Brad sat alone in the main cafeteria, as usual, munching on a slightly overdone soyburger.
Something disrupted this planetary system, he repeated to himself for about the fortieth time. Planet Gamma is heading for a deep freeze. According to Emcee the planet’s been following this orbit for at least a hundred thousand years, so the aliens must be able to survive their long winter.
But, based on the orbital data they had calculated, Gamma’s glacial winter lasts almost forty Earth years. How can the aliens survive that, with the primitive technology they’ve shown?
Then a new thought struck him: Maybe they have only a primitive technology because every time they get started developing a higher one, the damned winter closes in on them and everything freezes.
Interesting, he thought. Let’s see what the biologists have to say about that.
The biology team meeting that afternoon was superficially like the planetology meeting: same conference room, same shuffling, seemingly random seating selection. Once again Kosoff sat in on the meeting and, again, he chose a chair halfway down the table, next to an attractive young woman.
And again everyone’s attention focused on Kosoff, rather than the department head.
There was one other difference, Brad saw. Felicia Portman was at this meeting, looking petite and altogether lovely among the other biologists. She recognized Brad down at the end of the table and smiled brightly at him. He grinned back at her.
He had seen Felicia, of course, now and then during the two months since they’d first met. But always with other people around: a casual group, usually biologists. Although they had shared a few meals together with her teammates, Brad had not asked her for a date.
Abruptly, Kosoff got up from the chair in which he’d seated himself and went around the table to take the chair next to her.
Before Brad could even think of what to do, the department’s chairwoman called the meeting to order. Dr. Ursula Steiner was a handsome woman, regally tall, with splendid yellow hair coiled atop her head like a crown of gold. Do you have to be blond to be a department head? Brad wondered.
Again, Emcee began the meeting with a summary of what the remote sensors had learned of the intelligent natives of planet Gamma.
The sensors—palm-sized and disguised to resemble ordinary rocks—had been strewn near several of the villages that dotted the green fields and rolling hills of the planet. Since the natives appeared to be diurnal creatures, the “rocks” had been delivered by nearly silent helium-filled airships at night. None of the aliens seemed to have noticed them.
The three-dimensional wall display showed one of the aliens: bipedal, tall, and willowy slim. Its skin was pale, blotched with irregular blue spots. No clothing at all. No obvious sexual organs.
Its head rose above its shoulders like a bullet-shaped protuberance. No discernable mouth. Large staring eyes on the sides of the head; they moved with a persistent back-and-forth twisting of the head, apparently scanning their surroundings constantly. A vertical slit between the eyes appeared to be a nostril.
“Predators?” asked one of the biologists.
“None identified, as yet,” answered Emcee’s voice.
Apparently they were warm-blooded, apparently hermaphroditic. Two arms, consisting of intertwined muscular tentacles that could separate or wrap themselves together, at will. The ends of the writhing, twisting strands served much like fingers when they were brought together.
“While various noninvasive scans have produced a rough picture of the creatures’ innards, further details can only be obtained by direct examination of several individuals,” said the computer’s synthesized face from the wall screens.
“We’ll have to go down to the surface and pick up a few of them,” the chairwoman said, looking at Kosoff.
“Eventually,” Kosoff replied.
“They are omnivorous,” Emcee reported.
“I don’t see a mouth in its head.”
“It has a mouth in its abdomen. Observe.”
The image on the screen flickered as it jumped ahead; now it showed one of the aliens crouching near a flowering shrub at the base of a tall tree. It froze into immobility.
“Hunting behavior,” said Emcee. “Note the fingerlike extremities.”
The alien’s arm flexed the ends of its muscular strands, which twitched like boneless fingers. In its other arm it gripped a short, pointed stick.
Faster than the humans’ eyes could follow, the alien’s arm flashed into the shrubbery and spitted a writhing, screeching animal the size of a small reptile. A mouth in the lower section of its torso opened wide, showing wet red tissue inside, fringed with writhing, coiling, wormlike appendages. The alien stuffed its shrieking prey inside and the mouth snapped shut, cutting off the screams of the doomed animal.
“Yuck!” said a disgusted woman across the table from Kosoff. Brad felt his own stomach turn uneasily while moans and gagging gasps filled the conference room.
Dr. Steiner rapped her knuckles on the table. “Come on, now. We’re professional biologists, not children at a freak show.”
“It looks pretty freakish,” one of the younger men said—weakly.
They spent the next hour discussing what data the remote sensors had amassed about the natives’ physiology.
“What about their social organization?” Brad heard himself ask.
Dr. Steiner looked surprised, but quickly answered, “We’ve concentrated on their physical structure and basic biochemistry. Studies of their social behavior are scheduled for later.”
Kosoff said, “They seem to have established villages for themselves.”
“Yes, built of dried mud bricks,” said the chairwoman.
“Like adobe.”
“And they have farms on the outskirts of their villages.”
Kosoff asked, “Any signs of conflict between villages?”
“None that we’ve detected,” replied Steiner. “They seem comparatively peaceful, noncompetitive. Of course, the villages are fairly well separated. Contacts between them must be comparatively rare.”
“They’re hermaphroditic,” said Felicia Portman. “That removes a major source of conflict.”
“I suppose we’ll have to go down and take a few of them up here to the ship for detailed physical examination.”
Brad asked, “Do we have the means to do that without letting them know that we’re here?”
Dr. Steiner scowled down the table at him. “If we want them to remain ignorant of our presence, I suppose we’ll have to sacrifice any specimens we bring up here for examination.”
“Can’t be helped,” said one of the men halfway down the table.
“But that would be murder,” Felicia objected. “I mean, after all, they’re intelligent creatures.”
“Can’t be helped,” the department head echoed, looking squarely at Kosoff.
Kosoff shrugged his heavy shoulders. “This is a decision we don’t have to make today. Perhaps not for several weeks.”
“I agree,” said Steiner. Shifting her gaze to Brad, she went on, “No need for further discussion. Meeting adjourned.”
Brad saw the hostility in her face. I should keep my big mouth shut, he told himself as all the others pushed themselves up from their chairs and headed for the door. I’m an observer here, a guest. They resent my sticking my nose into their business.
But Felicia came up to him, a questioning smile on her lips.
“Are you going to join the bio team?” she asked teasingly.
Brad got up from his chair like a carpenter’s ruler unfolding. Embarrassed, he muttered, “I didn’t mean to interfere—”
Kosoff came up to them as the department head swept by and shot an annoyed glare at Brad.
“For an anthropologist,” Kosoff said, “you don’t seem to be able to sit back and observe without interfering with the subject of your study.”
Brad felt his cheeks redden. “I just thought that—”
But Kosoff had already turned his attention to Felicia. “I wonder if you’d like to have dinner with me tonight, Dr. Portman?”
And he reached for her hand.
A look halfway between surprise and alarm flashed across Felicia’s face.
Before she could reply to Kosoff, Brad said, “Um, I’ve already invited Felicia to dinner.”
Looking relieved, she said to Kosoff, “Perhaps some other time, Professor.”
Brad gripped her arm lightly and the two of them headed for the door, leaving Kosoff standing there. Brad could feel the heat of the older man’s anger, like the glow of red-hot lava spilling from a volcano.
“Thanks,” Felicia whispered to him as they reached the door.
Brad nodded. Terrific afternoon, he thought. I’ve made enemies of the head of the biology department and the director of the scientific staff. Great.
Yet he asked, half afraid of the answer, “You’ll have dinner with me?”
Grinning, Felicia replied, “I’ll have to. Otherwise the professor will know you lied about it.”
Brad suddenly felt buoyant, realizing that he was going to have dinner with the best-looking biologist on the ship.