As they headed back to Gamma, sitting side by side in the shuttle’s cramped seats, Brad grumbled, “That was a waste of time.”
Felicia countered, “Not really. We decided to put the generators in orbit around Alpha. We’ve saved the octopods.”
He made a reluctant grin. “Steiner isn’t happy about it. She wants to experiment on the creatures.”
“She’s a biologist, Brad. She’s got all sorts of new and different species all around her, and she hasn’t been allowed to study them.”
“You mean she hasn’t been allowed to chop them up and poke around their innards.”
“Don’t be cruel,” Felicia said. “How would you like it if you weren’t allowed to talk with your Gammans?”
Leaning closer to her, Brad asked, “Fil, how can we save the Gammans from those damned cats? They’ll be slaughtered all over again the next time the two planets approach each other.”
“The first thing to do,” she replied, “is to learn all we can about the cats. Their biology, their life spans, how they breed—”
“Maybe we should arm the Gammans,” Brad muttered.
“Arm them?”
“Give them lasers so they can protect themselves.”
“Kosoff would never agree to that.”
“Maybe I should shoot him first.”
“Be serious, Brad!”
He shook his head wearily. “Anyway, the Gammans are too passive. They’d probably hold the lasers in their hands while the cats chewed on them.”
Emcee’s emotionless voice emanated from the overhead speakers, “Landing in two minutes.”
Brad looked out the oval window and saw the base camp flash past. It was growing: more buildings, more vehicles. In two years their encampment had turned into a miniature city.
A city that the Gammans avoid as if it were haunted, he told himself. Even Lnng is nervous, edgy when I bring him out to see what we’re doing.
Glancing at Felicia to make sure her shoulder harness was secure, he tightened his own straps and leaned his head against the chair’s back.
“I guess you’re right,” he said. “The first thing we have to do is learn all we can about the cats. And their spacecraft.”
* * *
The villagers had grown accustomed to having humans among them. Brad tried to keep the contacts to a minimum; all visits to the village were for necessary reasons, no idle sightseeing. Still, men and women from Earth had quickly become commonplace among the Gammans.
It helped, Brad thought, that the aliens were so passive. Even Lnng accepted the presence of humans in the village with little more than an acquiescent shrug of his shoulders.
Very different from how we would react if a crowd of aliens suddenly descended on Earth. Then he realized, Here on Gamma, we’re the aliens.
Felicia spent most of her time in the encampment’s spare, utilitarian biology lab, analyzing the imagery coming in from the satellites orbiting Beta.
Brad went into the village every day, trying to find some way of getting the Gammans to protect themselves.
He was standing in the village’s central square. Funny, he thought, even though this open space is circular I still think of it as a square. The afternoon was warm and sunny, although Brad could see that the distant mountaintops were dusted with snow. Don’t let this lovely afternoon fool you, he told himself. Winter is on its way.
As usual, he had driven one of the camp’s buggies into the village and parked it in front of the longhouse. Beats walking back and forth, Brad told himself. The Gammans had been curious about the vehicle the first time they saw it. Brad had done his best to explain the “horseless carriage” to them; he had even lifted up its hood to reveal the tiny nuclear-powered electric motor.
Lnng had asked if he could drive the buggy and Brad had allowed him to tool it around the village’s central square—slowly. Sitting beside the Gamman, Brad had kept the buggy’s remote controller in his lap, ready to take over the controls if he had to.
Once the drive was finished, Lnng stepped out of the buggy with obvious reluctance. “I could travel a long way in this,” he said. “All the way to the mountains, I think.”
“And farther,” said Brad, making a mental note to leave a couple of the buggies in the village when he departed for Earth.
That evening, as the setting Mithra cast purple shadows across the hollow, Brad joined Mnnx, Lnng, and a half-dozen other Gammans as they went into the home they shared for their evening meal. A sharp wind was whistling down from the snowcapped mountains; the weather was turning cold, raw.
But inside the house, the fireplace glowed warm and cheerfully. The Gammans sat in a semicircle on the dirt floor as their stew pot bubbled. Brad thought the stew smelled harsh, unappetizing, but the Gammans seemed delighted with the aroma.
Sitting between Mnnx and Lnng, as usual, Brad saw through the house’s only window that it was fully night outside, dark and cold.
“I’ll have to leave you soon,” he said.
“Leave?” Mnnx echoed.
“I’ll come back tomorrow.”
“Oh.” With obvious relief.
Lnng said, “But one day you will leave for good and return to your own village in the sky.”
“Yes, that is true,” said Brad.
Lnng clutched Brad’s knee with one of his ropy hands, making Brad twitch with alarm. The Gamman asked, “Brrd, why can’t you stay here, with us? When the monsters come again you could protect us.”
Brad shook his head. “I wish I could.”
Mnnx said, “Brrd must return to his own village, far away in the sky.”
“But why?” Lnng asked, almost pleading.
Mnnx answered, “It is the wish of the Sky Masters.”
“No,” said Brad. “The Sky Masters do not control me or my people.”
“You think not,” argued Mnnx, “but the Sky Masters are very powerful, very wise. They are controlling you even though you do not know it.”
“Can that really be true?” one of the other Gammans asked.
“It is true,” Mnnx said. “The Sky Masters are all-powerful. They are watching us now.”
“No,” said Brad. “They have gone far away.”
“Even from far away they can see us.”
Lnng challenged, “Then why did they let Brrd protect us from the monsters?”
“To test us,” Mnnx replied without a moment’s hesitation. “To see if we would accept their judgment over us, or give in to the temptation to live, even though that is against their command to us.”
Brad asked, “The Sky Masters want you to die?”
“Yes. So that there will be room for the new Folk when they rise from the ground.”
“But we’ve built a new village for them,” Brad said.
Lnng added, “We can build many new villages, all across the land.”
“And the Sky Masters will return and smash all the villages to dust. They will kill us all for disobeying their commands.”
Lnng leaned forward as he sat and reached across Brad to tap Mnnx on the chest. “So the punishment for not allowing the monsters to kill us is for the Sky Masters to kill us.”
“Yes.”
“Then what difference does it make?” Lnng shouted. “We die either way.”
Mnnx was silent for several heartbeats. At last he replied, “We have disobeyed the Sky Masters. They will return and punish us.”
“But until they do,” said Lnng, “let us live and enjoy living. Let us live today and not worry about tomorrow.”
“No,” said Brad. “Let us live today and prepare for tomorrow.”
* * *
All through the drive back to the encampment Brad thought about what he had to do. If there’s no way to prevent the cats from crossing to Gamma the next time the two planets come close, then I’m going to have to give the Gammans weapons to defend themselves.
Mnnx is a fatalist, but Lnng wants to live. He’s the one who should be leader in the village. He’s the one who’ll fight.
But how many others will follow his lead? Brad wondered. How many of them will stand there like dumb animals and allow the cats to tear them apart, the way Drrm did?
Once he got to his quarters, Brad began to tell Felicia what he was planning.
“Give them weapons?” She looked shocked. “Brad, you can’t do that. You don’t know where it might lead.”
“It will lead to their survival,” he said flatly.
“It could wreck their culture,” she replied, almost pleadingly. “It could destroy them more completely than the cats from Beta.”
Brad started to shake his head, but Felicia insisted, “Surely as an anthropologist you can see that, can’t you? It would be like giving guns to children.”
“Children who are in the grip of an ancient mythology, of superstition and ignorance.”
“But you can’t force them to change.”
“Can’t I?”
Almost desperately, Felicia said, “Kosoff won’t allow it.”
Brad knew she was right. But he said tightly, “We’ll see.”