First Cycle Part 6

"No individual could pay well enough," Vandro said, "not even if his gang financed him. It would only be a drop in the bucket. Have you any idea-" He paused, a strange look on his face.

"What is it, Vandro?" his a.s.sistant demanded.

"I have an idea."

"Thank goodness. From the way you looked, I thought you had an attack of stomach- pain."

"No, seriously, I have what might be quite an idea," Vandro said. He turned to the old man. "And it's your idea, Zalgo."

"My idea?"

"That's right. Chance, you said. Well, that's it! Chance! We'll have a lottery!"

Vandro was right. The idea caught the popular imagination. It was understood, of course, that the winner would be required to meet certain physical and mental standards; but it was also realized that if the individual failed, he or she would have no trouble selling the winning ticket for many times its original cost. Gangs of speculators bought blocks of tickets, intending to do just that. Vandro began to worry, as the money poured in, that there was something he hadn't thought of, something that was going to go wrong, causing the whole idea to blow up in their-his-face. He could, for example, imagine the outburst of murderous fury which would rock the planet at the slightest suspicion offraud. He had a recurrent dream, in which the numbering machine on the press had jammed, turning out thousands of tickets with the same number, which then happened to win.

The drawing was held at the headquarters of the Trading Combine, at Timber Lake, with the entire board of advisers watching over it. The winning number was flashed by telephone and radio around the world, which then held its collective breath to see who held the ticket.

It was three sleep-periods before the winner, a girl named Lylla Rovodorro, called in to claim her prize. A member of a small ranching gang on the plains, Lylla had been up- country at the time of the drawing, and had taken three sleep-periods to get back to somewhere with a telephone. Her arrival at Storm Valley Rendezvous, two sleep-periods later, was televised and relayed everywhere.

It was almost three years before the rocket was ready, during which time Lylla became a proficient pilot. A huge crowd, some coming all the way from the Outer Hemisphere, began gathering near the firing-point a few sleep-periods before the launch time. The rocket was hauled up onto the launching-track; the crew entered, closing the airlock behind them, and strapped in. They did a quick pre-flight check, and signalled ready. In the firing bunker, Vandro closed the switch. The roar of the rockets could be heard for five thousand lances in all directions. Slowly at first, and then with ever-increasing speed, the rocket made its run along the launch-track, and then majestically rose into the atmosphere, and away.

Tov-Varsov was no longer Successor-Controller. Krav-Torov, the Controller of Spiritual and Political Orthodoxy, had eliminated him in a lightning coup twelve years before, along with his designated successor, Lev-Lonov. The body-cells and lower brain- cells were satisfied with the official explanation that Lev-Lonov had murdered the Citizen Successor-Controller, and then had been amputated by the patriotic and loyal Krav-Torov, who had saved the Organic State from criminal usurpation. It was noted that Krav-Torov never appointed a successor to his own previous position, but kept the machinery of the temporal and spiritual secret police tightly in his own hand.

Like everybody else on the upper policy level, he had been thoroughly familiarized with the case of the mysterious radio signals believed to originate from the Horizon Object, and with the possible dangers of allowing radio to be used on the Outward Islands. However, radio was too useful a tool, both for communication and for the continuous propaganda with which the brain-cells bar-raged the body-cells, to just give it up. On the continents safely shadowed from the neighboring planet, the broadcasting and relay stations multiplied. Every Temple of Tisse reared its antenna-spire; every village and town and agricultural center had its tower. Every citizen had a cheap, fixed- frequency receiver. The Creed of Puzza and the doctrines of Dov-Soglov, and the will of Successor-Controller Krav-Torov, were reiterated incessantly.

On the twelfth anniversary of the Martyrdom of Tov-Varsov and the frustration of the Treason of Lev-Lonov, every radio was turned on, all the variable-frequency radios of the higher brain-cells were tuned to the same wavelength. Priests intoned thanks to Vran for the deliverance of the True Faith and the scientifically organized State. An official historian read the carefully edited account of the courage and patriotism of the Citizen Successor-Controller.Then, in the midst of the festivities, a strange signal intruded: a bar of music, a voice in an alien tongue, and a second bar of music. The reaction was clear and swift, but due to the complications of the day, it was some time before the rebroadcast stations could be ordered off the air. Even then, it was found that the mysterious signal, repeated over and over, and occasionally varied by what sounded like more unintelligible language, was being received by public radio in one sector after another across the face of the planet.

The detection stations, maintained against possible subversive use of the radio, quickly swung into action. At first their readings did not appear to make any sense; but the technicians quickly figured out how to interpret them. What they were listening to was a signal being broadcast from a moving body, travelling considerably faster than the speed of sound, and about a thousand leagues straight up. Its path, they soon established, was a great loop inward from the Horizon Zone, around the planet, and then back out again.

Orv-Gorov, the Dean of Archpriests, met with Karv-Torov and the top deputies of the State on the upper terrace of the huge building which had been constructed by Rav- Razkov around the Shop of the Cobbler. The Citizen Successor-Controller drummed on the table-top with his long middle fingers.

"You all heard this thing," he said, "either directly or in recordings. It would seem to be identical with the signals heard in the time of the late Citizen Tov-Varsov, and, for that matter, those received during the war against the Zaithuan heretics."

"It would seem so," Yorrov-Voppov, the Deputy for Technological Conformity said.

"And what are we to conclude from this?" Karv-Torov asked, using a formula from the Questions of Faith section in The Books of Tisse.

"Well, Citizen," Yorrov-Voppov said, "the present signals are clearly coming from an upper-atmosphere vehicle which is circ.u.mnavigating the planet. The question is, undoubtedly, where did this vehicle come from?

"As I see it, there are only two possibilities; either it came from somewhere on this planet, or it came from somewhere out there." He gestured in a vaguely upward direction.

"Continue," Karv-Torov said, not visibly impressed by the a.n.a.lysis so far.

"If it came from somewhere on this planet, then we have to a.s.sume that there are secret laboratories and workshops of some group unknown to us, and that they have a higher level of technology than we, ourselves. This presents two questions to which there are no rational answers: first, if this group exists, why does it choose now to reveal itself, and why by this means; and second, if it is as superior technologically as one would have to a.s.sume from this s.h.i.+p circling the planet, why bother hiding itself at all? Unless someone can come up with an answer to these two questions, then I think we must a.s.sume the vehicle, and thus the transmissions, to be extra-planet in origin. This hypothesis is supported by the evidence of the earlier transmissions, which seemed to originate on the Horizon Object. This would seem to establish beyond conjecture that the Horizon Object is a planet like our own, and is inhabited by some form of intelligent life."

"But it's all absurd!" the Dean of Archpriests declared. "There are clear statements in The Books as to what the heavens are like, and nowhere is there mentioned other planets like onto this one. And then to a.s.sume that, not only is the Horizon Object a planet with living beings on it, but that these beings can build a vehicle which can carry them across hundreds of thousands of leagues of empty s.p.a.ce, something which, as I understand, we ourselves cannot do-""Citizen-Priest Orv-Gorov, it is you who speak absurdities," Krav-Torov rebuked.

"We have the evidence of observations based on the best scientific instruments. You, on the other hand, are calling something absurd merely because you do not wish to believe in it. It goes against something you read in a book. One of The Books, perhaps, but still only a book. On the other hand, balanced against your book, is the presence of a very real object circling our planet, sending radio-signals to everything it pa.s.ses over. Music! No, Citizen-Priest; despite The Books, the Horizon Object is a world like our own. And its people would seem to have been trying to communicate with us for years, and they now have built a machine enabling them to cross s.p.a.ce and drop in.

"This is the situation which confronts us, whatever The Books say. Now let us consider realistically what we are going to do about it."

"We must consider the effect on the body-cells," one of the deputies said. "This thing is going to destroy their faith in The Books, which is fundamental to everything else."

"Not necessarily," Krav-Torov said. "Not if it's handled right. After all, the body-cells are not encouraged to read The Books of Tisse for themselves, even those few who can read by themselves. We must now begin to prepare them. Discover, for the greater glory of Vran, that there is a possibility that the Horizon Object is a world like our own, and that those signals that everybody is talking about must have come from there. The Citizen-Priest can find an appropriate chapter in The Books of Tisse that predicts that such a discovery will be made at this time. Can't you. Priest?"

Orv-Gorov bent his head. "Unfathomable are the ways of Vran," he said.

"There's a great mission and a great opportunity for you, Dean of Archpriests," Krav- Torov said. "Consider: the inhabitants of other worlds, now that we admit to the existence of other worlds, may well be ignorant of the sacred truths of The Books of Tisse, and all else concerning Vran. It will be our duty to instruct them. You must start preparing brain- cells for this function."

"That is so," Orv-Gorov said, thoughtfully.

"And we must make plans to acquaint them with the advantages of the scientific structure of the Organic State."

"I wonder if these people-things-whatever they are-in the circling vessel have landed anywhere," Tav-Frakov, the Deputy Controller of Food Production said. "Perhaps, if they have, we could find them and amputate them. Then we could take their s.h.i.+p for study, and get rid of all other signs of their presence, and pa.s.s the whole thing off as a miracle. Within a few years the event will be forgotten."

Several of the others murmured agreement. Krav-Torov grimaced and slammed both hands down on the table-top. "Great Vran, pity me, who am advised by imbeciles!" he cried. "Do you think those who circle our world are the only inhabitants of their world, or that their vehicle of s.p.a.ce is unique?"

"No, Citizen Successor-Controller. That is why I advised amputating those who may have landed here."

"Yes? And have you thought beyond your nose? Have you considered what would happen then? Has it occurred to you that those who sent this s.p.a.ce-vehicle will miss it when it fails to return? That they -will send further vehicles to find out what happened?

That if they discover that their representatives have been amputated, they might not be pleased?" He glared at all those around him. "Have we the technology to build such a machine? No! Therefore it is clear that the residents of the Horizon Object arescientifically and technically in advance of us. What sort of weapons do you suppose such people would have, knives and clubs?"

"But then, if they are our technological superiors, they may conquer us if we allow them a foothold here."

Krav-Torov shook his head. "If they don't hear from this expedition, then they'll only send a bigger expedition-one big enough to land in force and start operations against us.

But if we receive the first party in friends.h.i.+p, we may postpone hostilities at least long enough to learn just what we have to deal with. If we're careful and clever, we can keep them off guard. They will be able to tell, without much dispute, that they are our technological superiors. This may lull them into thinking that they are also our superiors in other ways. They will not feel threatened, and will remain friendly. It will be to their advantage to be friendly at first. Although our technological superiors, they will be vastly outnumbered."

"That is so," someone agreed.

"We will, therefore, keep them friendly as long as possible, and at least long enough to learn their science before a war starts. And, Citizens, I have enough faith in the holy religion of Tisse and the Organic State to believe that, given time, we will outstrip them.

Then we shall see whose planet is conquered by whom!"

Vandro Hannaro, waiting at Storm Valley Rendezvous, watched the disc of s.h.i.+ning Sister grow in his television screen, as the camera in the nose of the rocket sped toward it.

The voices of Dantro Fanzagarro, the pilot, and Karnna La.s.santro, the instrumenter, and Lylla Rovorrido, came through, describing the effects of the acceleration they had endured-much less serious than had been predicted-and laughing about their misadventures in the unfamiliar weightlessness.

Time pa.s.sed. The watchers worked in s.h.i.+fts, staring at the screen and discussing the problems that came up with the crew. The Horizon Islands grew larger and plainer, and many of the smaller islands of the Central Sea became visible. Then the s.p.a.cecraft skipped by the rim of the planet, and pa.s.sed it, and the gravity of s.h.i.+ning Sister checked it in its arrow-straight path, reached out and pulled it into a parabolic orbit. For the first time the watchers saw the seven continents of s.h.i.+ning Sister surrounding the Central Sea, and the great, shallow expanse of ocean that was the invisible side.

"We have picked up radio signals from below," Karnna reported. "I don't know what it means, but every radio transmitter on the planet is sending the same thing-voices speaking, and what sounds like chanting in regular poetic meter."

"Maybe they have picked you up on radar, if they have radar, and are welcoming you," Vandro suggested.

"That could be. At any rate, we have started broadcasting our friends.h.i.+p message on the same wave-length; so they'll certainly pick it up. We're going to be pa.s.sing behind the planet in a few seconds, so it will be a while before you hear from us again. Think good thoughts."

"All right. We'll be waiting to hear from you when you come around. Be careful with your fuel; don't get carried away and try to go too low. You'll need it for maneuvering your way back here."

The screen went gray, and a second later the carrier wave of the radio vanished.

Vandro rose stiffly and went to a couch. The others turned from the screens, some to lie down, some for food and tea, and some of the less weary just to sit around and talk.Somebody shook Vandro awake when the screens came to life again, with a beautiful view of their own planet as seen around the crescent arm of s.h.i.+ning Sister. A short time later Dantro Fanzagarro's voice came over the speakers.

"Vandro, your mother was right; they are afraid of us. I don't know what all the chanting and yelling was about, but it certainly wasn't to welcome us. Almost as soon as we began sending on their wavelength, everything stopped. We haven't been able to raise anything since."

"Maybe they are keeping radio silence to better receive you."

"I don't believe it. We varied the recorded message with our own voices. We sent them number-series signals. We tapped things out with a buzzer. We tried everything. It just wasn't any use. As soon as we began sending, their stations all went off the air. We did get some great pictures of the surface with the telephoto cameras. We saw cities, towns, s.h.i.+ps, even a few aircraft flying below us. The aircraft seemed fairly primitive, to my eyes."

The return trip took six sleep-periods. The watchers at Storm Valley and on Skystabber, and at thousands of stations around the Outer Hemisphere slept only in fitful s.n.a.t.c.hes, and not at all when the rocket entered its series of braking elipses. The whole planet held its breath until the ram-jet engines on the wingtips gulped in enough air and flamed into life. And when it bellied down for a perfect landing along the ten-kilolance runway prepared in the middle of the Burning Desert, telephone bells jangled in the editorial offices of a thousand newspaper gangs, whistles and bells and cannon proclaimed that the first voyagers to s.h.i.+ning Sister had returned safely.

The photographs taken on the spiral sweep over the Outer Hemisphere were carefully developed, enlarged, and examined. They were able to confirm Dantro's opinion that he had seen cities and towns down below. Under high resolution, they were' even able to make out individual houses, squares, some roads and other artifacts. It was clearly a densely-populated, and apparently a highly-civilized world. Imagination supplied innumerable details; arguments grew heated. Maps were made. And all Hetaira resolved as one that someday, as soon as possible, a landing must be made.

The Alvararro Gang had already developed a nuclear-power rocket engine which could be used as an out-of-atmosphere auxiliary drive for s.p.a.ce s.h.i.+ps. Because its exhaust was poisonously radioactive, it could not be used to supply power for takeoffs and landings. After considering many possibilities, it was decided to build a large nuclear-powered s.h.i.+p to go into orbit around s.h.i.+ning Sister, and chemical shuttle-rockets for planetary landings. The amount of fuel necessary to rise to a low orbit and intersect a waiting mother-s.h.i.+p was much less than the amount needed for a high orbit, or for free flight in s.p.a.ce.

The work took years. A whole technology had to be created to build a large object in s.p.a.ce. The shuttle-rockets themselves were perfected during this period, by the simple expedient of building them at a rate sufficient to put one into orbit about every ten sleep- periods. The rockets lifted structural materials and supplies and oxygen and fuel and water and food and workers. And slowly, with many a change in detail as new things were learned along the way, the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p grew in low orbit around the planet.

When finished, the s.h.i.+p was a huge globe, which could carry a crew of fifty; it could stay in s.p.a.ce, fully manned, for a number of years. She carried six long shuttle-rockets,each twice the size of the one which had made the circuit around s.h.i.+ning Sister ten years before. Her captain was the man who had given the project his single-minded devotion from his mother's breast, Vandro Hannaro.

Chapter Twelve

Two hundred hours after she had blasted out of her orbit around the home planet, the Sister's Visitor was in orbit above her destination. This time there was no attempt at contact by radio. Shuttle Rocket Number One was launched even as the s.h.i.+p's...o...b..t was being stabilized. It spiraled over the Outer Hemisphere inside the atmosphere, using ramjet power to pull it quite close to the surface several times, and rocket-a.s.sisted jet to take it back out again. By the time Sister's Visitor began its second orbit, two planetary diameters from the surface, the shuttle rocket was locked back in its pad, and the film from its specially-designed cameras was already on the drying-racks.

As the photographs were studied and a.n.a.lyzed, the s.p.a.ce s.h.i.+p slowly spiraled closer to the planet, to take up an orbit a mere one-third of a planetary diameter off. A primary landing site was picked for the delta-winged shuttle craft, and four of them dropped free of the s.h.i.+p and jetted in toward the planet.

Vandro Hannaro piloted the lead shuttle; his copilot was Lylla Rovorrido, the girl who had won a place on the first expedition ten years before. With them were a physicist from the Balkadranna Gang, named Yssa, and Zandro Garvanno", the biologist. The two shuttle-craft that followed him down were piloted by Dantro Fanzagarro and Karnna La.s.santro, the other members of the first expedition; they carried only pilot and copilot, and were loaded with enough fuel to enable at least one of the three to return to the mother s.h.i.+p. The fourth shuttle-craft, instead of landing with the other three, used its ramjet engines to explore the planet from the upper atmosphere.

They had selected the long, narrow continent, which, as they would learn, was named Dudak; and they had picked an area of what looked like open farmland, cross-gridded with roads, some thirty kilolances south of a large town. There were, Vandro saw, a small clump of buildings with flat roofs, and several tall smokestacks. It could be the village of a sugar-planting gang. He glanced back and forth between the map made from the aerial photographs to the screen connected with the pickups on the wing-tips, which gave a binocular view of the ground ahead, clear of the retro-fire jet-flames.

If it was a sugar plantation, they got their sugar from something entirely different from the tubers grown on his own world; the crop seemed to be high stuff, for there was a distinct shadow-line between the standing and harvested areas. There was a section already harvested, big enough to set down all three rockets, using the short-field stall- and-drop landing techniques that had been worked out and practiced time after time over the past three years. It was about five hundred lances from the clump of flat-roofed buildings. They were down to two hundred lances, now, with the ramjet engines firing at full thrust. Below, they had been seen. There were vehicles on the roads, and small dots that must be people in the fields; and all were hurrying frantically away from where the shuttle craft were going to come down. As they dropped a bit further, Vandro could see that the people were rea.s.suringly humanoid-erect bipeds, with two visible arms.

"Take control, Lylla. Put her down so that our triangle apex will point toward that village. Over about there," he indicated on the screen. "That should give you enough room."Lylla glanced critically at the indicated area. "With a whole lance to spare, I'd say,"

she said.

"I have confidence in you," Vandro told her. He picked up the hand-phone and called the two shuttles behind him. "Follow us in. Maintain the fifty-lance triangle. Kwalvo, do you hear me? Where are you?"

The pilot of the shuttle that wasn't landing called in, "Kwalvo to Vandro. I hear you easily. I am about three hundred kilolances away now, doing a photo run over what looks like a small industrial city. I'll be over your landing-site in about ten minutes, when you need me for the fireworks."

"Good. Stay about four thousand lances up, when you come in. Be ready to drop lower if the natives prove too hostile for the display, as planned. If it turns out that we need a bombing run, I'll want extreme precision."

"You'll get it," Kwalvo promised.

Yssa Balkadranna flipped the switch on the big screen in front of them to show the feed from the rotating scanner in the nose of the shuttle. "Take a look, Vandro," she called, "There's some kind of aircraft headed toward us from the direction of the village.

I'm not sure, but I think it just took off from there. Can't tell yet whether it intends to be hostile."

"Okay, Yssa. Lylla, put us down." He studied the image on the screen. The plane was a big thing, a low-wing monoplane with twin jets on pods above each wing. It looked like a transport.

Lylla brought the shuttle down, cutting the jets. It b.u.mped along the field for a few seconds, as the great flaps extended and killed the remaining speed. The other shuttles came in right behind it, taking their places on the ground in an equilateral triangle.

Vandro unstrapped himself from his seat, taking his pistol belt and putting it on. The others were freeing themselves; Yssa slung a belt of hand-grenades, and Zandro checked the clip on an auto-carbine and then slung it over his shoulder.

At the last second, Vandro picked up the microphone. "Okay, we're going out," he said. "Now, excuse me for repeating this, but I'd rather be neurotically redundant than miss something. We simply can't have this first contact with Our Sister's Children ruined by bloodshed. So I must go beyond 'don't start anything' to 'don't use your weapons unless it looks like they're going to ma.s.sacre us,' and then, let me add, shoot to disable rather than kill."

The native aircraft, a broad-winged, coppery gleaming contraption, was circling over them at about a hundred and fifty lances. As Vandro watched it on his screen, it opened a pair of doors in its belly; a maneuver that reminded him of the explosive-dropping aircraft of the Rim Country oil wars of the Fifth Century. He wondered what sort of explosives these people used, and how badly it could damage the t.i.tanium skin of the shuttle-craft. If it damaged the exterior heat-s.h.i.+eld, it would not prevent the shuttles from taking off and rejoining the mother s.h.i.+p in orbit, so that wasn't an immediate worry.

Although the carbon-filament skin would have to be repaired before they could come back down again.

"Dantro, Karnna; cancel that instruction to exit now. Keep your airlocks closed," he yelled into the microphone. "Kwalvo! Hurry on over here. I think we need your demonstration of moral superiority about now. There's a plane buzzing us that needs impressing.""Kwalvo to Vandro; on our way. Watch for us at about two hundred lances over that airplane."

Rylla was operating the lateral pickup manually, and now she rotated it to keep the circling airplane centered. It seemed undecided as to what to do. Either waiting for some first move by them, Vandro thought, or waiting for some word from a distant decision- maker. Vandro switched on the exterior microphones, and from them came two distinct noises; the sound of the big four-jet aircraft overhead, and a high, intermittent screaming that might be some sort of alarm siren from the village.

Then, suddenly, came a third sound that drowned out everything else-a deafening, ear-battering roar, like a great waterfall, a huge blast furnace, and a continuous thunderstorm combined. A wide ribbon of red smoke appeared in the cloud-fleeced blue sky, curving in a full circle around the three grounded shuttlecraft. The copper-glistening aircraft banked to the left, turned quickly, and shot away out of the circle.

"Smart boy," Vandro commented. "He's never seen anything like that before, and has no idea of what it is. And, whatever it turns out to be, he doesn't want any part of it. All right, let's open her up and go outside."

They rotated the airlock open and extended the elevator. The other two shuttle-craft were also unb.u.t.toning; they could see Dantro and Karnna and their co-pilots, also armed and laden with equipment, come dropping down the seven-lance descent to the ground.

"That ought to impress any native who's watching," Vandro said, climbing sedately into the elevator. "It impresses me."

High overhead, Kwalvo Yarragarro was making another circle, a hundred lances higher, and five hundred wider; but this time without the noise. When he had finished that, he changed his smoke from red to blue and slashed a straight line across, and then bisected it directly overhead with another. From the mother s.h.i.+p, far off in orbit, it would be visible telescopically as two smears of red with a smear of blue sandwiched between.

But to an observer directly at zenith, it would be a pair of red circles center-crossed in blue. That was the impression Vandro wanted to create-that the observer, with a whole s.p.a.ce-fleet, was directly overhead.

The earth had been blackened and burned in patches around the three landing-craft, where the down-thrusting ramjets had scorched a landing-path. The ground under the s.h.i.+ps was littered with bits of vegetable-matter and covered with the stubble of the thick, pulpy plants that had recently been harvested from it. Some patches were still burning.

Vandro and those with him stomped over to these patches, breathing thanks for their ankle-high boots and leather trousers. They used portable fire extinguishers on the burning places, and then stamped and kicked out any places that looked like they might be still smoldering. Then the crews of the three s.h.i.+ps met at the center of the triangle and set down their cases of equipment.

There was a piece of native farm machinery sitting just about in the center-a wheeled thing with a big fork, which looked as though it had been used to gather and bundle whatever the crop was. Vandro made up a few inventive new cursewords, when he suddenly realized that he had completely missed seeing the gadget from the air, and they must have missed it by no more than a couple of arm-widths.

A strip a hundred lances wide had already been cut through the field, extending from a distant clump of tall, tree-like fauna, past the s.h.i.+ps, to the clump of buildings and smokestacks some three hundred lances in front of them. On either side, the crops werestill standing. The plant looked like giant club-mosses, stalks two lances high and thick as a man's leg at the knee. Karnna picked up a half-burned bit of plant-detritus from the ground and sniffed at it. "Doesn't smell as though it had a very high sugar content" she said. "Obviously carbon-oxygen-hydrogen, though. They might use the stuff for roughage for whatever kinds of herbivorous animals they raise, or-"

"Here they come!" Yssa said, pointing across the fields, then raising her binoculars.

There were four large trucks with boxy bodies, that looked like they were probably armed and armored, and ahead of them came two small open cars, each carrying half a dozen humanoid figures. One of the cars came on toward the grounded shuttle-craft, the other, and the trucks, began circling slowly around, at about two hundred lances. They didn't make any attempt to preserve any of the crop, but just plowed it under their wide wheels as they went.

Yssa had her gla.s.ses trained on the approaching open car. "Oh! They're horrible!" she cried. "They have no fur; just some hideous stuff like gra.s.s on their heads. And they're covered with clothing, all over, from what I can tell. The little bits of skin that are sticking out are green-gray, like a swamp-eel's."

"Restrain yourself, Yssa," Karnna said. "Remember, we probably look just as hideous to them."

"Ridiculous, Karnna," Yssa said. "Why, just look at them, and then look at us. Any unbiased person would have to admit that we're rather handsome people, and they're monsters."