The river, once away from the vicinity
of the great fall, was broad and slow. At first the air trapped by
the descending “water” furnished a breeze toward the sea, and
Barlennan ordered the sails set to take advantage of it; but this
presently died out and left the ship at the mercy of the current.
This was going in the right direction, however, and no one
complained. The land adventure had been interesting and profitable,
for several of the plant products collected could certainly be sold
at high prices once they reached home; but no one was sorry to be
afloat again. Some looked back at the waterfall as long as it could
be seen, and once everyone stared into the west to catch a glimpse
of the rocket as the muted thunder of its approach reached them;
but in general the feeling was one of anticipation.
The banks on either side began to draw
more and more attention as they proceeded. During their overland
journey they had become accustomed to the sight of an occasional
upright growth of the sort that the Flyer had called a “tree,”
usually seeing one every few days. They had been fascinating
objects at first, and had, indeed, proved a source of one of the
foods they planned to sell at home. Now the trees were becoming
more and more numerous, threatening to replace the more familiar
sprawling, rope-branched plants entirely, and Barlennan began to
wonder if even a colony planted here might not be able to support
itself by trade in what the Flyer had called fir
cones.
For a long time, fully fifty miles, no
intelligent life was sighted, though animals in fair numbers were
seen along the banks. The river itself teemed with fish, though
none appeared large enough to constitute a danger to the
Bree. Eventually the river on either side
became lined with trees, which extended no one could tell how far
inland; and Barlennan, spurred by curiosity, ordered the ship
steered closer to shore to see what a forest—he had no such word
for it, of course—looked like.
It was fairly bright even in the depths
of the wood, since the trees did not spread out at the top nearly
as much as is common on Earth, but it was strange enough. Drifting
along almost in the shadow of the weird plants, many of the
crew felt a resurgence of their old terror of having solid objects
overhead; and there was a general feeling of relief when the
captain silently gestured the helmsman to steer away from the bank
once more.
If anyone lived there they were welcome
to it. Dondragmer expressed this opinion aloud, and was answered by
a general mutter of approval. Unfortunately, his words were either
not heard or not understood by listeners on the bank. Perhaps they
were not actually afraid that the Bree’s
crew meant to take their forest away from them, but they decided to
take no chances; and once more the visitors from high-weight
suffered an experience with projectile weapons.
The armory this time consisted entirely
of spears. Six of them flew silently from the top of the bank and
stuck quivering in the Bree’s deck; two more
glanced from the protective shells of sailors and clattered about
on the rafts before coming to rest. The sailors who had been hit
leaped convulsively from pure reflex, and both landed yards away in
the river. They swam back and clambered aboard without assistance,
for all eyes were directed toward the source of the mysterious
attack. Without orders the helmsman angled more sharply toward the
center of the river.
“I wonder who sent those—and if they
used a machine like the Flyer’s. There wasn’t the same noise.”
Barlennan spoke half aloud, not caring whether he were answered.
Terblannen wrenched one of the spears out of the deck and examined
its hardwood point; then, experimentally, he threw it back at the
receding shore. Since throwing was a completely new art to him,
except for experiments such as he had made in getting objects to
the top of the tank in the stone-rollers’ city, he threw it as a
child throws a stick, and it went spinning end over end back to the
woods. Barlennan’s question was partly answered; short as his
crewman’s arms were, the weapon reached the bank easily. The
invisible attackers at least didn’t need
anything like Lackland’s gun, if they were anything like ordinary
people physically. There seemed no way to tell what the present
attackers were, and the captain had no intention of finding out by
direct examination. The Bree kept on
downstream, while an account of the affair went winging up to
Lackland on distant Toorey.
For fully a hundred miles the forest
continued while the river widened gradually. The Bree kept out in midstream for a time after her single
encounter with the forest dwellers, but even that did not keep her
completely out of trouble. Only a few days after the arrival of the
spears, a small clearing was sighted on the left bank. His
viewpoint only a few inches off the surface prevented Barlennan
from seeing as well as he would have liked, but there were
certainly objects in that clearing worthy of examination. After
some hesitation he ordered the ship closer to that bank. The
objects looked a little like trees, but were shorter and thicker.
Had he been higher he would have seen small openings in them just
above ground level which might have been informative; Lackland,
watching through one of the vision sets, compared the things at
once
to pictures he had seen of the huts of African natives, but he
said nothing yet. Actually he was more interested in a number of
other items lying partly in and partly out of the river in front of
what he already assumed to be a village. They might have been logs
or crocodiles, for they were not too clearly visible at this
distance, but he rather suspected they were canoes. It would be
interesting to see how Barlennan reacted to a boat so radically
different from his own.
It was quite a while, however, before
anyone on the Bree realized that the “logs”
were canoes or the other mysterious objects dwellings. For a time,
in fact, Lackland feared that they would drift on downstream
without ever finding out; their recent experience had made
Barlennan very cautious indeed. However, there were others besides
Lackland who did not want the ship to drift by without stopping,
and as she approached the point on her course opposite the village
a red and black flood of bodies poured over the bank and proved
that the Earthman’s conjecture had been correct. The loglike
objects were pushed into the stream, each carrying fully a dozen
creatures who apparently belonged to the identical species as the
Bree’s crew. They were certainly alike in
shape, size, and coloring; and as they approached the ship they
uttered earsplitting hoots precisely like those Lackland had heard
on occasion from his small friends.
The canoes were apparently dugouts,
hollowed out sufficiently so that only the head end of each crew
member could be seen; from their distribution, Lackland suspected
that they lay herringbone fashion inside, with the paddles operated
by the foremost sets of pincer-equipped arms.
The Bree’s
leeward flame throwers were manned, though Barlennan doubted that
they would be useful under these conditions. Krendoranic, the
munitions officer, was working furiously at one of his storage
bins, but no one knew what he was up to; there was no standard
procedure for his department in such a situation. Actually, the
entire defense routine of the ship was being upset by the lack of
wind, something that almost never occurred on the open
sea.
Any chance there might have been to
make effective use of the flame dust vanished as the fleet of
canoes opened out to surround the Bree. Two
or three yards from her on all sides, they glided to a stop, and
for a minute or two there was silence. To Lackland’s intense
annoyance, the sun set at this point and he was no longer able to
see what went on. The next eight minutes he had to spend trying to
attach meaning to the weird sounds that came over the set, which
was not a very profitable effort since none of them formed words in
any language he knew. There was nothing that denoted any violent
activity; apparently the two crews were simply speaking to each
other in experimental fashion. He judged, however, that they could
find no common language, since there appeared to be nothing like a
sustained conversation.
With sunrise, however, he discovered
that the night had not been wholly uneventful. By rights, the
Bree should have drifted some distance
downstream during the darkness; actually, she was still opposite
the village. Furthermore she was no longer far out in the river,
but only a few yards from the bank.
Lackland was about to ask Barlennan what he meant by taking such a
risk, and also how he had managed to maneuver the Bree, when it became evident that the captain was just
as surprised as he at this turn of events.
Wearing a slightly annoyed expression,
Lackland turned to one of the men sitting beside him, with the
remark:
“Barl has let himself get into trouble
already. I know he’s a smart fellow, but with over thirty thousand
miles to go I don’t like to see him getting held up in the first
hundred.”
“Aren’t you going to help him? There’s
a couple of billion dollars, not to mention a lot of reputations,
riding with him.”
“What can I do? All I could give would
be advice, and he can size up the situation better than I can. He
can see it better, and is dealing with his own sort of
people.”
“From what I can see, they’re about as
much his sort as the South Sea Islanders were Captain Cook’s. I
grant they appear to be the same species, but if they’re, say,
cannibals your friend may really be in hot water.”
“I still couldn’t help him, could I?
How do you talk a cannibal out of a square meal when you don’t know
his language and aren’t even facing him in person? What attention
would he pay to a little square box that talked to him in a strange
language?” The other raised his eyebrows a trifle.
“While I’m not mind reader enough to
predict that one in detail, I would suggest that in such a case he
might just possibly be scared enough to do almost anything. As an
ethnologist I can assure you that there are primitive races on a
lot of planets, including our own Earth, who would bow down, hold
square dances, and even make sacrifices to a box that talked to
them.”
Lackland digested that remark in
silence for a few moments, nodded thoughtfully, and turned back to
the screens.
A number of sailors had seized spare
masts and were trying to pole back toward the center of the river,
but were having no success. Dondragmer, after a brief investigation
around the outer rafts, reported that they were in a cage formed of
piles driven into the river bed; only the upstream side was open.
It might or might not be coincidence that the cage was just large
enough to accommodate the Bree. As this
report was made, the canoes drifted away from the three closed
sides of the cage and congregated on the fourth; and the sailors,
who had heard the mate’s report and prepared to pole in the
upstream direction, looked to Barlennan for instructions. After a
moment’s thought, he motioned the crew to the far end of the ship
and crawled alone to the end facing the assembled canoes. He had
long since figured out how his ship had been moved; with the coming
of darkness some of the paddlers must have gone quietly overboard,
swum beneath the Bree, and pushed her where
they wanted. There was nothing too surprising in that; he himself
could exist for some time beneath the surface of river or ocean,
which normally carried a good deal of dissolved hydrogen. What
bothered him was just why these people wanted the
ship.
As he passed one of the provision
lockers he pulled back its cover and extracted a piece of meat.
This he carried to the edge of the ship and held out toward the
crowd of now silent captors. Presently some unintelligible gabbling
sounded among them; then this ceased, as one of the canoes eased
slowly forward and a native in the bow reared up and forward toward
the offering. Barlennan let him take it. It was tested and
commented upon; then the chief, if that was his position, tore off
a generous fragment, passed the rest back to his companions, and
thoughtfully consumed what he had kept. Barlennan was encouraged;
the fact that he hadn’t kept it all suggested that these people had
some degree of social development. Obtaining another piece, the
captain held it out as before; but this time, when the other
reached for it, it was withheld. Barlennan put it firmly behind
him, crawled to the nearest of the piles that were imprisoning his
ship, indicated it, gestured to the Bree, and pointed out into the
river. He was sure his meaning was plain, as undoubtedly it was;
certainly the human watchers far above understood him, though no
word of their language had been used. The chief, however, made no
move. Barlennan repeated the gestures, and finished by holding out
the meat once more.
Any social consciousness the chief
possessed must have been strictly in connection with his own
society; for as the captain held out the meat a second time a spear
licked out like the tongue of a chameleon, impaled the food, jerked
it out of Barlennan’s grasp, and was withdrawn before any one of
the startled sailors could move. An instant later the chief gave a
single barking order; and as he did so half the crew of each of the
canoes behind him leaped forward.
The sailors were completely unused to
aerial assault, and had also relaxed a trifle when their captain
began his negotiation; in consequence, there was nothing resembling
a fight. The Bree was captured in something
less than five seconds. A committee headed by the chief began at
once to investigate the food lockers, and their satisfaction was
evident even through the language barrier. Barlennan watched with
dismay as the meat was dragged out on deck in obvious preparation
for transferral to a canoe, and for the first time it occurred to
him that there was a possible source of advice which he had not yet
used.
“Charles!” he called, speaking English
for the first time since the incident had begun. “Have you been
watching?” Lackland, with mixed anxiety and amusement, answered at
once.
“Yes, Barl; I know what’s been going
on.” He watched the Bree’s captors for
reaction as he spoke, and had no reason to feel disappointed. The
chief, who had been facing away from the point where the radios
were lashed, switched ends like a startled rattlesnake and then
began looking around for the source of the voice with an
unbelievably human air of bewilderment. One of his men who had been
facing the radios indicated to him the one whose speaker Lackland
had used, but after poking around the impenetrable box with knife
and lance the chief obviously rejected this suggestion. This was
the moment the Earthman chose for speaking again.
“Do you think there’s any chance of
getting them scared of the radios, Barl?”
The chiefs head was about two inches
from the speaker this time, and Lackland had made no effort to
reduce the volume. Consequently there was no question where the
sound had come from; and the chief began backing away from the
noisy box. He was evidently trying to go slowly enough to satisfy
his self-respect and fast enough to suit his other emotions, and
once again Lackland had trouble in not laughing aloud.
Before Barlennan had a chance to reply
Dondragmer moved over to the pile of meat, selected a choice piece,
and laid it in front of the radio set with every indication of
humility. He had taken a chance on having a pair of knives meet in
his body, and knew it; but his guards were too absorbed by the new
situation to take offense at his motion. Lackland, understanding
how the mate had interpreted his own lead, followed on; he reduced
the volume in the hope that his next utterance would seem less like
anger to the canoeists, and heartily approved the mate’s
action.
“Good work, Don. Every time one of you
does something like that I’ll try to show approval; and I’ll bark
like nobody’s business at anything I don’t want our new
acquaintances to be doing. You know the appropriate actions better
than I, so just do everything in your power to make ’em think these
radio boxes are high-powered beings who’ll deliver lightning if
properly annoyed.”
“I understand; we can hold our end,”
replied the mate. “I thought that was what you had in
mind.”
The chief, gathering his courage once
more, suddenly lunged at the nearest radio with his spear. Lackland
remained silent, feeling that the natural result on the wooden
point would be impressive enough; the sailors entered with a will
into the game outlined by the Flyer. With what Lackland supposed
were the equivalent of gasps of pious horror, they turned away from
the scene and covered their eyes with their pincers. After a
moment, seeing that nothing further was happening, Barlennan
offered another piece of meat, at the same time gesturing in a way
meant to convey the impression that he was begging for the life of
the ignorant stranger. The river people were quite evidently
impressed, and the chief drew back a little, gathered his
committee, and began to discuss the whole situation with them.
Finally one of the chiefs counselors, in what was evidently an
experiment, picked up a piece of meat and gave it to the nearest
radio. Lackland was about to express gentle thanks when
Dondragmer’s voice came, “Refuse it!” Not knowing why but willing
to trust the mate’s judgment, Lackland turned up the volume and
emitted a lionlike roar. The donor leaped back in genuine and
unmistakable terror; then, at a sharp order from the chief, he
crawled forward, retrieved the offending bit of food, selected
another from the pile on the deck, and presented that.
“All right.” It was the mate’s voice
again, and the Earthman lowered the volume of the
speaker.
“What was wrong the other time?” he
asked quietly.
“I wouldn’t have given that piece to a
ternee belonging to my worst enemy,” replied
Dondragmer.
“I keep finding resemblances between
your people and mine in the darnedest situations,” Lackland
remarked. “I hope this business is suspended for the night; I can’t
see what’s going on in the dark. If anything happens that I should
react to, for heaven’s sake tell me.” This remark was prompted by
the arrival of sunset once more, and Barlennan assured him that he
would be kept informed. The captain had recovered his poise, and
was once again more or less in control of the situation—as far as a
prisoner could be.
The night was spent by the chief in
discussion; his voice, interrupted occasionally by others which
must belong to his counselors, came clearly to the Earthmen far
above. By dawn he had apparently reached a decision. He had drawn a
little apart from his counselors and laid down his weapons; now, as
sunlight slanted once more across the deck, he advanced toward
Barlennan, waving the latter’s guards away as he approached. The
captain, already fairly sure in his mind what the other wanted,
waited calmly. The chief halted with his head a few inches from
Barlennan’s, paused impressively for a moment, and began to
speak.
His words were still unintelligible to
the sailors, naturally enough; but the gestures accompanying them
were clear enough to give the speech meaning even to the distant
human watchers.
Quite plainly, he wanted a radio.
Lackland found himself speculating idly on just what supernatural
powers the chief supposed the device to possess. Perhaps he wanted
it to protect the village from enemies, or to bring luck to his
hunters. That was not really an important question, however; what
mattered would be his attitude when the request was refused. That
might possibly be rather anti-social, and Lackland was still
worrying a trifle.
Barlennan, showing what his human
friend felt was rather more courage than sense, answered the speech
briefly; a single word and a gesture which Lackland had long since
come to recognize comprised the reply. “No” was the first
Mesklinite word which Lackland learned beyond doubt, and he learned
it for the first time now. Barlennan was very
definite.
The chief, to the relief of at least
one watcher, did not take a belligerent attitude. Instead, he gave
a brief order to his men. Several of these at once laid aside their
weapons and began restoring the looted food to the lockers from
which it had been taken. If freedom were not enough for one of the
magic boxes, he was willing to pay more. Both Barlennan and
Lackland more than suspected that the fellow was now afraid to use
force, badly as his possessive instincts were aroused.
With half the food returned, the chief
repeated his request; when it was refused as before, he gave an
amazingly human gesture of resignation and ordered his men to
restore the rest. Lackland was getting uneasy.
“What do you think he’ll do when you
refuse him now, Barl?” he asked softly. The chief looked at the box
hopefully; perhaps it was arguing with its owner, ordering him to
give his captor what he wanted.
“I’m not sure enough to venture a
prediction,” the Mesklinite replied. “With luck, he’ll bring us
more stuff from the village to add to the price; but I’m not sure
luck goes that far. If the radio were less important, I’d give it
to him now.”
“For heaven’s sake!” The ethnologist
sitting beside Lackland practically exploded at this point. “Have
you been going through all this rigmarole and risking your life and
those of your men just to hang onto a cheap vision
set?”
“Hardly cheap,” muttered Lackland.
“They were designed to hold up at Mesklin’s poles, under Mesklinite
atmosphere, and through the handling of Mesklinite
natives.”
“Don’t quibble!” snapped the student of
cultures. “What are those sets down there for if not to get
information? Give one to that savage! Where could it be better
placed? And how could we observe the everyday life of a completely
strange race better than through that eye? Charles, sometimes I
wonder at you!”
“That will leave three in Barlennan’s
possession, of which one absolutely must get
to the south pole. I see your point, but I think we’d better get
Rosten’s approval before we actually leave one this early on the
way.”
“Why? What does he have to do with it?
He’s not risking anything like Barlennan, and doesn’t care about
watching that society like some of the rest of us. I say leave it;
I’m sure Barlennan wants to leave it; and it seems to me that
Barlennan has the final say in any case.”
The captain, who had of course
overheard this, cut in.
“You forget, friend of Charles, that
the radios are not my property. Charles let me take them, at my
suggestion to be sure, as a safety measure, so that at least one
would reach its goal even though unavoidable incidents deprived me
of the others. It seems to me that he, not I, is the one whose word
should be final.” Lackland answered instantly.
“Do as you think best, Barl. You are on
the spot; you know your world and its people better than any of us
can hope to; and if you do decide to leave one with these people,
even that will do some good to my friends, as you have
heard.”
“Thank you, Charles.” The captain’s
mind was made up in the instant the Flyer finished speaking.
Fortunately the chief had listened enthralled to the conversation,
making no attempt to further his own interests while it was going
on; now Barlennan, keeping up the play to the end, called some of
his crew and gave swift orders.
Moving very circumspectly and never
touching a radio at any time, the sailors prepared a rope sling.
Then they pried the set up from a “safe” distance with spars, and
poked and pushed until the sling was in position under and around
it. This accomplished, one of the sling handles was given very
respectfully
to Barlennan. He in turn gestured the chief closer, and with an
air of handling something precious and fragile, handed the loop of
rope to him. Then he gestured toward the counselors, and indicated
that they should take the other handles. Several of them moved
forward, rather gingerly; the chief hastily designated three for
the honor, and the others fell back.
Very slowly and carefully the bearers
moved the radio to the edge of the Bree’s
outermost raft. The chiefs canoe glided up—a long, narrow vessel
evidently hollowed to a paper-thin shell from the trunk of one of
the forest trees. Barlennan viewed it with distrust. He himself had
never sailed anything but a raft; hollow vessels of any kind were
strange to him. He felt certain that the canoe was too small to
carry the weight of the radio; and when the chief ordered the
greater part of the crew out of it he barely suppressed the
equivalent of a negative headshake. He felt that the lightening
thus obtained would be insufficient. He was more than startled when
the canoe, upon receiving its new freight, merely settled a trifle.
For a few seconds he watched, expecting vessel and cargo to pop
suddenly below the surface; but nothing of the sort happened, and
it became evident that nothing would.
Barlennan was an opportunist, as had
been proved months ago by his unhesitating decision to associate
with the visitor from Earth and learn his language. This was
something new, and obviously worth learning about; if ships could
be made that would carry so much more weight for their size, the
knowledge was obviously vastly important to a maritime nation. The
logical thing to do was to acquire one of the canoes.
As the chief and his three co-workers
entered the craft, Barlennan followed. They delayed shoving off as
they saw his approach, wondering what he might want. Barlennan
himself knew what he wanted, but was not sure he could get away
with what he planned to try. His people, however, had a proverb
substantially identical in meaning with Earth’s “Nothing venture,
nothing gain,” and he was no coward.
Very carefully and respectfully he
touched the radio, leaning across the half inch of open river
surface between ship and canoe to do so. Then he
spoke.
“Charles, I’m going to get this little
ship if I have to come back and steal it. When I finish talking,
please answer—it doesn’t matter what you say. I’m going to give
these people the idea that the boat which carried the radio is too
changed for ordinary use, and must take the radio’s place on my
deck. All right?”
“I was brought up to disapprove of
racketeers—I’ll translate that word for you sometime—but I admire
your nerve. Get away with it if you can, Barl, but please don’t
stick the neck you don’t have out too far.” He fell silent and
watched the Mesklinite turn his few sentences to good
account.
As before, he employed practically no
spoken language; but his actions were reasonably intelligible even
to the human beings, and clear as crystal to his erstwhile captors.
First he inspected the canoe thoroughly, and plainly if
reluctantly found it worthy. Then he waved away another canoe
which had drifted close, and gestured several members of the river
tribe who were still on the Bree’s deck away
to a safe distance. He picked up a spear which one of the
counselors had discarded to take up his new position, and made it
clear that no one was to come within its length of the
canoe.
Then he measured the canoe itself in
spear lengths, took the weapon over to where the radio had been,
and ostentatiously cleared away a spot large enough to take the
craft; at his order, several of his own crew gently rearranged the
remaining radios to make room for their new property. More
persuasion might have been attempted, but sunset cut the activity
short. The river dwellers did not wait out the night; when the sun
returned, the canoe with the radio was yards away, already drawn up
on shore.
Barlennan watched it with anxiety. Many
of the other canoes had also landed, and only a few still drifted
near the Bree. Many more natives had come to
the edge of the bank and were looking over; but to Barlennan’s
intense satisfaction, none came any closer to the loaded canoe. He
had apparently made some impression.
The chief and his helpers carefully
unloaded their prize, the tribe maintaining its original distance.
This was, incidentally, several times the spear’s length demanded
by Barlennan. Up the bank the radio went, the crowd opening wide to
let it through and disappearing after it; and for long minutes
there was no more activity. The Bree could
easily have pushed out of her cage at this time, the crews of the
few canoes remaining on the river showing little interest in what
she did, but her captain did not give up that easily. He waited,
eyes on the shore; and at long last a number of long black and red
bodies appeared over the bank. One of these proceeded toward the
canoe; but Barlennan realized it was not the chief, and uttered a
warning hoot. The native paused, and a brief discussion ensued,
which terminated in a series of modulated calls fully as loud as
any that Lackland had heard Barlennan utter. Moments later the
chief appeared and went straight to the canoe; it was pushed off by
two of the counselors who had helped carry the radio, and started
at once toward the Bree. Another followed it
at a respectful distance.
The chief brought up against the outer
rafts at the point where the radio had been loaded, and immediately
disembarked. Barlennan had given his orders as soon as the canoe
left the bank, and now the little vessel was hauled aboard and
dragged to the space reserved for it, still with every evidence of
respect. The chief did not wait for this operation to be finished;
he embarked on the other canoe and returned to shore, looking back
from time to time. Darkness swallowed up the scene as he climbed
the bank.
“You win, Barl. I wish I had some of
your ability; I’d be a good deal richer than I am now, if I were
still alive by some odd chance. Are you going to wait around to get
more out of them tomorrow?”
“We are leaving now!” the captain
replied without hesitation.
Lackland left his dark screen and went
to his quarters for his first sleep in many hours. Sixty-five
minutes—rather less than four of Mesklin’s days—had passed since
the village had been sighted.