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  2

  Our spectral data on the planet had shown the atmosphere to be breathable, but it was all the same a relief when Dark cracked the top hatch and we sniffed the air that flooded in—tangy, a little high in oxygen, but quite compatible to our systems and pleasant after Wanderer's sterile, controlled atmosphere. We wouldn't have to worry about filters. Some planets which are technically hospitable to human life have really filthy air—it will keep you going, but you get into the habit of breathing shallowly and find it hard to respect the locals, who seem happy with the stuff.

  An atmosphere of this sort strongly implied drinkable water. As for food, we would have to trust to luck after our store of concentrates ran out, though Explorer experience shows that a place where humans can breathe usually provides something they can eat. In any case, on joining the Service, we had all been surgically modified with a variety of implants so as to amplify the normal range of what we could safely and profitably eat—even wood in an emergency. But all of us made sure to load our coveralls with as many packets of concentrate as we could.

  For me the most vital item of baggage was the Communicator, which after a short period of scanning any alien speech pattern, whether oral, gestural, or a combination, can give a skilled Recorder a reasonably good command of the language and refine it to perfection in a little longer. My own contribution to the Communicator is one of which I am particularly proud: the mode controls. When a Recorder is sure of the general sense of a sequence of talk—that fear, inquiry, anger or whatever is being conveyed—he presses the proper mode stud, and the Communicator's internal computer, by restricting itself to expressions appropriate to that sense, is enabled to shorten the time necessary to arrive at an accurate and relevant vocabulary. All this assumes that you can find a native who isn't too frightened to sit down and talk for a while; nontechnological beings—Level Three and below—often get the impression that the Communicator is absorbing some of their vital essence, so the first topics you get a good grasp of are apprehension and distaste rather than anything useful.

  Each Explorer has his stresses, of course, but I have always felt that the Recorder, though considered the least important crew member in Survey work, has to endure more than most, in effect having to turn himself into a native, learning to think as well as talk as they do. Many of us are really finished for Exploration after no more than a dozen trips; it is time to leave the Service when you find yourself less and less able to be sure who you are after having been so many other people. And the occasional, though rare, encounter with a non-humanoid intelligent race hastens the process. One Recorder I knew did a comparatively short tour on a planet inhabited by beings who communicated by graceful waves of a fringe of tentacles accompanied by a buzzing noise which served to indicate emotion, emphasis and, where relevant, social standing. Pleasant fellows when you got to know them, he insisted, but he was never very easy to talk to after that, being unable to suppress a tendency to drone and make his fingers writhe.

  Once I had made sure of the Communicator, its power pack and its accessory kit, I stored up on food concentrate; then, as ready as I could be, I looked at the others.

  Dark had his Captain's personal tool kit, containing medical supplies and instruments and gadgets useful for small repairs and adjustments. He was also in charge of the slim cylinder containing the equipment we preferred not to think of—the stasis devices. That is a Captain's responsibility, a fact for which all other Explorers are thankful.

  Ari was cradling his Metahistorical microtapes, which contained analyses of the pasts and presents and futures of any number of worlds and solar systems, and the hand viewer he used to scan them. I knew that, as our senior member, he had with him also a supply of the age/stress counter-treatments the Service provided for the elderly.

  Valmis carried nothing except food concentrates—Integrators' equipment is all in their minds (and in the minds and equipment of the Metahistorians and Recorders, whom they shamelessly exploit whenever they need something concrete to weave into their Patterns!). The one exception was his so-called Displacer, and that appeared to have blown itself up when he tried it. Well, if the rest of us ran short, Valmis could be considered as a walking supply of concentrates.

  Dark had the only clear view of our surroundings, the pilot's seat being higher than the rest of the cabin, as well as forward; the other viewports were covered by water most of the time, with an occasional glimpse of the sky and foam as a wave trough passed. He leaned down and said, "Visitors—close to."

  He clambered amidships, pushed the top hatch fully open, and climbed out. We followed and gingerly balanced ouselves on Wanderer's hull as it pitched in the waves.

  Dark looked gloomily at the approaching native craft. "At least it's not using oars." he said.

  It seemed to me that an oar-powered vessel would have had to be better designed than the one approaching us. Its makers had built it to float and to carry a propulsion plant, but apparently had not thought much further than that.

  "Hydrocarbon-fueled," Dark said—unnecessarily, as the wind brought a cloud of black smoke hurrying ahead of the ship to engulf us momentarily, and the stink was unmistakable.

  A shout came from the deck of the ungainly craft as it neared us; the figures lining it were reasonably humanoid in appearance, though on the short, squat side, as far as I could make out.

  Very soon it was alongside, carrying its own stench—which I hoped reflected bad housekeeping rather than the inherent essence of the natives—and lines snaked down to us from the deck, now about a body length above our heads. Dark climbed up briskly, hand over hand, then leaned over the railing to give a boost to Ari, physically always the least adept member of the crew. Valmis went up next and I followed.

  I could have wished for a more dramatic first encounter between two intelligent races than this. We usually try to make it an impressive business, with careful preparation and ceremony, conveying clearly but tactfully that the Explorer team is both powerful and well-intentioned. A vital part of this is preliminary long-range work by the Recorder before actual contact, so that the first words spoken by the Explorers are in the native tongue, a tactic which has a powerful psychological effect.

  As it was, there seemed no point in my saying anything; we stood in two groups, Explorers and natives, eyeing each other for a moment—my own concern being suddenly with the queasiness occasioned by the ship's motion, even more pronounced than Wanderer's—before one of the natives spoke. His voice was loud and firm. I guessed what he said to be a ritual greeting, suitable for an encounter which must have struck him as uncanny, something along the lines of "Greeting and peace, O strangers. What are your intentions toward us?"—possibly with some flattering adjectives added to placate us.

  I had started up the Communicator as soon as I boarded the vessel, and the native's words were instantly stored in its computer, but I knew there would have to be a considerable amount of steady, directed conversation before it could provide much of a grasp of what was being said.

  "Greeting to you also," I said. "Our spaceship was damaged and we were obliged to land here; thank you for taking us aboard your craft." Not that there was any chance of his understanding me, but it is best under those circumstances to say what you would if communication did exist—at least the manner and tone are appropriate.

  He turned to some of the other natives and asked them something. "Ha," Ari said. "The only question he can logically be asking is whether any of them understood us. From this we infer that some of these people have encountered visitors from another planet already, and learned their language—"

  "It could also be," I said, "that they have no knowledge or concept that there is anywhere but this planet to be from, and consider us some sort of exotics from another part of it."

  "And it could be," said Dark, who always inclined to a suspicious view of natives and their ways, "that he's asking if they ought to sacrifice us to the sea gods."

  For two of the native sailors were advan
cing on us. We stiffened, but they brushed past us to the rail.

  "Hey!" Dark yelled as they slid down the ropes to Wanderer. "Captain—nice of you to pick us up, but those fellows can't go down there!"

  "Don't worry, Dark," I said. "A quick look around will convince them that we're from a culture very different from anything on this planet, and we can start off on a proper footing with them. It's not as if there were anything loose in there for them to steal."

  Dark glared at me. "It's not stealing I'm worried about, but they might—"

  A cloud of steam burst from the water behind Wanderer's submerged stern jet; the ship lifted half its length above the surface, nose first, then slammed down with a smack like an explosion and raised a wave that heeled the native vessel so far over that for an instant I was looking down at the sea across the nearly vertical deck, as if I had been at the top of a wall. Then, of course, it rocked back nearly as far the other way. By the time we were certain the vessel would not capsize and I turned to look at Wanderer, there was nothing left of her but a boiling patch on the surface, as the last of her air was displaced by the alien sea.

  "—meddle with the controls," Dark finished. "Just a whiff of power left, evidently. Blundering natives!" He subsided into an icy gloom.

  The vessel's captain was roaring, and I fingered the anger mode stud on the Communicator. Two heads popped up in the agitated water, and the tone of the captain's roars changed; seamen hurried to throw lines to their shipmates, who were quickly hauled on board.

  The dripping men talked excitedly to their captain, who glared at us and took them off to the crude cabin in the middle of the vessel. Evidently they had had a chance to take in some of the details of Wanderer's interior that did not accord with the usual run of things on this planet.

  The other crewmen drifted away uneasily, leaving us alone on the forward deck. The vessel turned and began plowing through the waves.

  Valmis said, "This will be a strange but rich experience, unique in Exploration. We will be the first Explorer team to be really part of a world, investigating it with only its own resources and our human qualities to depend on—a whole new insight—"

  "You need a whole new head," Dark said. "The experience is that Wanderer's at the bottom of the sea and we're prisoners of a bunch of jumpy natives who aren't the least bit interested in being Explored."

  I am by nature optimistic, but felt that Dark had summed the situation up all too accurately.

  3

  Soon a shoreline was visible, mountains running down almost to the sea. In a while we could make out buildings huddled densely, some tall and blocky, most low to the ground. Our vessel headed toward a tangle of ships, some larger than it was, but all of equally crude construction, and came alongside a wooden platform extending from the shore far out into the harbor.

  The crewmen began fastening the vessel to the platform with lines, and the captain leaped onto it and walked to a shed at the shore end.

  I had used the last part of our voyage for some planning. "The thing to do now," I said, "is to find some person of consequence who will at least understand that we are out of the ordinary and be interested enough to be willing to communicate with us. Once I have a command of the language, we can explain our predicament and our mission and set about enlisting the natives' aid."

  "It might be as well to do so quickly," Ari said, nodding toward the remaining sailors. These—especially the two who had so disastrously boarded Wanderer, whom I was able to distinguish from their fellows by their still-sodden condition—were looking at us in what I felt sure was a menacing fashion. I got their expressions on the Communicator's visual scanner, keyed to the appropriate mode; this may have been a mistake, as pointing the device at them seemed to increase their anger.

  "Thank you for your help," I said. "We are grateful for the rescue, but we must leave now to see to some business." Again I was relying on the principle of speaking normally so as to get the proper tone.

  We moved to the edge of the craft and prepared to step down, and the natives immediately surrounded us. They did not actually seize us, but made it impossible to get past them without violence, which it would have been imprudent as well as discourteous to offer.

  "I don't recall that any of them is likely to have said anything like 'Let us go' since we've been here," Ari said thoughtfully. "There wasn't any situation that called for that. If there had been, I suppose you could find the spot on your speech record and play it back to them."

  So I could have, but Ari was right: nothing that had been said by any of the natives would have applied to our situation. However . . . I ran the recorder back to the captain's angry roaring when Wanderer had made its last leap and gone down, apparently drowning two of his seamen, and pressed the play stud.

  At the sound of their chiefs voice, the natives fell back; as I had thought, they were conditioned to respect his wrath. They stood indecisively for a moment, and we jumped over the side and onto the platform.

  We walked briskly down it toward the shore, moving especially quickly past the shed where the captain, his back to us, was talking with another native, presumably telling him of his strange catch at sea.

  We did not take time to observe the curious features of the city we found ourselves in, but hurried down first one street and then another, taking right and left turns at random, until we were fairly sure we were not being followed by the captain.

  I suppose we were not—at least he was not visible in the crowd we found about us as soon as we stopped. They seemed to have sprung out of the ground, and were jabbering and pointing. I had hoped that we might not be so unlike the natives so as to attract undue attention, but this was clearly not to be. There were at least thirty individuals surrounding us; and, while of a variety of sizes, shapes and modes of dress, they obviously had far more in common with one another than with us.

  They continued to gesticulate and talk as their numbers increased, but did not approach us closely or attempt to touch us.

  Having assumed the leadership of Wanderer's crew for the moment, I felt it was up to me to take some productive action, but I could not think of any.

  "Tell them to take us to their leader," Dark suggested.

  "How? I don't have the native words for anything yet, except what a sea captain says when he sees two of his crewmen dragged to the bottom by a metal sea monster!"

  "We could mime it," Valmis said. To my irritation, largely because I should have thought of it first, I must admit, my colleagues immediately agreed, and we fell to working up a short bit of pantomime that would convey our wishes.

  After quick consultation, we gathered around Dark, who stood at first with his arms folded, frowning, then made brusque gestures of command—move, kneel, turn, and so forth—which we obeyed with exaggerated respect. Valmis, Ari and I then pointed at Dark, holding the gesture for a moment. If the natives could not understand from this that he was our leader, it would really be hopeless to expect anything of them.

  Once we were sure this idea had been gotten across if it was ever going to be, we all turned to point at the crowd, made a gesture as though drawing or fetching something toward us, then pointed back at Dark. If that didn't say, "Take us to your leader," or at least, "Bring your leader here"—there could be confusion on that point—I don't know what it did say.

  To the crowd, though, it did not seem to be that clear. They laughed, waved, jumped, but did nothing that looked as if it would result in a leader turning up.

  Then I saw one of them throw something; it clinked as it hit near me and rolled a bit before toppling on its side: a metal disc. Others began to do the same, and I feared we were under some sort of attack, though an inefficient one, as none of the discs came near hitting us or was thrown with any force.

  Ari picked up a couple of them and said, "Probably tokens of small units of credit—characteristic of Levels Two to Six. See—several are identical, hence mass produced; probably a government monopoly."

  "Could they n
ot be amulets?" Valmis said. "That would be a more appropriate offering to strangers from another world—the images of their deities seem to be stamped on them."

  "Ha!" Dark said. "Your charade has got us taken for wandering clowns—these natives have the impudence to toss us payment for entertaining them! Though I must say you fellows looked funny, kneeling and bobbing like that. You'd better pick those things up; we don't have anything else anybody on this world seems to want."

  At this point a native pushed through the crowd, parting it with peremptory cries and a jab now and then from a stick he carried. He was dressed differently from any of them and, by the deference they showed in giving way, was certainly someone of authority.

  This would not be the leader we were looking for, but he ought to be able to put us in touch with him or someone else of standing.

  He stood looking at us severely—I was becoming more familiar with the natives' facial expressions, and his had many points of resemblance to the sea captain's—and said something in their incomprehensible language.

  Now I had to make one of those judgments sometimes forced on Recorders—to make an intuitive leap toward communication with an alien race. The first sequence on my Communicator was the captain's opening words as we boarded his vessel—almost certainly, I had sensed at the time, a carefully polite greeting and query about our intentions. That being so, it should serve at least roughly for a salutation to this official. I slid back to that portion of the recording and depressed the play stud.

  The captain's words boomed out, with instant, though varied, effect. Some of the crowd laughed, some opened their mouths and widened their eyes, some—females at a guess, from certain differences in costume and apparent structure—turned and left that place. The man with the stick grimaced—looking very like the captain now—and menaced me with it. He then called out, and others appeared, dressed like him and also carrying sticks. He spoke to them loudly, and they surrounded us and hustled us off.