News From Elsewhere (7 page)

Chirico laughed. “For a moment I thought he was the welcome committee.”

Lukas said, “I could use a drink before we go outside. If you need me, I’ll be on the mess deck.” He went down the companion ladder.

Ten minutes later, Alsdorf and Chirico joined him. They sat around the table, sipping hot coffee, enjoying the 
feel of an almost normal gravity pull, and discussing plans for tackling the survey block. Alsdorf, as the senior representative of Trans-Solar Chemicals, was busy making out duty lists.

Suddenly there was a commotion on the lower deck. Then the sound of heavy metallic boots on the main ladder. The three men jumped up and went to the hatch. They met Duluth on his way up. He was wearing a pressure suit. As soon as he saw them, he pressed the emergency release and whipped off his headpiece.

“Apes,” he panted. “Bloody big ones!”

“Where?” snapped Alsdorf.

“Half a kilometer away. There’s a troop of them—fifteen, maybe twenty—heading toward us from the forest.”

Chirico was almost bouncing with excitement. “This gets better and better. It looks like we really found something this time.”

The three of them hurried into pressure suits, while Duluth picked up a couple of machine pistols to deal with any misunderstandings that might arise. Then they went down to the airlock. By the time they had got through the entry-port and climbed down the landing ladder, the approaching troop was less than a hundred meters away.

Duluth and Alsdorf held the machine pistols firmly at their hips. “Ain’t this joyful?” remarked Duluth over his personal radio. “Hey, they got bundles with ’em. What’s the betting they’re going to pelt us with kingsize coconuts?”

“Anthropoids!” exclaimed Chirico incredulously. “By all that’s holy, we’ve found anthropoids on the first touchdown. . . . No, by heaven, they’re not anthropoids—they’re hominids! Look at the size of those heads!”

Lukas was staring through his visor intently. His eyes had not yet adjusted to the strange light of Fomalhaut Three, but as the troop came closer, moving at a queer half-trot, he saw that their limbs were pale and hairless while their faces were half-hidden under dark, shaggy manes.

“The major difference between us and them,” he said quietly, “is a haircut.”

“Plus another small detail,” said Alsdorf with some complacency. “We happen to be civilized.”

Lukas gave a dry laugh. “That’s our story. We might as well stick to it.”

Fifteen paces away, the troop fanned out into a semicircle and came to a halt. At a signal from one in the center, they placed their burdens down on the sand and waited expectantly. Men and hominids gazed at each other. Both groups seemed reluctant to make the first move.

Lukas and his companions saw that the inhabitants of Fomalhaut Three were almost uniformly tall—each of them about two inches higher than Alsdorf, who was the tallest of the terrenes. They were massive-chested creatures with hunched shoulders and long, sinewy arms. Their toes splayed uneasily, as if they were more accustomed to gripping branches than supporting those tough, wiry bodies in even balance. Their faces—what could be seen of them under the matting of coarse hair—were almost Neanderthal, with broad, flared nostrils, thick lips, receding forehead, and an occasional glimpse of dark eyes under bushy brows.

Presently one of them, whose hair was lighter and thinner than the rest, stepped out from the group and raised his right arm forward, level with the shoulder, as if in greeting. He began to work his lips.

Encased in their pressure suits, the terrenes could hear no sound. But Lukas suddenly decided that it was worth risking a few alien bugs to hear what Neanderthal Man, Fomalhaut Three version, had to say. He took off his headpiece.

“
Czanyas”
said the hominid, touching his own chest. Then, pointing at the terrenes, he added:
“Olye ma nye kran czanyas.”

Lukas took a couple of steps forward and repeated the word
czanyas
experimentally with his finger pointing at the hominid.

The whole troop made a rumbling noise in their throats, and lips curved in broad grins. Encouraged, Lukas thumped his own chest:
“Olye ma nye kran czanyas?”
He displayed his bewilderment with exaggerated gestures.

The old hominid pointed to the sky:
“Olye!”
Then he pointed to the ship: “
Ma nye kran!”
Then he pointed to Lukas, Alsdorf, Duluth, and Chirico in turn: “
Czanyas
. . . .
Olye ma nye kran czanyas”

Duluth had taken his headpiece off. “What does the old bird say, Mike?”

“In case we didn’t notice it,” said Lukas with a grin, “he’s pointing out the difference between us and them—I think. They are men, and we are men of the ship of the sky, or something like that.”

The old hominid turned and made a small hand signal to his own kind. One at a time, they came forward and laid their presents at the feet of the terrenes. Then they returned to the semicircle and squatted. Presently each of the terrenes had at his feet a pile of assorted fruits of varying shapes, sizes, and colors. Chirico, unable to restrain his interest, took off his headpiece and sat down to examine his pile. He began to sort out the local equivalents of melon, grapes, oranges, nuts, and even maize.

Only Alsdorf remained unrelaxed, still wearing his headpiece, still covering the hominids with his machine pistol.

Lukas examined his own pile of fruit, then with much gesture and patient repetition, managed to make the hominids understand that he and his companions were grateful. Finally he turned to Duluth. “Better make this mutual. What can we give ’em, Joe?”

Duluth grinned. “How about a machine pistol, or a gas bomb?”

But Lukas wasn’t in the mood for humor. “They’ll be getting the benefits of civilization soon enough. . . . Better break out a few plastic bowls. Jump to it!”

“Aye-aye, Skipper. Keep your shirt on.” Duluth went back into the ship, and emerged a few minutes later with an armful of utensils, which he presented to the hominids, gravely wishing each one in turn a Merry Christmas.

For the next hour or so, Lukas and Chirico concentrated on establishing the meaning of various words. Even Alsdorf became sufficiently interested to take off his head-piece and join in. They discovered that
solyenas
was food; 
czanyas solyenas ra
meant man eats food. They learned that
koshevo
was the word for water,
ilshevo
the word for land, and
lashevo
the word for air. From this, they finally elucidated that
olye
was not the sky but the sun.

And while these language concepts were being established, the sun sank slowly down the yellowish sky until it hung just over the forest line. The hominids then indicated 
that they wished to go back to the forest, but would return again “when the sun swam out of the ocean.”

“
Mahrata
said the old, grizzled leader, raising his arm.
“Olye kalengo, czanyas kalengo. Olye rin koshevo, da czanyas va”

“Me too,” grinned Duluth. “What’s he saying, Mike?” “He says: ‘Farewell. Sun sleeps, men sleep. Sun swims from water, then men return.’ ”

The four terrenes watched the troop of hominids make their way back across the sand belt to the now darkening forest line. Then they went back into the ship, taking most of the fruit with them and dumping it in the laboratory for Chirico’s further attention.

The brief but tremendous stress of touch-down, followed by the equally tremendous discovery that Fomal-haut Three was inhabited by manlike beings, had almost drained them of emotional and intellectual energy. They were tired and, to their surprise, ravenously hungry.

However, there was still some daylight left, and Alsdorf suggested that they rig up the cargo derrick and lower the caterpillar tractor to the ground in readiness for the first survey trip. But by the time the derrick was ready to take the tractor, it was too dark to see what they were doing. Duluth went up to the navigation deck and swung out three searchlights, focusing them on the ground immediately below the derrick. For another ten or fifteen minutes the men worked in silence, lugging the tractor out of the bowels of the ship and hooking it up to the derrick with hiduminium hawsers. At last they lowered away, and had the satisfaction of knowing that the first survey party could push off as soon as the sun rose.

“By the Lord Harry, I’m dead on my feet,” panted Duluth as he stared down at the tractor in the pale, circular glare of the arc lights.

Chirico wiped the sweat from his forehead. “Bet I could eat one of our tame hominids raw.”

“I have a suggestion,” said Lukas. “Iced beer and chicken. Anybody with me?”

There was a minor stampede to the mess deck. Throughout a long, luxurious meal, discussion centered mainly upon the hominids and the possibility of Fomalhaut Three containing more highly developed cultures. Of the four of them, Alsdorf was the least interested 
in what he referred to as “the organic curiosities of the planet.” Being one of the star geophysicists of Trans-Solar Chemicals, his preoccupation was solely with the mineral content of the planet, how best it could be exploited and the resulting products transported to the Solar System.

“Do not forget,” he said dryly, “that we are here to look for rare metals, not to investigate the indigenous life forms. The hominids are interesting, but we must not let them sidetrack us. . . . On the other hand, if there are possibilities of large-scale mining, they may provide a convenient labor force. Otherwise—”

Lukas slammed his beer mug down. “Kurt, there are times when you make me sick. These poor bastards have a right to their own existence. I’m damned if I’d see them turned into a bunch of coolies so that Trans-Solar can double their dividends. Don’t you have any conscience?”

Alsdorf grinned. “My duty toward my neighbor,” he said slyly, “is surely my duty toward my fellow human beings. If the situation demanded it, I would not hesitate to exploit these creatures for the benefit of humanity. . . . We should, of course, civilize them in the process.”

“Bluebells to both of you,” drawled Duluth with an inane grin. “Quit arguin’ about what ain’t happenin’, and for Chris sake have another beer. ... I wonder if those long-haired boys got any idea how to make wallop? Thash the way to shivilishe ’em—teash ’em to make corn brandy and shay shir to the nishe zhentlemen from shpace.”

Next morning at dawn, the hominids returned, bringing with them more presents—only this time the presents were such as to make Alsdorf s eyes practically pop out of his head.

Nobody was awake when they arrived, so they squatted patiently outside the
Henri Poincare,
nursing their presents and chanting a kind of tuneless psalm, either to the ship or its occupants.

Lukas was the first to go down to them. He saw that their presents consisted of small whitish metal drinking bowls, crudely ornamented, and it occurred to him that these were offered in exchange for the colored plastic bowls that had been presented to the hominids the day before.

The old one who had previously done the talking again 
stepped out and opened the ceremony.

“
Mahratanua
he said.
“Olye rin a koshevo, e czanyas va kala mu omeso ”
He touched the bowl he was holding to the center of his forehead, then held it out to Lukas.

Lukas had a peculiar feeling. For one odd moment, he had the conviction that the hominids were staging an elaborate joke—the sort of joke that sophisticated adults might rig for the benefit of credulous children. Then he met the innocent gaze of the old hominid, and the feeling passed.

He took the bowl, and was still busy expressing his thanks in mime and language when Alsdorf came down. The geophysicist was immediately presented with a bowl himself. With a brief gesture and a patronizing smile for the old one, he suddenly forgot everything and began to examine the bowl intently. He took a small knife from his pocket and scratched the surface. Then he took out a lens and peered at the scratch through it. Uttering a sharp exclamation, he hurried back into the ship. Five minutes later he returned, pale and trembling.

“Mike, do you know what this thing is made of?” He stared at the bowl in his hand with an expression of sheer disbelief.

“Haven’t a clue,” said Lukas calmly. “You tell me.”

“Platinum,” croaked Alsdorf. “Solid platinum! We’ve just been presented with a small fortune.”

Though it was obviously impossible for the hominids to understand what Alsdorf was saying, they grinned broadly, as if they were delighted with his excitement—or as if their subtle private joke was a big success.

While Alsdorf was assuring himself that the bowl Lukas held was also made of platinum, Duluth and Chirico appeared. They, too, went through the presentation ceremony.

“Well, I’ll be sugared,” said Duluth, clutching his bowl tightly. “Pure platinum, by Hades! Now suppose we fix up a little trading post. . . . Plastics for platinum, and fair exchange is no robbery. We wouldn’t have to stay in business long. . . . You know, I always planned on buying a little estate in the South of France when I get too old for space travel. Now, I’ll just buy me the South of France.”