It's a beautiful world, Lyrane is. Like Earth must have been before it got cluttered up with people. No cities, no smoke, no industrial complexes—just green plains, snowy mountains, dark forests, blue seas, and white polar caps all wrapped in cotton clouds swimming in the clearest atmosphere you ever saw. It made my eyes ache to look at it. And it affected the crew the same way.
We were wild to land. We came straight in along the equatorial plane until we hit the Van Allen Belt and the automatics took over. We stopped dead, matched intrinsics and skirted the outer band, checking the radiation quality and the shape of the Belt. It was a pure band that dipped down at the poles to form entry zones. There was not a sign of bulges or industrial contaminants.
Naturally we had everything trained on the planet while we made our sweeps—organic detectors, radar, spectroanalytic probes—all the gadgets the BEE equips us with to make analysis easy and complete. The readings were so homelike that every man was landsick. I wasn't any different from the rest of them, but I was in command and I had to be cautious about setting the Two Two Four down until we'd really wrung the analytic data dry.
So, while the crew grumbled about hanging outside on a skyhook, we kept swinging around in a polar orbit until we knew that world below us like a baby knows its mother. It checked clean to five decimal places, which is the limit of our gadgetry. Paradise, that's what it was—a paradise untrod by human foot. And every foot on the ship was itching.
"When we gonna land, Skipper?" Alex Baranov asked me. It was a gross breach of discipline, but I forgave him. Alex was the second engineer, an eager kid on his first flight out from Earth. Like most youngsters, he thought there was romance in space, but right now he was landsick. Even worse than most of us. And, like most kids, he'd leap where angels'd dread to walk on tiptoe.
"We'll land," I assured him. "You'll be down there pretty soon."
He hurried off to tell the others.
We set the ship down in the middle of one of the continental land masses in an open plain surrounded by forest and ran a few more tests before we stepped out, planted the flag, and claimed the place for the Confederation. After that we had an impromptu celebration to thoroughly enjoy the solid feel of ground under our feet and open sky overhead. It lasted all of five minutes before we came to our senses and posted a guard.
It was five minutes too long. Alex Baranov had a chance to get out of sight and go exploring, and, like a kid, he took it. We didn't miss him for nearly ten minutes more, and in fifteen minutes a man can cover quite a bit of territory.
"Anyone see where he went?" I asked.
"He was wearing a menticom," one of the crew offered. "Said he wanted to look around."
"The idiot!" I snapped. "He had no business going off like that."
"Nobody told him not to," Dan Warren said. Dan was my executive officer, and a good hand in case of trouble, but he left the command decisions to me, and of course I figured that everybody knew the cardinal rule of first landings. The net result was that Alex had disappeared.
I went back into the ship and broke out another menticom.
"Alex!" I broadcasted. "Return to ship at once!"
"I can't, Skipper," Alex's projection came back to me. "I'm surrounded."
"By what? Where?"
"They look sorta human—bigger than us. I'm near the edge of the forest nearest the ship. I can't do anything. I didn't bring a blaster." There was panic in his thoughts. And then suddenly I saw two hairy bipeds flash across Alex's vision. Both of them were carrying spears. The nearest one jumped and lunged. The scene dissolved in a blaze of red panic and the projection cut off as though someone had turned a switch.
 
I had a fix now and turned to face a knob of forest jutting out into the plain. Near the forest's edge I saw a flurry of movement that vanished as I watched.
"Break out a 'copter," I ordered.
"Why?" Warren asked, and then I realized that I alone of all the crew had seen what had happened to Alex.
I told them.
The search, of course, was unproductive. I didn't expect that it would be anything else. I was pretty certain that Alex was a casualty. I'd felt people die while wearing menticoms, and the same blank sense of emptiness had blotted out Alex. It was a bad deal all around. I liked that kid.
But Alex's death had provided data. This world was inhabited and the inhabitants weren't friendly. So I had the crew stake out a perimeter which we could energize with the ship's engines, and activated a couple of autoguards for patrol duty. Alex wasn't a pleasant thought, but we weren't equipped to retrieve bodies. So I wrote him in the log as missing and let it go at that.
I had to correct the entry a week later when Alex came walking up to the perimeter as large as life and just as healthy, wearing a mild sunburn, a sheepish expression, and nothing else.
The autoguard announced his coming and I headed the delegation that met him. I read him the riot act, and after I'd finished chewing on him he was pinker than ever.
"Okay, sir—so I was a fool," he said. "But they didn't hurt me. Scared me half to death, but once they realized I was intelligent there was no trouble. They were fascinated by my clothes." Alex grinned ruefully. "And they're pretty strong. They peeled me."
"Obviously," I said coldly.
"They have a village back in the woods." He pointed vaguely behind him. "It'd pay to take a look at it."
"Mister Baranov," I said. "If I don't throw you in the brig for what you've done, it's only because you may have brought back some information we can use. What are these natives like? What did they do to you besides making you a strip-tease artist? What cultural level are they? How many of them do you estimate there are? What do they look like? Get up to the ship and report to Lieutenant Warren for interrogation and draw new clothing." I had the same half exasperated, half angry tone that a relieved mother has when one of her youngsters returns home late but unharmed.
Alex must have recognized it, because he grinned as he went off.
I contacted Warren on the intercom. "Dan," I said, "Baranov's back—apparently unharmed. I want him given the works. When you've gotten everything you can get, have a man detailed to watch him. If he so much as looks suspicious, heave him in the brig."
Warren's answering projection had a laugh in it. "Always cautious, hey, Skipper? Okay, I'll see that he gets the business."
It turned out that Alex didn't have much real information except for a description of the natives, their village, and their attitude toward him. It was about what you'd expect from a kid, interesting but far from helpful.
The delegation of natives showed up a half hour later. They came walking across the open space between the ship and the forest as though they hadn't a care in the world. Four of them—big hairy humanoids, carrying spears. They were naked as animals. Not that they needed clothes with all that hair, but just the same their appearance gave me a queasy feeling—like I was looking at man's early ancestors suddenly come to life.
If you can imagine a furry humanoid seven feet tall, with the face of an intelligent gorilla and the braincase of a man, you'll have a rough idea of what they looked like—except for their teeth. The canines would have fitted better in the face of a tiger, and showed at the corners of their wide, thin-lipped mouths, giving them an expression of ferocity.
They came trotting straight across the plain, moving with grace and power. All external signs pointed to them being a carnivorous, primitive race. Hunters, probably. The muscles of my scalp twitched as some deep-buried instinct inside me whispered, "Competition!"
I've met plenty of humanoids, but these were the first that roused any emotion other than curiosity. Perhaps it was their fierce appearance, or the bright, half-contemptuous intelligence in their eyes, or the confident arrogance in their approach, or merely that they looked more like us than the others I had met. Whatever it was, it was strong, and I had the impression that the feeling was mutual.
"Stop!" I said as they approached the periphery.
"Why should we?" the foremost native replied in perfect Terran.
"Because that barrier'll burn you to a nice crisp cinder if you don't."
"That's a good reason," the native said, nodding.
Then the delayed reaction took over and the shock nearly floored me, until I saw that he was wearing Alex's menticom. Well, that explained the language and the feeling of mutual distrust—and it could explain why I thought Alex had died back there in the jungle. A mental communicator snatched from its wearer's head can give that impression.
But it raised an entirely new set of questions. Where did this savage learn to operate the circlet and how did he recognize its purpose? I guess I wasn't too smart, because the native was tuned to me and I wasn't shielding my thoughts at all.
He chuckled—it sounded like the purr of a cat. "We are not stupid, Earthman."
"So I see," I said uneasily.
"I am K'wan, chief of this segment. I wish to know why you are here."
"To survey your world. We are members of the Bureau of Extraterrestrial Exploration. It is our job to make surveys of planets."
"Why?"
"For trade, colonization, and exploitation," I answered. There was no sense in giving him a dishonest explanation. With him wearing that communicator, it would have done no good to try.
"And what have you decided about us?"
"That's not our job. We just investigate and report. What happens next is not our affair. But if you're worrying—don't. There are plenty of worlds available without bothering inhabited places. Since you are intelligent, we would probably like to trade with you, if you have anything to trade—but that, of course, is up to you. We never intrude where we are not wanted, as long as we are treated with respect. If we are attacked, however, that is a different story." It was the old respect-and-threat routine that worked with primitive races. But I wasn't at all sure it was working now.
"Strange," K'wan said. "I would have sworn you were a predatory race. You are enough like us to be our little cousins." He scratched his head with a surprisingly human gesture. "In your position I would have attacked to show my power and inspire respect. Perhaps you are telling the truth."
"A predator can grow soft when he has too much prey," I said.
"Aye, there is truth in that. But what is too easy and how much is too much? And does a man change his habits of eating just because he is fat?"
"You can find out."
"I do not think that would be wise," the native said. "Although you are physically weak, you sound confident. Therefore you are strong. And strength is to be respected. Let us be friends. We will make an agreement with you."
I shook my head. "It is not our place to make agreements. We only observe."
"You have not done much of that," he said pointedly. "You sit here and send your machines over our seas and forests, but you do not see for yourselves. You cannot learn this way."
"We learn enough," I said shortly.
"We have talked of you at our council," K'wan continued, "and we think that you should know more before you depart. So we have come to make you an offer. Let four of your men come with me, and four of mine will stay with you. We will exchange—and you can see our ways while we see yours. That would help us understand each other."
It sounded reasonable. An exchange of hostages—or call it a cultural exchange, if you'd prefer. I told him that I'd think it over and to come back tomorrow. He nodded, turned, and together with his retinue disappeared into the jungle.
We hashed K'wan's proposal over at a board meeting that night and decided that we'd take it. The exact status of Lyranian culture worried us. It is a cardinal rule never to underestimate an alien culture or to judge it by surface appearances. So we organized a team that would form our part of the "cultural exchange."
I would go, of course. If K'wan could visit us, I could hardly stay back. Alex was selected partly because he was an engineer, mostly because he'd been over the ground before. Ed Barger, our ecologist, and Patrick Allardyce, our biologist, made up the remainder of the party. I'd have liked to take the padre and Doc, but Doc was more valuable at base, and if I could have only four men, I wanted fighting men.
"Now," I said, "we'll take along a tight-beam communicator. Coupled to our menticoms, it should be able to reach the ship and put what we see and what happens on permanent record." Then I turned to Dan Warren. "If anything goes wrong, don't try to rescue us. Finish your observations and get out. You understand? And get those exchange natives into Interrogation. Condition them to the eyeballs with cooperation dogma. We may need some friends here when the second echelon makes a landfall."
Warren nodded. I didn't have to elaborate.
The native village was about what I expected from our reconnaissance flights. It was beautifully camouflaged. You couldn't tell it from the rest of the forest except that the trees were larger and were hollow—apparently hewn out with patient care to make a comfortable living space inside. Lyranians lived in one place, if what I could see of their dwellings was any criterion. I wanted to look inside, but K'wan hustled us down the irregular "street" that wound through the grove of giant trees until we finally came to the granddaddy of them all, a trunk nearly forty feet in diameter.
K'wan gestured at the tree. "Your house while you are here. We made it for you Earthmen." His voice came over my menticom and was duly recorded on the ship, since we were in constant contact, giving our impressions of the place. So far it was strictly SOP.
"Thanks," I said. "We appreciate it." I was really touched at this tribute. K'wan had probably evacuated his own house to furnish us quarters where we could be together. The size of it indicated that it must be the chief's residence. But like all primitives he had to lie a little and the fiction of making this place for us was a way of salvaging pride in the face of our technological superiority.
He walked inside and we followed, expecting to find a gloomy hole—but instead the room glowed with a soft light that came from the walls themselves. The air was cool and comfortable, a pleasing contrast to the heat outside.
"What the—" I began, but Allardyce was already peering at the walls.
"A type of luminous fungus," he said. "A saprophyte. Lives on the wood of this tree and gives off light. Clever."
I shut my mouth and looked around. There were other rooms opening off this one and along one wall a knobby imitation of a staircase led upward to a hole overhead.
"Hmmm, a regular skyscraper," Ed Barger commented, noting the direction of my gaze. "Well, we should not be crowded, at any rate."
I had been noticing something was wrong without realizing it. You know the feeling you get when you've lost something, but can't quite remember what it was. Then my neurons made connections and I realized that the communicator and the menticom were both as dead as if we were in a lead box.
Quietly I moved to the door—and Dan's voice hammered in my ears: "Skipper! Answer me! What's wrong?"
"Nothing, Dan," I said. "We just went into the quarters they assigned us. Something about them blocks transmission and reception. We're all fine."
"Oh." Dan sounded relieved. "For a minute I was worried."
"One of the boys'll call in every two hours," I assured him. "If you don't hear from us then, it'll be time to do something."
"Okay, Skipper, but what'll I do?"
"That'll be your decision," I said. "You'll be ranking officer."
Dan's chuckle was humorless. "Thanks, but I hope we keep on hearing from you."
"Don't worry—you will. These people look worse than they really are. At least they have been nice so far."
"They'd better stay that way," Dan replied grimly.
It was my turn to chuckle. "Keep calm and keep your blasters dry. I'm going inside now. You'll hear from us in two hours."
Ed Barger looked at me a trifle oddly as I came through the doorway. "A while ago you were laughing at that story K'wan was telling us about making this house for us. I caught your undertone."
"Sure. What about it?"
"Well, I'm not so sure he was lying."
"Huh?"
"Take a look around you."
I did. It was a nice room, considering its origin—low benches around the walls, a table and four chairs in the center, a soft, thick floor covering that was a pleasure to the feet.
"See anything unusual?" Ed asked.
"No," I said.
"What about those benches?"
"They're part of the walls," I said, "cut out of the tree when it was hollowed out."
"Cut to our size?"
I did a double take. Barger was right. The Lyranians were seven feet tall and long-legged, but the benches were precisely right for human sitting, and the table in the center was only three feet above the gray floor. Suddenly I didn't feel so good.
"And those rooms—there are four of them—scaled to people our size?"
I shrugged. "So they modified the joint for us."
"You still don't get it. This place is living. It's growing. Nothing here except those chairs isn't part of this tree, and I'm not sure that they weren't. Besides, how did they know that there'd be four of us?"
"They could have been hopeful, or maybe four is their idea of a delegation. Remember there were four of them that visited us, and they suggested that four of us visit them."
"It's obvious," Allardyce added, "that this place has been made for us. K'wan wasn't lying."
Barger shook his head. "I still don't like it. I think we'd better get out of here. If they are as good biologists as this tree indicates, they're a Class VI civilization at least—and we're not set up to handle levels that high."
"I don't think that's necessary," Allardyce said. "They don't seem unfriendly, and until they do, we're better off sitting pat and playing the cards as they're dealt. We can always warn the ship in case anything goes wrong."
"Don't be jumpy," Alex broke in. "I told you they were all right. They grew the place for me. It's just grown a little since."
I made a noncommittal noise.
"It's true," Alex s............