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-branded 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 Me 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 JrOm 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 herring-bone 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’cdmmon 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 aa 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 chief’s 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 Me 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 chief’s 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 Don-dragmer’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 hell 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, hell 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 Barlen-na 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 Barlefm&n. 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 toward, 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. AM 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 carioe 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-jcahoe; 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 was sighted.