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Ebook has 194 lines and 11160 words, and 4 pages

This, Lord admitted to himself, was conquest, by whatever innocuous name it passed. But was it for good or evil? In the first shock of reality, Martin Lord had doubted himself and the destiny of the Federation. But only for a moment. What he saw was good--he had been taught to believe that--because the Federation was perfection.

But the doubt, like a cancer, fed and grew in the darkness of Lord's soul.

"We've burned out a relay," Don Howard reported.

"Have we replacements?" Lord asked.

"It's no problem to fix. But repairs would be easier if we could set the ship down somewhere."

Lord glanced at the unknown sun and three satellite planets which were plotted electronically on his cabin scanning screen. His pulse leaped with sudden excitement. This was his first--and last--chance for adventure, the only interstellar flight he would command in his lifetime. When he returned to earth, he would be chained for the rest of his days to a desk job, submerged in a sea of statistical tables and financial statements.

"Run an atmosphere analysis on those three worlds, Mr. Howard," he said softly.

Driven by its auxiliary nuclear power unit, the ship moved closer to the new solar system. In half an hour Don Howard brought Lord the lab report. Two of the planets were enveloped in methane, but the third had an earth-normal atmosphere. Lord gave the order for a landing, his voice pulsing with poorly concealed, boyish pleasure.

Over the circle of scorched earth Lord heard the sound of their voices. For a fleeting second the words seemed to make sense--a clear, unmistakable welcome to the new world.

But communication was inconceivable. This planet was far beyond the fringe of the Federation. Lord was letting his imagination run away with him.

He flung out his arms in a universally accepted gesture of open-handed friendship. At once the talk of the natives ceased. They stood waiting silently on the burned ground while the men unwound the landing ladder.

Lord made the initial contact himself. The techniques which he had learned in the University of Commerce proved enormously successful. Within ten minutes rapport was established; in twenty the natives had agreed to submit to the linguistic machines. Lord had read accounts of other trailblazing commercial expeditions; and he knew he was establishing a record for speed of negotiation.

The savages were quite unfrightened as the electrodes were fastened to their skulls, entirely undisturbed by the whir of the machine. In less than an hour they were able to use the common language of the Federation. Another record; most species needed a week's indoctrination.

Every new development suggested that these half-naked primitives--with no machine civilization, no cities, no form of space flight--had an intellectual potential superior to man's. The first question asked by one of the broad-shouldered savages underscored that conclusion.

"Have you come to our world as colonists?"

No mumbo-jumbo of superstition, no awe of strangers who had suddenly descended upon them from the sky. Lord answered, "We landed in order to repair our ship, but I hope we can make a trade treaty with your government."

For a moment the six men consulted among themselves with a silent exchange of glances. Then one of them smiled and said, "You must visit our villages and explain the idea of trade to our people."

"Of course," Lord agreed. "If you could serve as interpreters--"

"Our people can learn your language as rapidly as we have, if we can borrow your language machine for a time."

Lord frowned. "It's a rather complex device, and I'm not sure--you see, if something went wrong, you might do a great deal of harm."

"We would use it just as you did; we saw everything you turned to make it run." One of the golden-skinned primitives made a demonstration, turning the console of dials with the ease and familiarity of a semantic expert. Again Lord was impressed by their intelligence--and vaguely frightened.

"You could call this the first trade exchange between your world and ours," another savage added. "Give us the machine; we'll send you fresh food from the village."

The argument was logical and eventually the natives had their way. Perhaps it was Ann Howard's intervention that decided the point. She vehemently disapproved; a gift of techniques should be withheld until she had examined their cultural traditions. But Martin Lord was a trade agent, and he had no intention of allowing his mission to be wrecked by the ephemeral doubts of a teacher. Here at the onset was the time to make it clear that he was in command. He gave the natives the machine.

As the six men trudged across the burned earth carrying the heavy apparatus easily on their shoulders, Lord wondered if either he or Ann Howard had much to do with the negotiations. He had an unpleasant feeling that, from the very beginning, the natives had been in complete control of the situation.

Less than an hour after the six men had departed, a band of natives emerged from the forest bearing gifts of food--straw baskets heaped with fruit, fresh meat wrapped in grass mats, hampers of bread, enormous pottery jars filled with a sweet, cold, milky liquid. Something very close to the miraculous had occurred. Every native had learned to use the Federation language.

The milky drink proved mildly intoxicating--yet different from the stimulants used in the Federation. Lord drank a long draught from a mug brought him by one of the women. The effect was immediate. He felt no dulling of his reason, however; no loss of muscular control, but instead a stealthy relaxation of mental strain joined with a satisfying sense of physical well-being. A subtle shifting in prospective, in accepted values.

The savage feast, which grew steadily more boisterous, Lord would have called an orgy under other circumstances. The word did occur to him, but it seemed fantastically inapplicable. Normally the behavior of his men would have demanded the severest kind of disciplinary action. But here the old code of rules simply didn't apply and he didn't interfere with their enjoyment.

The afternoon sun blazed in the western sky; heat in shimmering waves hung over the clearing. Lord went into the ship and stripped off his uniform; somehow the glittering insignia, the ornamental braid, the stiff collar--designed to be impressive symbols of authority--seemed garish and out of place. Lord put on the shorts which he wore when he exercised in the capsule gym aboard ship.

Outside again, he found that most of the men had done the same thing. The sun felt warm on his skin; the air was comfortably balmy, entirely free of the swarms of flies and other insects which made other newly contacted frontier worlds so rugged.

As he stood in the shelter of the landing ladder and sipped a second mug of the white liquor, Lord became slowly aware of something else. Divested of their distinguishing uniforms, he and his crew seemed puny and ill-fed beside the natives. If physique were any index to the sophistication of a culture--but that was a ridiculous generalization!

He saw Ann Howard coming toward him through the crowd--stern-faced, hard-jawed, stiffly dignified in her uniform. The other women among the crew had put on their lightest dress, but not Ann. Lord was in no frame of mind, just then, to endure an interview with her. He knew precisely what she would say; Ann was a kind of walking encyclopedia of the conventions.

Lord slid out of sight in the shadow of the ship, but Ann had seen him. He turned blindly into the forest, running along the path toward the village.

In a fern-banked glen beside the miniature waterfall he had met Niaga.

No woman he had ever known seemed so breathtakingly beautiful. Her skin had been caressed by a lifetime's freedom in the sun; her long, dark hair had the sheen of polished ebony; and in the firm, healthy curves of her body he saw the sensuous grace of a Venus or an Aphrodite.

She stood up slowly and faced him, smiling; a bright shaft of sunlight fell on the liquid bow of her lips. "I am Niaga," she said. "You must be one of the men who came on the ship."

"Martin Lord," he answered huskily. "I'm the trade agent in command."

"I am honored." Impulsively she took the garland of flowers which she had been making and put it around his neck. When she came close, the subtle perfume of her hair was unmistakable--like the smell of pine needles on a mountain trail; new grass during a spring rain; or the crisp, winter air after a fall of snow. Perfume sharply symbolic of freedom, heady and intoxicating, numbing his mind with the ghosts of half-remembered dreams.

"I was coming to your ship with the others," she said, "but I stopped here to swim, as I often do. I'm afraid I stayed too long, day-dreaming on the bank; time means so little to us." Shyly she put her hand in his. "But, perhaps, no harm is done, since you are still alone. If you have taken no one else, will I do?"

"I--I don't understand."

"You are strangers; we want you to feel welcome."

"Niaga, people don't--that is--" He floundered badly. Intellectually he knew he could not apply the code of his culture to hers; emotionally it was a difficult concept to accept. If his standards were invalid, his definitions might be, too. Perhaps this society was no more primitive than--No! A mature people would always develop more or less the same mechanical techniques, and these people had nothing remotely like a machine.

"You sent us a gift," she said. "It is only proper for us to return the kindness."

"You have made a rather miraculous use of the language machine in a remarkably short period of time."

"We applied it to everyone in the village. We knew it would help your people feel at ease, if we could talk together in a common tongue."

"You go to great pains to welcome a shipload of strangers."

"Naturally. Consideration for others is the first law of humanity." After a pause, she added very slowly, with her eyes fixed on his, "Mr. Lord, do you plan to make a colony here?"

"Eventually. After we repair the ship, I hope to negotiate a trade treaty with your government."

"But you don't intend to stay here yourself?"

"I couldn't."

"Have we failed in our welcome? Is there something more--"

"No, Niaga, nothing like that. I find your world very--very beautiful." The word very inadequately expressed what he really felt. "But I'm not free to make the choice."

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