Naudsonce | Page 2

"Our cannon's a horn," Gofredo said. "I can't see how they're blowing it,
though."
There was a stir to right and left, among the Marines deployed in a

crescent line on either side of the contact team; a metallic clatter as
weapons were checked. A shadow fell in front of them as a combat-car
moved into position above.
"What do you suppose it means?" Meillard wondered.
"Terrans, go home." He drew a frown from Meillard with the
suggestion. "Maybe it's supposed to intimidate us."
"They're probably doing it to encourage themselves," Anna de Jong, the
psychologist, said. "I'll bet they're really scared stiff."
"I see how they're blowing it," Gofredo said. "The man who's walking
behind it has a hand-bellows." He raised his voice. "Fix bayonets!
These people don't know anything about rifles, but they know what
spears are. They have some of their own."
So they had. The six who walked in the lead were unarmed, unless the
thing one of them carried was a spear. So, it seemed, were the
horn-bearers. Behind them, however, in an open-order skirmish-line,
came fifty-odd with weapons. Most of them had spears, the points
glinting redly. Bronze, with a high copper content. A few had bows.
They came slowly; details became more plainly visible.
The leader wore a long yellow robe; the thing in his hand was a
bronze-headed staff. Three of his companions also wore robes; the
other two were bare-legged in short tunics. The horn-bearers wore
either robes or tunics; the spearmen and bowmen behind either wore
tunics or were naked except for breechclouts. All wore sandals. They
were red-brown in color, completely hairless; they had long necks,
almost chinless lower jaws, and fleshy, beaklike noses that gave them
an avian appearance which was heightened by red crests, like roosters'
combs, on the tops of their heads.
"Well, aren't they something to see?" Lillian Ransby, the linguist asked.
"I wonder how we look to them," Paul Meillard said.

That was something to wonder about, too. The differences between one
and another of the Terrans must puzzle them. Paul Meillard, as close to
being a pure Negro as anybody in the Seventh Century of the Atomic
Era was to being pure anything. Lillian Ransby, almost ash-blond.
Major Gofredo, barely over the minimum Service height requirement;
his name was Old Terran Spanish, but his ancestry must have been
Polynesian, Amerind and Mongolian. Karl Dorver, the sociographer,
six feet six, with red hair. Bennet Fayon, the biologist and physiologist,
plump, pink-faced and balding. Willi Schallenmacher, with a bushy
black beard....
They didn't have any ears, he noticed, and then he was taking stock of
the things they wore and carried. Belts, with pouches, and knives with
flat bronze blades and riveted handles. Three of the delegation had
small flutes hung by cords around their necks, and a fourth had a reed
Pan-pipe. No shields, and no swords; that was good. Swords and
shields mean organized warfare, possibly a warrior-caste. This crowd
weren't warriors. The spearmen and bowmen weren't arrayed for battle,
but for a drive-hunt, with the bows behind the spears to stop anything
that broke through the line.
"All right; let's go meet them." The querulous, uncertain note was gone
from Meillard's voice; he knew what to do and how to do it.
* * * * *
Gofredo called to the Marines to stand fast. Then they were advancing
to meet the natives, and when they were twenty feet apart, both groups
halted. The horn stopped blowing. The one in the yellow robe lifted his
staff and said something that sounded like,
"Tweedle-eedle-oodly-eenk."
The horn, he saw, was made of strips of leather, wound spirally and
coated with some kind of varnish. Everything these people had was
carefully and finely made. An old culture, but a static one. Probably
tradition-bound as all get-out.
Meillard was raising his hands; solemnly he addressed the natives:

"'Twas brillig and the slithy toves were whooping it up in the Malemute
Saloon, and the kid that handled the music box did gyre and gimble in
the wabe, and back of the bar in a solo game all mimsy were the
borogoves, and the mome raths outgabe the lady that's known as Lou."
That was supposed to show them that we, too, have a spoken language,
to prove that their language and ours were mutually incomprehensible,
and to demonstrate the need for devising a means of communication.
At least that was what the book said. It demonstrated nothing of the sort
to this crowd. It scared them. The dignitary with the staff twittered
excitedly. One of his companions agreed with him at length. Another
started to reach for his knife, then remembered his manners. The
bellowsman pumped a few blasts on the horn.
"What do you think of the language?" he