it. That bear trap from Abercrombie and Fitch. The jaguar horn from Battler’s. The crocodile lure from—”
“I’ve never seen a trap like this,” Dailey mused. “Pretty clever advertising, just to leave it here.”
“They’ll bill you for it eventually,” Thurston said cynically. “I’m going to make breakfast. You’ll wash the dishes.”
He went inside while Dailey turned the tag over and read the other side.
“Take the TRAP to a clearing and anchor it to any convenient TREE with the attached chain. Press Button One on the base. This primes the TRAP. Wait five seconds and press Button Two. This activates the TRAP. Nothing more is required until a CAPTURE has been effected. Then press Button Three to deactivate and open the TRAP, and remove the PREY.
“Warning! Keep the TRAP closed at all times except when removing the PREY. No opening is required for the PREY’S ingress, since the TRAP works on the principle of Osmotic Section and inducts the PREY directly into the TRAP.”
“What won’t they think of next?” Dailey said admiringly.
“Breakfast is ready,” Thurston called.
“First help me set the trap.”
Thurston, dressed now in Bermuda shorts and a loud sport shirt, came out and peered at the trap dubiously. “Do you really think we should fool with it?”
“Of course. Maybe we can catch a fox.”
“What on Earth would we do with a fox?” Thurston demanded.
“Turn it loose,” Dailey said. “The fun is in the catching. Here, help me lift it.”
The trap was surprisingly heavy. Together they dragged it fifty yards from the cabin and tied the chain to a young pine tree. Dailey pushed the first button and the trap glowed faintly. Thurston backed away anxiously.
After five seconds, Dailey pressed the second button.
The forest dripped and squirrels chattered in the treetops and the long grass rustled faintly. The trap lay quietly beside the tree, its open metal framework glowing faintly.
“Come in,” Thurston said. “The eggs are undoubtedly cold.”
Dailey followed him back to the cabin, glancing over his shoulder at the trap. It lay in the forest, silent and waiting.
Samish, where are you? My need is becoming increasingly urgent. Unbelievable as it will sound, my little planetoid is being pulled apart before my very eyes! You are my oldest friend, Samish, the companion of my youth, the best man at my mating, and a friend of Fregl as well. I’m counting on you. Don’t delay too long.
I have already beamed you the beginning of my story. The Terrans accepted my trap as a trap, nothing more. And they began to use it at once, with no thought to the possible consequences. I had counted on this. The fantastic curiosity of the Terran species is well known.
During this period, my wife was crawling gaily around the planetoid, redecorating our hutch and enjoying the change from city life. Everything was going well....
During breakfast, Thurston explained in pedantic detail why a trap could not function unless it had an opening to admit the prey. Dail
ey smiled and spoke of osmotic section. Thurston insisted that there was no such thing. When the dishes were washed and dried, they walked over the wet, springy grass to the trap.
“Look!” Dailey shouted.
Something was in the trap, something about the size of a rabbit, but colored a bright green. Its eyes were extended on stalks and it clicked lobster-like claws at them.
“No more rum before breakfast,” Thurston said. “Starting tomorrow. Hand me the canteen.”
Dailey gave it to him and Thurston poured down a generous double shot. Then he looked at the trapped creature again and went, “Brr! “
“I think it’s a new species,” Dailey said.
“New species of nightmare. Can’t we just go to Lake Placid and forget about it?”
“No, of course not. I’ve never seen anything like this in my zoology books. It could be completely unknown to science. What will we keep it in?”
“Keep it in?”
“Well, certainly. It can’t stay in the trap. We’ll have to build a cage and then find out what it eats.”
Thurston’s face lost some of its habitual serenity. “Now look here, Ed. I’m not sharing my vacation with anything like that. It’s probably poisonous. I’m sure it has dirty habits.” He took a deep breath and continued. “There’s something unnatural about that trap. It’s—inhuman!”
Dailey grinned. “I’m sure they said that about Ford’s first car and Edison’s incandescent lamp. This trap is just another example of American progress and know-how.”
“I’m all for progress,” Thurston stated firmly, “but in other directions. Can’t we just—”
He looked at his friend’s face and stopped talking. Dailey had an expression that Cortez might have worn as he approached the summit of a peak in Darien.
“Yes,” Dailey said after a while. “I think so.”
“What?”
“Tell you later. First let’s build a cage and set the trap again.”
Thurston groaned, but followed him.
Why haven’t you come yet, Samish? Don’t you appreciate the seriousness of my situation? Haven’t I made it clear how much depends upon you? Think of your old friend! Think of the lustrous- skinned Fregl, for whose sake I got into this mess. Communicate with me, at least.
Pilgrimage to Earth Page 3