Dusty Zebra : And Other Stories

Courtesy

The serum was no good. The labels told the story.

Dr. James H. Morgan took his glasses off and wiped them carefully, cold terror clutching at his innards. He put the spectacles back on, probing at them with a thick, blunt finger to settle them into correct position. Then he took another look. He had been right the first time. The date on the serum consignment was a good ten years too old.

He wheeled slowly, lumbered a few ponderous steps to the tent flap and stood there, squat body framed in the triangular entrance, pudgy hands gripping the canvas on either side.

Outside, the fantastic lichen moors stretched to gray and bleak horizons. The setting sun was a dull red glow in the west—and to the east, the doctor knew, night already was beginning to close in, with that veil of purplish light that seemed to fall like a curtain upon the land and billow rapidly across it.

A chill wind blew out of the east, already touched with the frigidity of night, and twitched the canvas beneath the doctor’s fingers.

“Ah, yes,” said Dr. Morgan, “the merry moors of Landro.”

A lonely place, he told himself. Not lonely only in its barrenness nor in its alien wildness, but with an ingrained loneliness that could drive a man mad if he were left alone with it.

Like a great cemetery, he thought, an empty place of dead. And yet without the cemetery’s close association, without the tenderness and the inevitability of a cemetery. For a cemetery held in scared trust the husks of those who once had lived and this place was an emptiness that held no memory at all.

But not for long, said Dr. Morgan. Not for long now.

He stood looking at the barren slope that rose above the camp and he decided that it would make an eminently satisfactory cemetery.

All places looked alike. That was the trouble. You couldn’t tell one place from another. There were no trees and there were no bushes, just a fuzzy-looking scrub that grew here and there, clothing the naked land in splotches, like the ragged coat that a beggar wears.

Benny Falkner stopped on the path as it topped the rise and stood rigid with the fear that was mounting in him. Fear of the coming night and of its bitter cold, fear of the silent hills and the shadowed swales, and the more distant and yet more terrible fear of the little natives that might this very moment be skulking on the hillside.

He put up his arm and wiped the sweat off his brow with his tattered sleeve. He shouldn’t have been sweating, he told himself, for it was chilly now and getting colder by the minute. In another hour or two it would be cold enough to freeze a man unprotected in the open.

He fought down the terror that choked his throat and set his teeth a-chatter and for an instant stood stock-still to convince himself he was not panic-stricken.

He had been going east and that meant he must go west to reach the camp again. Although the catch was that he couldn’t be absolutely sure he had been going east all the time—he might have trended north a little or even wandered south. But the deviation couldn’t have been enough, he was sure, to throw him so far off that he could not spot the camp by returning straight into the west.

Sometime soon he should sight the smoke of the Earthmen’s camp. Any ridge, the next ridge, each succeeding hummock in the winding trail, he had assured himself, would bring him upon the camp itself. He would reach higher ground and there the camp would be, spread out in front of him, with the semicircle of white canvas gleaming in the fading light and the thin trail of smoke rising from the larger cook tent where Bat Ears Brady would be bellowing one of his obscene songs.

But that had been an hour ago when the sun still stood a good two hands high. He remembered now, standing on the ridge-top, that he had been a little nervous, but not really apprehensive. It had been unthinkable, then, that a man could get himself lost in an hour’s walk out of camp.

Now the sun was gone and the cold was creeping in and the wind had a lonely sound he had not noticed when the light was good.

One more rise, he decided. One more ridge, and if that is not the one, I’ll give up until morning. Find a sheltered place somewhere, a rock face of some sort that will give me some protection and reflect a campfire’s heat—if I can find anything with which to make a campfire.

He stood and listened to the wind moaning across the land behind him and it seemed to him there was a whimper in the sound, as if the wind were anxious, that it might be following on his track, sniffing out his scent.

Then he heard the other sound, the soft, padding sound that came up the hill toward him.

Ira Warren sat at his desk and stared accusingly at the paperwork stacked in front of him. Reluctantly he took some of the papers off the stack and laid them on the desk.

That fool Falkner, he thought. I’ve told them and I’ve told them that they have to stick together, that no one must go wandering off alone.

A bunch of babies, he told himself savagely. Just a bunch of drooling kids, fresh out of college, barely dry behind the ears and all hopped up with erudition, but without any common sense. And not a one of them would listen. That was the worst of it, not a one of them would listen.

Someone scratched on the canvas of the tent.

“Come in,” called Warren.

Dr. Morgan entered.

“Good evening, commander,” he said.

“Well,” said Warren irritably, “what now?”

“Why, now,” said Dr. Morgan, sweating just a little. “It’s the matter of the serum.”

“The serum?”

“The serum,” said Dr. Morgan. “It isn’t any good.”

“What do you mean?” asked Warren. “I have troubles, doctor. I can’t play patty-cake with you about your serum.”

“It’s too old,” said Morgan. “A good ten years too old. You can’t use old serum. You see, it might …”

“Stop chattering,” commanded Warren, sharply. “The serum is too old, you say. When did you find this out?”

“Just now.”

“You mean this very moment?”

Morgan nodded miserably.

Warren pushed the papers to one side very carefully and deliberately. He placed his hands on the desk in front of him and made a tent out of his fingers.

“Tell me this, doctor,” said Warren, speaking cautiously, as if he were hunting in his mind for the exact words which he must use, “how long has this expedition been on Landro?”

“Why,” said Morgan, “quite some time, I’d say.” He counted mental fingers. “Six weeks, to be exact.”

“And the serum has been here all that time?”

“Why, of course,” said Morgan. “It was unloaded from the ship at the same time as all the other stuff.”

“It wasn’t left around somewhere, so that you just found it? It was taken to your tent at once?”

“Of course it was,” said Morgan. “The very first thing. I always insist upon that procedure.”

“At any time in the last six weeks, at any given moment in any day of that whole six weeks, you could have inspected the serum and found it was no good? Isn’t that correct, doctor?”

“I suppose I could have,” Morgan admitted. “It was just that…”

“You didn’t have the time,” suggested Warren, sweetly.

“Well, not that,” said Morgan.

“You were, perhaps, too pressed with other interests?”

“Well, not exactly.”

“You were aware that up to a week ago we could have contacted the ship by radio and it could have turned back and took us off. They would have done that if we had let them know about the serum.”

“I know that.”

“And you know now that they’re outside our radio range. We can’t let them know. We can’t call them back. We won’t have any contact with the human race for the next two years.”

“I,” said Morgan, weakly, “I…”

“It’s been lovely knowing you,” Warren told him. “Just how long do you figure it will be before we are dead?”

“It will be another week or so before we’ll become susceptible to the virus,” Morgan said. “It will take, in certain stubborn cases, six weeks or so for it to kill a man.”

“Two months,” said Warren. “Three, at the outside. Would you say that was right, Dr. Morgan?”

“Yes,” said Morgan.

“There is something that I want you to tell me,” Warren said.

“What is it?” Morgan asked.

“Sometime when you have a moment, when you have the time and it is no inconvenience to you, I should like to know just how it feels to kill twenty-five of your fellow men.”

“I,” said Morgan, “I…”

“And yourself, of course,” said Warren. “That makes twenty-six.”

Bat Ears Brady was a character. For more than thirty years now he had been going out on planetary expeditions with Commander Ira Warren, although Warren had not been a commander when it started, but a second looey. Today they were still together, a team of toughened planet-checkers. Although no one on the outside would have known that they were a team, for Warren headed the expedition and Bat Ears cooked for them.

Now Warren set out a bottle on his desk and sent for Bat Ears Brady.

Warren heard him coming for some time before he finally arrived. He’d had a drink or two too many and he was singing most obscenely.

He came through the tent entrance walking stiff and straight, as if there were a chalked line laid out for him to follow. He saw the bottle on the desk and picked it up, disregarding the glasses set beside it. He lowered the bottle by a good three inches and set it back again. Then he took the camp chair that had been placed there for him.

“What’s the matter now?” he demanded. “You never send for me unless there’s something wrong.”

“What,” asked Warren, “have you been drinking?”

Bat Ears hiccupped politely. “Little something I cooked up.”

He regarded Warren balefully. “Use to be we could bring in a little something, but now they say we can’t. What little there is you keep under lock and key. When a man gets thirsty, it sure tests his ingen … ingen … ingen …”

“Ingenuity,” said Warren.

“That’s the word,” said Bat Ears. “That’s the word, exactly.”

“We’re in a jam, Bat Ears,” said Warren.

“We’re always in a jam,” said Bat Ears. “Ain’t like the old days, Ira. Had some he-men then. But now…”

“I know what you mean,” said Warren.

“Kids,” said Bat Ears, spitting on the floor in a gesture of contempt. “Scarcely out of didies. Got to wipe their noses and…”

“It isn’t that kind of a jam,” said Warren. “This is the real McCoy. If we can’t figure this one out, we’ll all be dead before two months are gone.”

“Natives?” asked Bat Ears.

“Not the natives,” Warren told him. “Although more than likely they’d be glad to do us in if there was a chance.”

“Cheeky customers,” said Bat Ears. “One of them sneaked into the cook tent and I kicked him off the reservation real unceremonious. He did considerable squalling at me. He didn’t like it none.”

“You shouldn’t kick them, Bat Ears.”

“Well, Ira, I didn’t really kick him. That was just a figure of speech, kind of. No sir, I didn’t kick him. I took a shovel to him. Always could handle a shovel some better than my feet. Reach farther and…”

He reached out and took the bottle, lowered it another inch or two.

“This crisis, Ira?”

“It’s the serum,” Warren told him. “Morgan waited until the ship had got too far for us to contact them before he thought to check the serum. And it isn’t any good—it’s about ten years too old.”

Bat Ears sat half stunned.

“So we don’t get our booster shots,” said Warren, “and that means that we will die. There’s this deadly virus here, the … the—oh, well, I can’t remember the name of it. But you know about it.”

“Sure,” said Bat Ears. “Sure I know about it.”

“Funny thing,” said Warren. “You’d expect to find something like that on one of the jungle planets. But, no, you find it here. Something about the natives. They’re humanoid. Got the same kind of guts we got. So the virus developed an ability to attack a humanoid system. We are good, new material for it.”

“It don’t seem to bother the natives none now,” said Bat Ears.

“No,” said Warren. “They seem to be immune. One of two things: They’ve found a cure or they’ve developed natural immunity.”

“If they’ve found a cure,” said Bat Ears, “we can shake it out of them.”

“And if they haven’t,” said Warren, “if adaptation is the answer—then we’re dead ducks for sure.”

“We’ll start working on them,” said Bat Ears. “They hate us and they’d love to see us croak, but we’ll find some way to get it out of them.”

“Everything always hates us,” Warren said. “Why is that, Bat Ears? We do our best and they always hate us. On every planet that Man has set a foot on. We try to make them like us, we do all we can for them. But they resent our help. Or reject our friendliness. Or take us for a bunch of suckers—so that finally we lose our patience and we take a shovel to them.”

“And then,” said Bat Ears, sanctimoniously, “the fat is in the fire.”

“What I’m worried about is the men,” said Warren. “When they hear about this serum business…”

“We can’t tell them,” said Bat Ears. “We can’t let them know. They’ll find out, after a while, of course, but not right away.”

“Morgan is the only one who knows,” said Warren, “and he blabs. We can’t keep him quiet. It’ll be all over camp by morning.”

Bat Ears rose ponderously. He towered over Warren as he reached out a hand for the bottle on the desk.

“I’ll drop in on Morgan on my way back,” he said. “I’ll fix it so he won’t talk.”

He took a long pull at the bottle and set it back.

“I’ll draw a picture of what’ll happen to him if he does,” said Bat Ears.

Warren sat easily in his chair, watching the retreating back of Bat Ears Brady. Always there in a pinch, he thought. Always a man that you can depend on.

Bat Ears was back in three minutes flat. He stood in the entrance of the tent, no sign of drunkenness upon him, his face solemn, eyes large with the thing he’d seen.

“He croaked himself,” he said.

That was the solemn truth.

Dr. James H. Morgan lay dead inside his tent, his throat sliced open with a professional nicety that no one but a surgeon could have managed.

About midnight the searching party brought in Falkner.

Warren stared wearily at him. The kid was scared. He was all scratched up from floundering around in the darkness and he was pale around the gills.

“He saw our light, sir,” said Peabody, “and let out a yell. That’s the way we found him.”

“Thank you, Peabody,” said Warren. “I’ll see you in the morning. I want to talk to Falkner.”

“Yes, sir,” said Peabody. “I am glad we found him, sir.”

Wish I had more like him, thought Warren. Bat Ears, the ancient planet-checker; Peabody, an old army man, and Gilmer, the grizzled supply officer. Those are the ones to count on. The rest of them are punks.

Falkner tried to stand stiff and straight.

“You see, sir,” he told Warren, “it was like this: I thought I saw an outcropping…”

Warren interrupted him. “You know, of course, Mr. Falkner, that it is an expedition rule you are never to go out by yourself; that under no circumstances is one to go off by himself.”

“Yes, sir,” said Falkner, “I know that…”

“You are aware,” said Warren, “that you are alive only by some incredible quirk of fate. You would have frozen before morning if the natives hadn’t got you first.”

“I saw a native, sir. He didn’t bother me.”

“You are more than lucky, then,” said Warren. “It isn’t often that a native hasn’t got the time to spare to slit a human’s throat. In the five expeditions that have been here before us, they have killed a full eighteen. Those stone knives they have, I can assure you, make very ragged slitting.”

Warren drew a record book in front of him, opened it and made a very careful notation.

“Mr. Falkner,” he said, “you will be confined to camp for a two-week period for infraction of the rules. Also, during that time, you shall be attached to Mr. Brady.”

“Mr. Brady, sir? The cook?”

“Precisely,” said Warren. “He probably shall want you to hustle fuel and help with the meals and dispose of garbage and other such light tasks.”

“But I was sent on this expedition to make geologic observations, not to help the cook.”

“All very true,” admitted Warren. “But, likewise, you were sent out under certain regulations. You have seen fit to disregard those regulations and I see fit, as a result, to discipline you. That is all, Mr. Falkner.”

Falkner turned stiffly and moved toward the tent flap.

“By the way,” said Warren, “I forgot to tell you. I’m glad that you got back.”

Falkner did not answer.

Warren stiffened for a moment, then relaxed. After all, he thought, what did it matter? Within another few weeks nothing would matter for him and Falkner, nor for any of the rest.

The chaplain showed up the first thing in the morning. Warren was sitting on the edge of his cot, pulling on his trousers, when the man came in. It was cold and Warren was shivering despite the sputtering of the little stove that stood beside the desk.

The chaplain was very precise and businesslike about his visit.

“I thought I should talk with you,” he said, “about arranging services for our dear departed friend.”

“What dear departed friend?” asked Warren, shivering and pulling on a shoe.

“Why, Dr. Morgan, of course.”

“I see,” said Warren. “Yes, I suppose we shall have to bury him.”

The chaplain stiffened just a little.

“I was wondering if the doctor had any religious convictions, any sort of preference.”

“I doubt it very much,” said Warren. “If I were you, I’d hold it down to minimum simplicity.”

“That’s what I thought,” said the chaplain. “A few words, perhaps, and a simple prayer.”

“Yes,” said Warren. “A prayer by all means. We’ll need a lot of prayer.”

“Pardon me, sir?”

“Oh,” Warren told him, “don’t mind me. Just wool-gathering, that’s all.”

“I see,” said the chaplain. “I was wondering, sir, if you have any idea what might have made him do it.”

“Who do what?”

“What made the doctor commit suicide.”

“Oh, that,” said Warren. “Just an unstable character, I guess.”

He laced his shoes and stood up.

“Mr. Barnes,” he said, “you are a man of God, and a very good one from what I’ve seen of you. You may have the answer to a question that is bothering me.”

“Why,” said Mr. Barnes, “why I …”

“What would you do,” asked Warren, “if you suddenly were to find out you had no more than two months to live?”

“Why,” said Mr. Barnes, “I suppose that I would go on living pretty much the way I always have. With a little closer attention to the condition of my soul, perhaps.”

“That,” said Warren, “is a practical answer. And, I suppose, the most reasonable that anyone can give.”

The chaplain looked at him curiously. “You don’t mean, sir …”

“Sit down, Barnes,” said Warren. “I’ll turn up the stove. I need you now. To tell you the solemn truth, I’ve never held too much with this business of having you fellows with the expedition. But I guess there always will be times when one needs a man like you.”

The chaplain sat down.

“Mr. Barnes,” said Warren, “that was no hypothetical question I asked. Unless God performs some miracle we’ll all be dead in another two months’ time.”

“You are joking, sir.”

“Not at all,” said Warren. “The serum is no good. Morgan waited to check it until it was too late to get word to the ship. That’s why he killed himself.”

He watched the chaplain closely and the chaplain did not flinch.

“I was of a mind,” said Warren, “not to tell you. I’m not telling any of the others—not for a while, at least.”

“It takes a little while,” said Mr. Barnes, “to let a thing like that soak in. I find it so, myself. Maybe you should tell the others, let them have a chance…”

“No,” said Warren.

The chaplain stared at him. “What are you hoping for, Warren? What do you expect to happen?”

“A miracle,” said Warren.

“A miracle?”

“Certainly,” said Warren. “You believe in miracles. You must.”

“I don’t know,” said Mr. Barnes. “There are certain miracles, of course—one might call them allegorical miracles, and sometimes men read into them more than was ever meant.”

“I am more practical than that,” said Warren, harshly. “There is the miracle of the fact that the natives of this place are humanoid like ourselves and they don’t need any booster shots. There is a potential miracle in the fact that only the first humans who landed on the planet ever tried to live on Landro without the aid of booster shots.”

“Since you mention it,” said the chaplain, “there is the miracle of the fact that we are here at all.”

Warren blinked at him. “That’s right,” he said. “Tell me, why do you think we’re here? Divine destiny, perhaps. Or the immutable performance of the mysterious forces that move Man along his way.”

“We are here,” said Barnes, “to carry on the survey work that has been continued thus far by parties here before us.”

“And that will be continued,” said Warren, “by the parties that come after us.”

“You forget,” the chaplain said, “that all of us will die. They will be very wary of sending another expedition to replace one that has been wiped out.”

“And you,” said Warren, “forget the miracle.”

The report had been written by the psychologist who had accompanied the third expedition to Landro. Warren had managed, after considerable digging in the file of quadruplicates, to find a copy of it.

“Hog wash,” he said and struck the papers with his fist.

“I could of told you that,” said Bat Ears, “before you ever read it. Ain’t nothing one of them prissy punks can tell an old-timer like me about these abor … abor … abor …”

“Aborigines,” said Warren.

“That’s the word,” said Bat Ears. “That’s the word I wanted.”

“It says here,” declared Warren, “that the natives of Landro have a keen sense of dignity, very delicately tuned—that’s the very words it uses—and an exact code of honor when dealing among themselves.”

Bat Ears snorted and reached for the bottle. He took a drink and sloshed what was left in the bottom discontentedly.

“You sure,” he asked, “that this is all you got?”

“You should know,” snapped Warren.

Bat Ears wagged his head. “Comforting thing,” he said. “Mighty comforting.”

“It says,” went on Warren, “that they also have a system of what amounts to protocol, on a rather primitive basis.”

“I don’t know about this proto-whatever-you-may-call-it,” said Bat Ears, “but that part about the code of honor gets me. Why, them dirty vultures would steal the pennies off a dead man’s eyes. I always keep a shovel handy and when one of them shows up…”

“The report,” said Warren, “goes into that most exhaustively. Explains it.”

“Ain’t no need of explanation,” insisted Bat Ears. “They just want what you got, so they sneak in and take it.”

“Says it’s like stealing from a rich man,” Warren told him. “Like a kid that sees a field with a million melons in it. Kid can’t see anything wrong with taking one melon out of all that million.”

“We ain’t got no million melons,” said Bat Ears.

“It’s just an analogy,” said Warren. “The stuff we have here must look like a million melons to our little friends.”

“Just the same,” protested Bat Ears, “they better keep out of my cook tent …”

“Shut up,” said Warren savagely. “I get you here to talk with you and all you do is drink up my liquor and caterwaul about your cook tent.”

“All right,” said Bat Ears. “All right. What do you want to know?”

“What are we doing about contacting the natives?”

“Can’t contact them,” said Bat Ears, “if we can’t find them. They were around here, thicker than fleas, before we needed them. Now that we need them, can’t find hide nor hair of one.”

“As if they might know that we needed them,” said Warren.

“How would they know?” asked Bat Ears.

“I can’t tell you,” Warren said. “It was just a thought.”

“If you do find them,” asked Bat Ears, “how you going to make them talk?”

“Bribe them,” said Warren. “Buy them. Offer them anything we have.”

Bat Ears shook his head. “It won’t work. Because they know all they got to do is wait. If they just wait long enough, it’s theirs without the asking. I got a better way.”

“Your way won’t work, either.”

“You’re wasting your time, anyhow,” Bat Ears told him. “They ain’t got no cure. It’s just adap … adap …”

“Adaptation.”

“Sure,” said Bat Ears. “That’s the word I meant.”

He took up the bottle, shook it, measured it with his thumb and then, in a sudden gesture, killed it.

He rose quickly to his feet. “I got to sling some grub together,” he said. “You stay here and get her figured out.”

Warren sat quietly in the tent, listening to his footsteps going across the compound of the camp.

There was no hope, of course. He must have known that all along, he told himself, and yet he had postponed the realization of it. Postponed it with talk of miracles and hope that the natives might have the answer—and the native answer, the native cure, he admitted now, was even more fantastic than the hope of a miracle. For how could one expect the little owl-eyed people would know of medicine when they did not know of clothing, when they still carried rudely-chipped stone knives, when their campfire was a thing very laboriously arrived at by the use of stricken flint?

They would die, all twenty-five of them, and in the days to come the little owl-eyed natives would come boldly marching in, no longer skulking, and pick the camp to its last bare bone.

Collins was the first to go. He died hard, as all men die hard when infected by the peculiar virus of Landro. Before he was dead, Peabody had taken to his bed with the dull headache that heralded the onset of the malady. After that the men went down like tenpins. They screamed and moaned in delirium, they lay as dead for days before they finally died, while the fever ate at them like some ravenous animal that had crept in from the moors.

There was little that anyone could do. Make them comfortable, keep them bathed and the bedding washed and changed, feed them broth that Bat Ears made in big kettles on the stove, be sure there was fresh, cold water always available for the fever-anguished throats.

At first the graves were deep and wooden crosses were set up, with the name and other information painted on the cross bar. Then the graves were only shallow holes because there were less hands to dig them and less strength within the hands.

To Warren it was a nightmare of eternity—a ceaseless round of caring for his stricken men, of helping with the graves, of writing in the record book the names of those who died. Sleep came in snatches when he could catch it or when he became so exhausted that he tottered in his tracks and could not keep his eyelids open. Food was something that Bat Ears brought and set in front of him and he gulped without knowing what it was, without tasting what it was.

Time was a forgotten thing and he lost track of days. He asked what day it was and no one knew nor seemed to care. The sun came up and the sun went down and the moors stretched to their gray horizons, with the lonely wind blowing out of them.

Vaguely he became aware of fewer and fewer men who worked beside him, of fewer stricken men upon the cots. And one day he sat down in his tent and looked across at another haggard face and knew it was nearly over.

“It’s a cruel thing, sir,” said the haggard face.

“Yes, Mr. Barnes,” said Warren. “How many are there left?”

“Three,” said the chaplain, “and two of them are nearly gone. Young Falkner seems to be better, though.”

“Any on their feet?”

“Bat Ears, sir. Just you and I and Bat Ears.”

“Why don’t we catch it, Barnes? Why are we still here?”

“No one knows,” the chaplain told him. “I have a feeling that we’ll not escape it.”

“I know,” said Warren. “I have that feeling, too.”

Bat Ears lumbered into the tent and set a pail upon the table. He reached into it and scooped out a tin cup, dripping, and handed it to Warren.

“What is it, Bat Ears?” Warren asked.

“Something I cooked up,” said Bat Ears. “Something that you need.”

Warren lifted the cup and gulped it down. It burned its way clear into his stomach, set his throat afire and exploded in his head.

“Potatoes,” said Bat Ears. “Spuds make powerful stuff. The Irish found that out, years and years ago.”

He took the cup from Warren, dipped it again and handed it to Barnes.

The chaplain hesitated.

Bat Ears shouted at him. “Drink it, man. It’ll put some heart in you.”

The minister drank, choked, set the cup back on the table empty.

“They’re back again,” said Bat Ears.

“Who’s back?” asked Warren.

“The natives,” said Bat Ears. “All around us, waiting for the end of us.”

He disdained the cup, lifted the pail in both his hands and put it to his lips. Some of the liquor splashed out of the corners of his mouth and ran darkly down his shirt.

He put the pail back on the table, wiped his mouth with a hairy fist.

“They might at least be decent about it,” he declared. “They might at least keep out of sight until it is all over. Caught one sneaking out of Falkner’s tent. Old gray buck. Tried to catch him, but he outlegged me.”

“Falkner’s tent?”

“Sure. Snooping around before a man is dead. Not even waiting till he’s gone. Didn’t take nothing, though, I guess. Falkner was asleep. Didn’t even wake him.”

“Asleep? You sure?”

“Sure,” said Bat Ears. “Breathing natural. I’m going to unsling my gun and pick off a few of them, just for luck. I’ll teach them…”

“Mr. Brady,” asked Barnes, “you are certain Falkner was sleeping naturally? Not in a coma? Not dead?”

“I know when a man is dead,” yelled Bat Ears.

Jones and Webster died during the night. Warren found Bat Ears in the morning, collapsed beside his stone-cold stove, the empty liquor pail beside him. At first he thought the cook was only drunk and then he saw the signs upon him. He hauled him across the floor and boosted him onto his cot, then went out to find the chaplain.

He found him in the cemetery, wielding a shovel, his hands red with broken blisters.

“It won’t be deep,” said Mr. Barnes, “but it will cover them. It’s the best that I can do.”

“Bat Ears has it,” Warren told him.

The chaplain leaned on his shovel, breathing a little hard from digging.

“Queer,” he said. “Queer, to think of him. Of big, brawling Bat Ears. He was a tower of strength.”

Warren reached for the shovel.

“I’ll finish this,” he said, “if you’ll go down and get them ready. I can’t…I haven’t the heart to handle them.”

The chaplain handed over the shovel. “It’s funny,” he said, “about young Falkner.”

“You said yesterday he was a little better. You imagined it?”

Barnes shook his head. “I was in to see him. He’s awake and lucid and his temperature is down.”

They stared at one another for a long time, each trying to hide the hope that might be upon his face.

“Do you think …”

“No, I don’t,” said Barnes.

But Falkner continued to improve. Three days later he was sitting up. Six days later he stood with the other two beside the grave when they buried Bat Ears.

And there were three of them. Three out of twenty-six.

The chaplain closed his book and put it in his pocket. Warren took up the shovel and shoveled in the dirt. The other two watched him silently as he filled the grave, slowly, deliberately, taking his time, for there was no other task to hurry him—filled it and mounded it and shaped it neat and smooth with gentle shovel pats.

Then the three of them went down the slope together, not arm in arm, but close enough to have been arm in arm—back to the white tents of the camp.

Still they did not talk.

It was as if they understood for the moment the dedicatory value of the silence that lay upon the land and upon the camp and the three that were left out of twenty-six.

Falkner said: “There is nothing strange about me. Nothing different than any other man.”

“There must be,” insisted Warren. “You survived the virus. It hit you and you came out alive. There must be a reason for it.”

“You two,” said Falkner, “never even got it. There must be some reason for that, too.”

“We can’t be sure,” said Chaplain Barnes, speaking softly.

Warren rustled his notes angrily.

“We’ve covered it,” he said. “Covered everything that you can remember—unless you are holding back something that we should know.”

“Why should I hold back anything?” demanded Falkner.

“Childhood history,” said Warren. “The usual things. Measles, a slight attack of whooping cough, colds—afraid of the dark. Ordinary eating habits, normal acceptance of schools and social obligations. Everything as if it might be someone else. But there has to be an answer. Something that you did…”

“Or,” said Barnes, “even something that he thought.”

“Huh?” asked Warren.

“The ones who could tell us are out there on the slope,” said Barnes. “You and I, Warren, are stumbling along a path we are not equipped to travel. A medical man, a psychologist, even an alien psychologist, a statistician—any one of them would have had something to contribute. But they are dead. You and I are trying to do something we have no training for. We might have the answer right beneath our noses and we would not recognize it.”

“I know,” said Warren. “I know. We only do the best we can.”

“I have told you everything I can,” said Falkner, tensely. “Everything I know. I’ve told you things I would not tell under any other circumstances.”

“We know, lad,” said Barnes gently. “We know you have.”

“Somewhere,” persisted Warren, “somewhere in the life of Benjamin Falkner there is an answer—an answer to the thing that Man must know. Something that he has forgotten. Something that he has not told us, unintentionally. Or, more than likely, something that he has told us and we do not recognize.”

“Or,” said Barnes, “something that no one but a specialist could know. Some strange quirk in his body or his mind. Some tiny mutation that no one would suspect. Or even…Warren, you remember, you talked to me about a miracle.”

“I’m tired of it,” Falkner told them. “For three days now you have gone over me, pawed me, questioned me, dissected every thought…”

“Let’s go over that last part again,” said Warren wearily. “When you were lost.”

“We’ve gone over it,” said Falkner, “a hundred times already.”

“Once again,” said Warren. “Just once again. You were standing there, on the path, you say, when you heard the footsteps coming up the path.”

“Not footsteps,” said Falkner. “At first I didn’t know they were footsteps. It was just a sound.”

“And it terrified you?”

“It terrified me.”

“Why?”

“Well, the dark and being lost and …”

“You’d been thinking about the natives?”

“Well, yes, off and on.”

“More than off and on?”

“More than off and on,” Falkner admitted. “All the time, maybe. Ever since I realized I was lost, perhaps. In the back of my mind.”

“Finally you realized they were footsteps?”

“No. I didn’t know what they were until I saw the native.”

“Just one native?”

“Just one. An old one. His coat was all gray and he had a scar across his face. You could see the jagged white line.”

“You’re sure about that scar?”

“Yes.”

“Sure about his being old?”

“He looked old. He was all gray. He walked slowly and he had a limp.”

“And you weren’t afraid?”

“Yes, afraid, of course. But not as afraid as I would have expected.”

“You would have killed him if you could?”

“No, I wouldn’t have killed him.”

“Not even to save your life?”

“Oh, sure. But I didn’t think of that. I just…well, I just didn’t want to tangle with him, that is all.”

“You got a good look at him?”

“Yes, a good look. He passed me no farther away than you are now.”

“You would recognize him again if you saw him?”

“I did recognize…”

Falkner stopped, befuddled.

“Just a minute,” he said. “Just a minute now.”

He put up his hand and rubbed hard against his forehead. His eyes suddenly had a stricken look.

“I did see him again,” he said. “I recognized him. I know it was the same one.”

Warren burst out angrily: “Why didn’t you tell…”

But Barnes rushed in and headed him off:

“You saw him again. When?”

“In my tent. When I was sick. I opened my eyes and he was there in front of me.”

“Just standing there?”

“Standing there and looking at me. Like he was going to swallow me with those big yellow eyes of his. Then he…then he…”

They waited for him to remember.

“I was sick,” said Falkner. “Out of my head, maybe. Not all there. I can’t be sure. But it seemed that he stretched out his hands, his paws rather—that he stretched them out and touched me, one paw on each side of my head.”

“Touched you? Actually, physically touched you?”

“Gently,” said Falkner. “Ever so gently. Just for an instant. Then I went to sleep.”

“We’re ahead of our story,” Warren said impatiently. “Let’s go back to the trail. You saw the native—”

“We’ve been over that before,” said Falkner bitterly.

“We’ll try it once again,” Warren told him. “You say the native passed quite close to you when he went by. You mean that he stepped out of the path and circled past you…”

“No,” said Falkner, “I don’t mean that at all. I was the one who stepped out of the path.”

You must maintain human dignity, the manual said. Above all else, human dignity and human prestige must be upheld. Kindness, yes. And helpfulness. And even brotherhood. But dignity was ahead of all.

And too often human dignity was human arrogance.

Human dignity did not allow you to step out of the path. It made the other thing step out and go around you. By inference, human dignity automatically assigned all other life to an inferior position.

“Mr. Barnes,” said Warren, “it was the laying on of hands.”

The man on the cot rolled his head on the pillow and looked at Warren, almost as if he were surprised to find him there. The thin lips worked in the pallid face and the words were weak and very slow in coming.

“Yes, Warren, it was the laying on of hands. A power these creatures have. Some Christ-like power that no human has.”

“But that was a divine power.”

“No, Warren,” said the chaplain, “not necessarily. It wouldn’t have to be. It might be a very real, a very human power, that goes with mental or spiritual perfection.”

Warren hunched forward on his stool. “I can’t believe it,” he said. “I simply can’t. Not those owl-eyed things.”

He looked up and glanced at the chaplain. Barnes’ face had flushed with sudden fever and his breath was fluttery and shallow. His eyes were closed and he looked like a man already dead.

There had been that report by the third expedition’s psychologist. It had said dignity and an exact code of honor and a rather primitive protocol. And that, of course, would fit.

But Man, intent upon his own dignity and his own prestige, had never accorded anyone else any dignity. He had been willing to be kind if his kindness were appropriately appreciated. He stood ready to help if his help were allowed to stand as a testament to his superiority. And here on Landro he had scarcely bothered to be either kind or helpful, never dreaming for a moment that the little owl-eyed native was anything other than a stone age creature that was a pest and nuisance and not to be taken too seriously even when he turned out, at times, to be something of a menace.

Until one day a frightened kid had stepped out of a path and let a native by.

“Courtesy,” said Warren. “That’s the answer: courtesy and the laying on of hands.”

He got up from the stool and walked out of the tent and met Falkner coming in.

“How is he?” Falkner asked.

Warren shook his head. “Just like the others. It was late in coming, but it’s just as bad.”

“Two of us,” said Falkner. “Two of us left out of twenty-six.”

“Not two,” Warren told him. “Just one. Just you.”

“But, sir, you’re all…”

Warren shook his head.

“I have a headache,” he said. “I’m beginning to sweat a little. My legs are wobbly.”

“Maybe…”

“I’ve seen it too many times,” said Warren, “to kid myself about it.”

He reached out a hand, grasped the canvas and steadied himself.

“I didn’t have a chance,” he said. “I stepped out of no paths.”