Three Survived

Chapter 12

The aliens hadn’t budged from their places. They still stood in a half circle, facing the Earthmen. But they were starting to look restless. Some of them were swinging their swords back and forth impatiently.

It looked as though they might charge at any moment. And that cry of “KILL. KILL. KILL.” coming out of the converter wasn’t exactly encouraging.

Rand saw that Dombey looked pretty restless too. The big jetmonkey seemed to be getting ready for a fight. His huge hands were clenching into fists, unclenching, clenching again.

Shutting off the converter for a moment, Rand said, “Relax, Tarzan. Stop looking so fierce.”

“We got to defend ourselves.”

“They have swords and we don’t,” Rand said. “And they outnumber us ten or fifteen to one. Muscle won’t help us now, Dombey. This is something we have to talk our way out of.”

The aliens were starting to move closer.

Rand turned the converter on again. “We are heading east to find our friends,” he said desperately. He pointed to the east. “When we find them, we will leave your world and never return. Do you understand? We want nothing from you. We’re not hostile. We want to leave as soon as we find our friends. We want to leave. We are not your enemies.”

The buzzing noises continued. They grew louder and sounded more menacing.

Rand tuned the converter again. It gave this translation:

“We are not able to decide what to do with you, strangers. We must ask a higher authority who decides for us. Make no more words, but come with us to our village.”

“Very well,” Rand said. “Take us to your village.”

He turned the converter off. The aliens moved in on them, forming a tight, buzzing circle. Dombey looked as if he wanted to push the aliens away from him.

Rand said, “Do everything they tell us to do, Dombey. Don’t complain, don’t refuse. Above all, don’t touch any of them or look like you want to hit them. Otherwise they’ll kill us. KILL. You understand that, Dombey?”

The jetmonkey nodded slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, boss, I won’t start no fight. But I don’t like them. They’re no good.”

“I don’t like them much either, but there are too many of them to fight. They’re armed and we aren’t. They can kill us, Dombey. Go where they tell you. Do what they want you to do.”

“Okay,” Dombey said agreeably. “You’re the boss, boss.”

Rand looked at Leswick. The metaphysician had said nothing at all for the past five minutes. He had hardly moved through the whole conversation with the aliens. Now he was permitting himself to be shoved along, scarcely noticing. His eyes looked dreamy. He seemed lost in his thoughts.

“What’s the matter with you, professor?” Rand asked. “You synthesizing some new cultural phenomena?”

Leswick didn’t reply.

“Hey, Leswick! I’m talking to you!”

“Will you keep quiet, Rand?” the metaphysician snapped. Rand had never heard him speak so sharply before. “Let me think this out, will you?”

“You’re going to save us through Metaphysical Synthesis?” Rand said sarcastically.

Leswick just glared at him.

“I beg your pardon for interrupting your thoughts,” Rand said. “Sorry! Terribly sorry!” The tone of his voice left no doubt how sorry he really was.

The aliens marched them onward through the jungle.

As they neared the village, Rand began to do some heavy thinking himself. There had to be some way out of this! There had to be some way he could show these suspicious aliens that the three Earthmen were no threat to them.

Maybe there was some way of drawing pictures for them, he thought. Show them the blowup of the ship, show them the crash landing of the lifeship, show them the location of the rescue beacon. Make it clear that we just want to hike to the beacon and signal for help so we can go home.

Another possibility was not to try to explain anything. Let them put us in their jail. Or what passes for a jail among them. And then, in the middle of the night, break out and slip away.

We ought to be able to do it. They look like simple sorts—they wouldn’t guard us too closely. Dombey can lead us in the dark. That would be easier than trying to explain ourselves to them. Even with the converter, we don’t seem to be able to get our ideas across. They’re alien. They don’t think the way we do. They can’t even begin to understand us. And we can’t figure them out, either.

What if they do guard us closely, though?

Then we’ll just have to figure out a logical way of dealing with them, Rand told himself. But nothing logical came into his mind. And now they were at the alien village.

The village was set in a broad clearing. Trees had been chopped down for a great distance on all sides, and bright sunlight came through the opening in the jungle. A small stream ran along one side of the settlement.

The place was fantastically busy. Hundreds more of the barrel-shaped aliens were bustling around in a tremendous hurry, every one of them hard at work. Here, four of them were pounding grain. There, eight of them were putting up a new hut. Over there, six others were trimming logs.

The village consisted of row on row of wooden huts, each one just like all the rest. Every hut was about six feet high and five feet wide. That was big enough to hold one alien, no more. Didn’t they have families, Rand wondered? Furniture? Possessions? How could they live in such tiny cabins?

The huts were laid out in a carefully designed pattern. The rows were neat and straight, each one containing about twenty-five huts except for the rows near the center of the village. Those were shorter, so that a kind of plaza was formed right in the middle of things.

In the center of the plaza stood a single huge hut. It was of the same design as the others, with a flat top and straight sides, but it was about twenty feet high and twenty feet wide. It towered over the smaller buildings like a strange square skyscraper.

That must be where the “higher authority” of the village lives, Rand thought. It’s a temple, or a palace, or maybe a city hall. It’s where the local chief will decide what’s going to happen to us.

The aliens were saying something to him. Rand held the thought-converter toward them for the translation.

“You will go to the great house,” they were telling him. “We will present you to the Mother.”

“Who is the Mother?” Rand asked. But he got no answer.

They walked toward the great house.

He noticed a strange thing: there didn’t seem to be any children in the village, or even any young adults. All of the aliens seemed to be of the same age and size and height.

There was another surprise as he got closer to the great house. Up till now, every villager he had seen was busy doing something. Now Rand saw a few loafers. These aliens lay sprawled on the ground looking remarkably lazy. Their eyes were closed, their mouths drooped open, their arms were folded across their middles. They weren’t dead, but they weren’t very lively, either.

These sleepers had slightly deeper brown skins than the others. Their bodies were soft and flabby. Two or three of them opened their eyes to stare at the Earthmen. But they closed them again after a brief look. All the other villagers were such hard workers. Rand wondered why these lucky few got off so lightly.

They came to the great house, now. Three of the aliens went inside. One of his captors turned to Rand and said, “Clickclick click.”

“Say that again?” The machine translated Rand’s words into clicks.

The alien repeated the noises into the thought-converter. They came out as, “You wait out here.”

“Can’t we go inside?”

“Negative negative negative. NO! Strange ones must not enter great house of the Mother. Stay here while we tell about you to the Mother.”

Rand shrugged. “If you want us to wait, we’ll wait, I guess.”

Time passed—one minute, three, five. Rand began to fidget. What was going on in there? Who was the Mother, and what was she telling these people?

He looked, at the swords of the aliens who guarded them. He didn’t like to think about the wicked-looking barbs along the edges of those blades.

He wondered if their luck was going to run out right here.

Luck had allowed the three of them to survive the explosion aboard the spaceship, when everyone else died. Luck had let them get into the lifeship and make a safe escape. Luck had brought them down on Tuesday unharmed, even though he had never piloted a ship before. Luck had carried them safely through the jungle despite all the hidden dangers.

But now their luck had changed. They were prisoners. Their lives were at the mercy of these alien creatures. Unarmed, outnumbered, they had to depend on the whim of the Mother. Would she spare them? He wondered. They seemed awfully unfriendly.

Another five minutes went by. Then the three aliens who had gone into the great house came out. They buzzed something to the ones who guarded the Earthmen. Rand strained to hear it, but the words were too faint for the converter to pick them up.

Then one of the aliens turned to him and said clearly, “The Mother has decided. You are dangerous. You threaten our safety.”

“No,” Rand protested. “We don’t threaten anybody’s safety. We’ll leave as soon as we reach our—our friend. Our friend in the east!”

“The Mother says you threaten our safety,” the alien said again, firmly. “And so you must die!”

Not here, Rand thought. Not now. Not like this. Not in a sticky jungle on an unknown planet for a stupid reason.

The ring of guards lifted their swords. The cruel barbs glittered in the hot sunlight. Here it comes, he told himself.

He tried to get ready to die. He was going to go down fighting. Maybe he’d take a few of the barrel-shaped creatures with him.

Then Leswick, who had been silent for a long time, came to life.

“Wait!” he shouted into the converter. “Wait! I demand to see the Mother! I claim the right to return to our hive!”