The attendant buildings were doubtless barns or sheds. Trophies hung on them too. The beasts in the corral looked, and probably weren’t, mammalian. Two species were vaguely reminiscent of horses and oxen, a third of sheep. They were not many, could not be the whole support of the dwellers here. The “dovecotes” held ornithoids as big as turkeys, which were not penned but were prevented from leaving the area by three hawklike guardians. “Watchdogs,” Turekian said of those. “No, watchfalcons.” They swooped about, perturbed at the invasion.
Yukiko’s voice came wistful from a receiver behind his ear: “Can I join you?”
“Stand by the guns,” Webner answered. “We have yet to meet the owners of this place.”
“Huh?” Turekian said. “Why, they’re gone. Skedaddled when they saw us coming.”
“Timid?” Yukiko asked. “That doesn’t fit with their being eager hunters.”
“On the contrary, I imagine they’re pretty scrappy,” Turekian said. “They jumped to the conclusion we must be hostile, because they wouldn’t enter somebody else’s land uninvited unless they felt that way. Our powers being unknown, and they having wives and kiddies to worry about, they prudently took off. I expect the fighting males—or whatever they’ve got—will be back soon.”
“What are you talking about?” Webner inquired.
“Why,…the locals.” Turekian blinked at him. “You saw them.”
“Those giant ornithoids? Nonsense.”
“Hoy? They came right out of the house there!”
“Domestic animals.” Webner’s hatchet features drew tight. “I don’t deny we confront a puzzle here.”
“We always do,” Yukiko put in softly.
Webner nodded. “True. However, facts and logic solve puzzles. Let’s not complicate our task with pseudoproblems. Whatever they are, the flyers we saw leave cannot be the sophonts. On a planet as Earthlike as this, aviform intelligence is impossible.”
He straightened. “I suspect the inhabitants have barricaded themselves,” he finished. “Well go closer and make pacific gestures.”
“Which could be misunderstood,” Turekian said dubiously. “An arrow or javelin can kill you just as dead as a blaster.”
“Cover us, Yukiko,” Webner ordered. “Follow me, Aram. If you have the nerve.”
He stalked forward, under the eyes of the girl. Turekian cursed and joined him in haste.
They were near the door when a shadow fell over them. They whirled and stared upward. Yukiko’s indrawn breath hissed from their receivers.
Aloft hovered one of the great ornithoids. Sunlight struck through its outermost pinions, turning them golden. Otherwise it showed stormcloud-dark. Down the wind stooped a second.
The sight was terrifying. Only later did the humans realize it was magnificent. Those wings spanned six meters. A muzzle full of sharp white fangs gaped before them. Two legs the length and well-nigh the thickness of a man’s arms reached crooked talons between them. At their angles grew claws. In thrust after thrust, they hurled the creature at torpedo speed. Air whistled and thundered.
Their guns leaped into the men’s hands. “Don’t shoot!” Yukiko’s cry came as if from very far away.
The splendid monster was almost upon them. Fire speared from Webner’s weapon. At the same instant, the animal braked—a turning of quills, a crack and gust in their faces—and rushed back upward, two meters short of impact.
Turekian’s gaze stamped a picture on his brain which he would study over and over and over. The unknown was feathered, surely warm-blooded, but no bird. A keelbone like a ship’s prow jutted beneath a strong neck. The head was blunt-nosed, lacked external ears; fantastically, Turekian saw that the predator mouth had lips. Tongue and palate were purple. Two big golden eyes stabbed at him, burned at him. A crest of black-tipped white plumage rose stiffly above, a control surface and protection for the backward-bulging skull. The fan-shaped tail bore the same colors. The body was mahogany, the naked legs and claws yellow.
Webner’s shot hit amidst the left-side quills. Smoke streamed after the flameburst. The creature uttered a high-pitched yell, lurched, and threshed in retreat. The damage wasn’t permanent, had likely caused no pain, but now that wing was only half-useful.
Turekian thus had time to see three slits in parallel on the body. He had time to think there must be three more on the other side. They weirdly resembled gills. As the wings lifted, he saw them drawn wide, a triple yawn; as the downstroke began, he glimpsed them being forced shut.
Then he had cast himself against Webner. “Drop that, you clot-brain!” he yelled. He seized the xenologist’s gun wrist. They wrestled. He forced the fingers apart. Meanwhile the wounded ornithoid struggled back to its companion. They flapped off.
“What’re you doing?” Webner grabbed at Turekian.
The pilot pushed him away, brutally hard. He fell. Turekian snatched forth his magnifier.
Treetops cut off his view. He let the instrument drop. “Too late,” he groaned. “Thanks to you.”
Webner climbed erect, pale and shaken by rage. “Have you gone heisenberg?” he gasped. “I’m your commander!”
“You’re maybe fit to command plastic ducks in a bathtub,” Turekian said. “Firing on a native!”
Webner was too taken aback to reply.
“And you capped it by spoiling my chance for a good look at Number Two. I think I spotted a harness on him, holding what might be a weapon, but I’m not sure.” Turekian spat.
“Aram, Vaughn,” Yukiko pleaded from the boat.
An instant longer, the men bristled and glared. Then Webner drew breath, shrugged, and said in a crackly voice: “I suppose it’s incumbent on me to put things on a reasonable basis, if you’re incapable of that.” He paused. “Behave yourself and I’ll excuse your conduct as being due to excitement. Else I’ll have to recommend you be relieved from further initial-contact duty.”
“I be relieved—?” Turekian barely checked his fist, and kept it balled. His breath rasped.
“Hadn’t you better check the house?” Yukiko asked.
The knowledge that something, anything, might lurk behind yonder walls restored them to a measure of coolness.
Save for livestock, the steading was deserted.
Rather than offend the dwellers by blasting down their barred door, the searchers went through a window on grav units. They found just one or two rooms on each story. Evidently the people valued ample floor space and high ceilings above privacy. Connection up and down was by circular staircases whose short steps seemed at variance with this. Decoration was austere and nonrepresentational. Furniture consisted mainly of benches and tables. Nothing like a bed or an o-futon was found. Did the indigenes sleep, if they did, sitting or standing? Quite possibly. Many species can lock the joints of their limbs at will.
Stored food bore out the idea of carnivorousness. Tools, weapons, utensils, fabrics were abundant, well made, neatly put away. They confirmed an Iron Age technology, more or less equivalent to that of Earth’s Classical civilization. Exceptions occurred: for example, a few books, seemingly printed from hand-set type. How avidly those pages were ransacked! But the only illustrations were diagrams suitable to a geometry text in one case and a stonemason’s manual in another. Did this culture taboo pictures of its members, or had the boat merely chanced on a home which possessed none?
The layout and contents of the house, and of the sheds when these were examined, gave scant clues. Nobody had expected better. Imagine yourself a nonhuman xenologist, visiting Earth before man went into space. What could you deduce from the residences and a few household items belonging to, say, a European, an Eskimo, a Congo pygmy, and a Japanese peasant? You might have wondered if the owners were of the same genus.
In time you could learn more. Turekian doubted that time would be given. He set Webner in a cold fury by his nagging to finish the survey and get back to the boat At length the chief gave in. “Not that I don’t plan a detailed study, mind you,” he said. Scornf
ully: “Still, I suppose we can hold a conference, and I’ll try to calm your fears.”
After you had been out, the air in the craft smelled dead and the view in the screens looked dull. Turekian took a pipe from his pocket. “No,” Webner told him.
“What?” The pilot was bemused.
“I won’t have that foul thing in this crowded cabin.”
“I don’t mind,” Yukiko said.
“I do,” Webner replied, “and while we’re down, I’m your captain.”
Turekian reddened and obeyed. Discipline in space is steel hard, a matter of survival. A good leader gives it a soft sheath. Yukiko’s eyes reproached Webner; her fingers dropped to rest on the pilot’s arm. The xenologist saw. His mouth twitched sideways before he pinched it together.
“We’re in trouble,” Turekian said. “The sooner we haul mass out of here, the happier our insurance carriers will be.”
“Nonsense,” Webner snapped. “If anything, our problem is that we’ve terrified the dwellers. They may take days to send even a scout.”
“They’ve already sent two. You had to shoot at them.”
“I shot at a dangerous animal. Didn’t you see those talons, those fangs? And a buffet from a wing that big—ignoring the claws on it—could break your neck.”
Webner’s gaze sought Yukiko’s. He mainly addressed her: “Granted, they must be domesticated. I suspect they’re used in the hunt, flown at game like hawks though working in packs like hounds. Conceivably the pair we encountered were, ah, sicced onto us from afar. But that they themselves are sophonts—out of the question.”
Her murmur was uneven. “How can you be sure?”
Webner leaned back, bridged his fingers, and grew calmer while he lectured: “You realize the basic principle. All organisms make biological sense in their particular environments, or they become extinct. Reasoners are no exception—and are, furthermore, descended from nonreasoners which adapted to environments that had never been artificially modified.
“On nonterrestroid worlds, they can be quite outrÈ by our standards, since they developed under unearthly conditions. On an essentially terrestroid planet, evolution basically parallels our own because it must. True, you get considerable variation. Like, say, hexapodal vertebrates liberating the forelimbs to grow hands and becoming centauroids, as on Woden. That’s because the ancestral chordates were hexapods. On this world, you can see for yourself the higher animals are four-limbed.
“A brain capable of designing artifacts such as we observe here is useless without some equivalent of hands. Nature would never produce it. Therefore the inhabitants are bound to be bipeds, however different from us in detail. A foot which must double as a hand, and vice versa, would be too grossly inefficient in either function. Natural selection would weed out any mutants of that tendency, fast, long before intelligence could evolve.
“What do those ornithoids have in the way of hands?” He smiled his tight little smile.
“The claws on their wings?” Yukiko asked shyly.
“‘Fraid not,” Turekian said. “I got a fair look. They can grasp, sort of, but aren’t built for manipulation.”
“You saw how the fledgling uses them to cling to the parent,” Webner stated. “Perhaps it climbs trees also. Earth has a bird with similar structures, the hoactzin. It loses them in adulthood. Here they may become extra weapons for the mature animal.”
“The feet.” Turekian scowled. “Two opposable digits flanking three straight ones. Could serve as hands.”
“Then how does the creature get about on the ground?” Webner retorted. “Can’t forge a tool in midair, you know, let alone dig ore and erect stone houses.”
He wagged a finger. “Another, more fundamental point,” he went on. “Flyers are too limited in mass. True, the gravity’s weaker than on Earth, but air pressure’s lower. Thus admissible wing loadings are about the same. The biggest birds that ever lumbered into Terrestrial skies weighed some fifteen kilos. Nothing larger could get aloft. Metabolism simply can’t supply the power required. We established aboard ship, from specimens, that local biochemistry is close kin to our type. Hence it is not possible for those ornithoids to outweigh a maximal vulture. They’re big, yes, and formidable. Nevertheless, that size has to be mostly feathers, hollow bones—spidery, kitelike skeletons anchoring thin flesh.
“Aram, you hefted several items today, such as a stone pot. Or consider one of the buckets, presumably used to bring water up from the river. What would you say the greatest weight is?”
Turekian scratched in his beard. “Maybe twenty kilos,” he answered reluctantly.
“There! No flyer could lift that. It was always superstition about eagles stealing lambs or babies. They weren’t able to. The ornithoids are similarly handicapped. Who’d make utensils he can’t carry?”
“M-m-m,” Turekian growled rather than hummed. Webner pressed the attack:
“The mass of any flyer on a terrestroid planet is insufficient to include a big enough brain for true intelligence. The purely animal functions require virtually all those cells. Birds have at least lightened their burden, permitting a little more brain, by changing jaws to beaks. So have those ornithoids you called ‘watchfalcons.’ The big fellows have not.”
He hesitated. “In fact,” he said slowly, “I doubt if they can even be considered bright animals. They’re likely stupid…and vicious. If we’re set on again, we need have no compunctions about destroying them.”
“Were you going to?” Yukiko whispered. “Couldn’t he, she, it simply have been coming down for a quick, close look at you—unarmed as a peace gesture?”
“If intelligent, yes,” Webner said. “If not, as I’ve proven to be the case, positively no. I saved us some nasty wounds. Perhaps I saved a life.”
“The dwellers might object if we shoot at their property,” Turekian said.
“They need only call off their, ah, dogs. In fact, the attack on us may not have been commanded, may have been brute reaction after panic broke the order of the pack.” Webner rose. “Are you satisfied? We’ll make thorough studies till nightfall, then leave gifts, withdraw, hope for a better reception when we see the indigenes have returned.” A television pickup was customary among diplomatic presents of that kind.
Turekian shook his head. “Your logic’s all right, I suppose. But it don’t smell right somehow.”
Webner started for the airlock.
“Me too?” Yukiko requested. “Please?”
“No,” Turekian said. “I’d hate for you to be harmed.”
“We’re in no danger,” she argued. “Our sidearms can handle any flyers that may arrive feeling mean. If we plant sensors around, no walking native can come within bowshot before we know. I feel caged.” She aimed her smile at Webner.
The xenologist thawed. “Why not?” he said. “I can use a levelheaded assistant.” To Turekian: “Man the boat guns yourself if you wish.”
“Like blazes,” the pilot grumbled, and followed them.
He had to admit the leader knew his business. The former cursory search became a shrewd, efficient examination of object after object, measuring, photographing, commenting continuously into a mini-recorder. Yukiko helped. On Survey, everybody must have some knowledge of everybody else’s specialty. But Webner needed just one extra person.
“What can I do?” Turekian asked.
“Move an occasional heavy load,” the other man said. “Keep watch on the forest. Stay out of my way.”
Yukiko was too fascinated by the work to chide him. Turekian rumbled in his throat, stuffed his pipe, and slouched around the grounds alone, blowing furious clouds.
At the corral he gripped a rail and glowered. “You want feeding,” he decided, went into a barn—unlike the house, its door was not secured—and found a haymow and pitchforks which, despite every strangeness of detail, reminded him of a backwoods colony on Hermes that he’d visited once, temporarily primitive because shipping space was taken by items more urgent than modern agro
machines. The farmer had had a daughter…. He consoled himself with memories while he took out a mess of cinnamon-scented red herbage.
“You!”
Webner leaned from an upstairs window. “What’re you about?” he called.
“Those critters are hungry,” Turekian replied. “Listen to ‘em.”
“How do you know what their requirements are? Or the owners’? We’re not here to play God, for your information. We’re here to learn and, maybe, help. Take that stuff back where you got it.”
Turekian swallowed rage—that Yukiko should have heard his humiliation—and complied. Webner was his captain till he regained the blessed sky.
Sky…birds…. He observed the “cotes.” The pseudohawks fluttered about, indignant but too small to tackle him. Were the giant ornithoids kept partly as protection against large ground predators? Turekian studied the flock. Its members dozed, waddled, scratched the dirt, fat and placid, obviously long bred to tameness. Both types lacked the gill-like slits he had noticed….
A shadow. Turekian glanced aloft, snatched for his magnifier. Half a dozen giants were back. The noon sun flamed on their feathers. They were too high for him to see details.
He flipped the controls on his grav unit and made for the house. Webner and Yukiko were on the fifth floor. Turekian arced through a window. He had no eye, now, for the Spartan grace of the room. “They’ve arrived,” he panted. “We better get in the boat quick.”
Webner stepped onto the balcony. “No need,” he said. “I hardly think they’ll attack. If they do, we’re safer here than crossing the yard.”
“Might be smart to close the shutters,” the girl said.
“And the door to this chamber,” Webner agreed. “That’ll stop them. They’ll soon lose patience and wander off—if they attempt anything. Or if they do besiege us, we can shoot our way through them, or at worst relay a call for help via the boat, once Olga‘s again over our horizon.”
Aliens from Analog Page 30
