The Galaxy Primes | Page 5

call me
'Brownie'."
"I see why they would. It fits like a coat of lacquer."
It did. Her hair was a dark, lustrous brown, as were her eyebrows. Her
eyes were brown. Her skin, too--her dark red playsuit left little to the
imagination--was a rich and even brown. Originally fairly dark, it had

been tanned to a more-than-fashionable depth of color by naked
sun-bathing and by practically-naked outdoor sports. A couple of
inches shorter than the green-haired girl, she too had a figure to make
any sculptor drool.
"I'm to be Dr. Jim's assistant. I have a thousand tapes, more or less, to
study, too. It'll be quite a while, I'm afraid, before I can be of much use,
but I'll do the best I can."
"If we had hit Alpha Centauri that arrangement would have been good,
but as we are, it isn't." Garlock frowned in thought, his heavy black
eyebrows almost meeting above his finely-chiseled aquiline nose.
"Since neither Jim nor I need an assistant any more than we need tails,
it was designed to give you girls something to do. But out here, lost,
there's work for a dozen trained specialists and there are only four of us.
So we shouldn't duplicate effort. Right? You first, Belle."
"Are you asking me or telling me?" she asked. "And that's a fair
question. Don't read anything into it that isn't there. With your attitude,
I want information."
"I am asking you," he replied, carefully. "For your information, when I
know what should be done, I give orders. When I don't know, as now, I
ask advice. If I like it, I follow it. Fair enough?"
"Fair enough. We're apt to need any number of specialists."
"Lola?"
"Of course we shouldn't duplicate. What shall I study?"
"That's what we must figure out. We can't do it exactly, of course; all
we can do now is to set up a rough scheme. Jim's job is the only one
that's definite. He'll have to work full time on nebular configurations. If
we hit inhabited planets he'll have to add their star-charts to his own.
That leaves three of us to do all the other work of a survey. Ideally, we
would cover all the factors that would be of use in getting us back to
Tellus, but since we don't know what those factors are.... Found out

anything yet, Jim?"
"A little. Tellus-type planet, apparently strictly so. Oceans and
continents. Lots of inhabitants--farms, villages, all sizes of cities. Not
close enough to say definitely, but inhabitants seem to be humanoid, if
not human."
"Hold her here. Besides astronomy, which is all yours, what do we
need most?"
"We should have enough to classify planets and inhabitants, so as to
chart a space-trend if there is any. I'd say the most important ones
would be geology, stratigraphy, paleontology, oceanography, xenology,
anthropology, ethnology, vertebrate biology, botany, and at least some
ecology."
"That's about the list I was afraid of. But there are only three of us. The
fields you mention number much more."
"Each of you will have to be a lot of specialists in one, then. I'd say the
best split would be planetology, xenology, and anthropology--each, of
course, stretched all out of shape to cover dozens of related and
non-related specialties."
"Good enough. Xenology, of course, is mine. Contacts, liaison, politics,
correlation, and so on, as well as studying the non-human life
forms--including as many lower animals and plants as possible. I'll
make a stab at it. Now, Belle, since you're a Prime and Lola's an
Operator, you get the next toughest job. Planetography."
"Why not?" Belle smiled and began to act as one of the party. "All I
know about it is a hazy idea of what the word means, but I'll start
studying as soon as we get squared away."
"Thanks. That leaves anthropology to you, Lola. Besides, that's your
line, isn't it?"
"Yes. Sociological Anthropology. I have my M.S. in it, and am--was, I

mean--working for my Ph.D. But as Jim said, it isn't only the one
specialty. You want me, I take it, to cover humanoid races, too?"
"Check. You and Jim both, then, will know what you're doing, while
Belle and I are trying to play ours by ear."
"Where do we draw the line between humanoid and non-human?"
"In case of doubt we'll confer. That covers it as much as we can, I think.
Take us down, Jim--and be on your toes to take evasive action fast."
The ship dropped rapidly toward an airport just outside a fairly large
city. Fifty thousand--forty thousand--thirty thousand feet.
"Calling strange spaceship--you must be a spaceship, in spite of your
tremendous, hitherto-considered-impossible mass--" a thought
impinged on all four Tellurian minds, "do you read me?"
"I read you clearly. This is the Tellurian