A welcoming committee was on hand: eight members of the base staff, clad in shorts and topees. Regulation uniforms went by the board on oven-hot Shaula II. The eight looked awfully happy to see us.
Coming over the flat sandy plain from the base were a dozen or so others, running, and behind them I could see even more. They were understandably glad we were here. Twenty-eight of them had spent a full year on Shaula II; they were eligible for their parity-program year’s vacation.
There were some other—things—moving towards us. They moved slowly, with grace and dignity. I had expected to be impressed with the Shaulans, and I was.
They were erect bipeds about four feet tall, with long thin arms dangling to their knees; their grey skins were grainy and rough, and their dark eyes—they had three, arranged triangularly—were deepset and brooding. A fleshy sort of cowl or cobra-hood curled up from their necks to shield their round hairless skulls. The aliens were six in number, and the youngest-looking of them seemed ancient.
A brown-faced young man wearing shorts, topee, and tattooed stars stepped forward and said, “I’m General Gloster. I’m in charge here.”
The Captain acknowledged his greeting. “Knight of the Felicific. We have your relief men with us.”
“I sure as hell hope you do,” Gloster said. “Be kind of silly to come all this way without them.”
We all laughed a little over that. By now we were ringed in by at least fifty Earthmen, probably the entire base complement (we didn’t rotate the entire base staff at once, of course), and the six aliens. The twenty-eight kids we had ferried here were looking around the place curiously, apprehensive about this hot, dry, flat planet that would be their home for the next sidereal year. The crew of the Felicific had gathered in a little knot near the ship. Most of them probably felt the way I did; they were glad we’d be on our way home in a couple of days.
Murchison was squinting at the six aliens. I wondered what he was thinking about.
The bunch of us traipsed back the half mile or so to the settlement; Gloster walked with Knight and myself, prattling volubly about the progress the base was making, and the twenty-eight newcomers mingled with the twenty-eight who were being relieved. Murchison walked by himself, kicking up puffs of red dust and scowling in his usual manner. The six aliens accompanied us at some distance.
“We keep building all the time,” Gloster explained when we were within the compound. “Branching out, setting up new equipment, shoring up the old stuff: That radar parabola out there wasn’t up, last replacement-trip.”
I looked around. “The place looks fine, General.” It was strange calling a man half my age General, but the Service sometimes works that way. “When do you plan to set up your telescope?”
“Next year, maybe.” He glanced out the window at the featureless landscape. “We keep building all the time. It’s the best way to stay sane on this world.”
“How about the natives?” the Captain asked. “You have much contact with them?”
Gloster shrugged. “As much as they’ll allow. They’re a proud old race—pretty near dried up and dead now, just a handful of them left. But what a race they must have been once! What minds! What culture!”
I found Gloster’s boyish enthusiasm discomforting. “Do you think we could meet one of the aliens before we go?” I asked.
“I’ll see about it.” Gloster picked up a phone. “McHenry? There any natives in the compound now? Good. Send him up, will you?”
Moments later one of the shorts-clad men appeared, hand in hand with an alien. At close range the Shaulan looked almost frighteningly old. A maze of wrinkles gullied its noseless face, running from the triple optics down to the dots of nostrils to the sagging, heavy-lipped mouth.
“This is Azga,” Gloster said. “Azga, meet Captain Knight and Second Officer Loeb, of the Felicific.”
The creature offered a wobbly sort of curtsey and said, in a deep, resonant, almost-human croak, “I am very humble indeed in your presence, Captain Knight and Second Officer Loeb.”
Azga came out of the curtsey and the three eyes fixed on mine. I felt like squirming, but I stared back. It was like looking into a mirror that gave the wrong reflection.
Yet I enjoyed my proximity to the alien. There was something calm and wise and good about the grotesque creature; something relaxing, and terribly fragile. The rough grey skin looked like precious leather, and the hood over the skull appeared to shield it from worry and harm. A faint musty odor wandered through the room.
We looked at each other—Knight, and Gloster, and McHenry, and I—and we remained silent. Now that the Shaulan was here, what could we say? What new thing could we possibly tell the ancient creature?
I resisted an impulse to kneel. I was fumbling for words to express my emotion when the sharp buzz of the phone cut across the room.
Gloster nodded curtly to McHenry, who answered. The man listened for a moment. “Captain Knight, it’s for you.”
Puzzled, Knight took the receiver. He held it long enough to hear about three sentences and turned to me. “Loeb, get a landcar from someone in the compound and get back to the ship. Murchison’s carrying on with one of the aliens.”
I hotfooted down into the compound and spotted an enlisted man tooling up his landcar. I pulled rank and requisitioned it, and minutes later I was parking it outside the Felicific and was clambering hand-over-hand up the catwalk.
An excited-looking recruit stood at the open airlock.
“Where’s Murchison?” I asked.
“Down in the communicator cabin. He’s got an alien in there with him. There’s gonna be trouble.”
I remembered Denebola, and Murchison kicking the stuffings out of a groaning frogman. I groaned a little myself, and dashed down the companionway.
The communications cabin was Murchison’s sanctum sanctorum, a cubicle off the astro deck where he worked and kept control over the Felicific’s communications network. I yanked open the door and saw Murchison at the far end of the cabin holding a massive crescent wrench and glaring at a Shaulan facing him. The Shaulan had its back to me. It looked small and squat and helpless.
Murchison saw me as I entered. “Get out of here, Loeb. This isn’t your affair.”
“What’s going on here?” I snapped.
“This alien snooping around. I’m gonna let him have it with the wrench.”
“I meant no harm,” the alien boomed sadly. “Mere philosophical interest in your strange machines, nothing more. If I have offended a folkway of yours I humbly apologize. It is not the way of my people to give offence.”
I walked forward and took a position between them, making sure I wasn’t within easy reach of Murchison’s wrench. He was standing there with his nostrils spread, his eyes cold and hard, his breath pumping noisily. He was angry, and an angry Murchison was a frightening sight.
He took two heavy steps toward me. “I told you to get out. This is my cabin, Loeb. And neither you or any aliens got any business in it.”
“Put down that wrench, Murchison. It’s an order.”
He laughed contemptuously. “Signalman First Class don’t have to take orders from anyone but the Captain if he thinks the safety of the ship is jeopardized. And I do. There’s a dangerous alien in here.”
“Be reasonable,” I said. “This Shaulan’s not dangerous. He just wanted to look around. Just curious.”