But only for a moment. Pointing to the rifle still in Jordan’s hands, Adri said softly, “If those are weapons, you won’t need them here. There are no dangerous animals in this forest.”
Ignoring that, Brandon asked, “This is your home world? You live on this planet?”
“Yes. Of course,” said Adri. “I would be pleased to show you our community.”
“By all means!” said Brandon.
“Wait a moment,” Jordan said. “We should report this to the others.”
“Your colleagues aboard the ship. Of course. I’ll be happy to greet them.” Adri started toward the buggy, the four men following him. Brandon rushed ahead, dumped his rifle in the back of the buggy, then slipped into the driver’s seat. Jordan heard him speaking excitedly over the communications link.
Jordan moved beside Adri, who paced along leisurely. The glossy-furred animal peeked out from the robe, big round eyes glittering, then ducked back inside again. Meek came up on Adri’s other side, and de Falla trailed a few paces behind.
“By the way,” Adri said, “you really don’t need those protective coverings you’re wearing. There’s nothing in the air here that can harm you.”
Jordan felt his brows knitting. “How can you know that? How can you be so sure?”
Pointing to Brandon, still jabbering excitedly with Thornberry, Adri replied, “He’s breathing the air.”
“He’s an impetuous young man,” said Jordan.
“But he’s unharmed.”
Jordan stared at the alien for a long, wordless moment, thinking, Can we trust him? Does he know what he’s talking about? Is he telling us the truth?
Turning to Meek, Jordan asked, “Harmon, what do you think? Would it be all right to get out of the biosuits?”
Glancing toward Brandon, Meek answered, “Let your brother be our guinea pig. He’s volunteered for the honor.”
Jordan asked Adri to sit beside Brandon so that Thornberry and the others aboard the ship could see him. On the smallish display screen their expressions were almost comical as they crowded around Thornberry: wonder, surprise, open-jawed awe. That must be what I looked like a few minutes ago, Jordan thought.
They were all talking at once. Thornberry began to look irritated as the rest of the team jostled him.
“I am pleased to meet you all,” Adri said, his voice suddenly strong enough to cut through their jabber. “I am delighted that you made the journey here, and I wish you well.”
Literally pushing the others away, Thornberry admitted, “To say that we’re surprised would be a grand understatement.”
“I understand,” said Adri.
Standing outside the buggy at Adri’s side, Jordan wondered, “Why aren’t you surprised? You seem almost to have been expecting us.”
Adri turned to him with his patient smile. “We’ve been observing you for a long time: watching your video broadcasts, monitoring your radio emissions. We detected your ship taking up an orbit around this planet. We projected a laser beacon to inform you of our presence. You quickly grasped its significance and sent your pair of machines here.”
“And you conked them out,” said Thornberry’s image on the comm screen, almost accusingly.
Adri looked slightly embarrassed. “Yes, I’m afraid we did disable them. We wanted you to come here yourselves. Making our first contact through your machines would have been … awkward.”
“Can you turn the rovers back on?” Thornberry asked.
“Oh yes, of course. You’ll find that they are both in perfect working order now.”
Thornberry glanced down; Jordan concluded he was working his console screen.
“Well I’ll be dipped in sheep droppings,” he muttered. “They’re both humming as if they’d never been off.”
“It’s been a pleasure to meet all of you,” Adri said, in his gentle, genial tone. Then he slipped out of the seat to stand beside Jordan. “Now, if you’re willing, I would like to show you our community.” Pointing deeper into the forest, Adri said, “It’s only a few kilometers, in that direction.”
“Why don’t you sit up front, with Brandon,” said Jordan.
“Oh, that’s not necessary. I can sit behind you.”
“No, no. I insist. You know the way. You can be Bran’s navigator.”
Adri seemed to think it over briefly, then made a polite little bow. “Thank you.”
He climbed into the right-hand seat. Jordan stashed his rifle, then sat with Meek in the second row while de Falla climbed into the rearmost row, empty since the robots were still with the reactivated rovers.
As the buggy started up, Jordan marveled at how fantastic this all was. It’s impossible, he told himself. I must be dreaming.
Yet he opened the neck seal of his biosuit and pulled the deflated plastic helmet down off his head.
The City
Brandon drove a good deal faster than de Falla had, pushing through the forest at Adri’s direction along what appeared to be a fairly well-defined track that wound among the trees. Jordan leaned between them and asked for a report from Longyear on the quality of the air.
The biologist’s lean, somber face appeared on the comm screen. “The bio program’s still analyzing the sampling data you’ve beamed up. Nothing toxic, apparently. But the analysis isn’t finished yet.”
Jordan nodded. “Brandon and I have removed our suit helmets.”
Longyear’s dark eyes widened. “That’s premature, Jordan. There could be—”
“We’ve volunteered to be experimental subjects. So far, so good.”
Looking unhappy, the biologist muttered, “What’s done is done.”
“Can’t argue with that,” Jordan said, feeling somehow cheerful, buoyant.
They rode on for another few minutes, and then Jordan saw stone buildings standing among the trees. Large buildings, several stories high, with flat roofs green with lush gardens. A small crowd of people was clustered in front of the nearest building.
“It’s a regular city!” Brandon cried out.
And indeed it was. Adri directed them down a central street, flanked on either side by handsome stone buildings. Brandon drove slowly now, gaping at the buildings and people they were passing. There were animals among the people, too: four-footed creatures that looked vaguely like miniature horses, about the size of a Shetland pony. Apparently they were used as beasts of burden. He could see no vehicles of any sort, not even a bicycle. Most of the ponies were a plain dun color, although a few of them were deeper shades of brown.
At the end of the street, Jordan saw, stood an imposing multistoried structure with a long stone stairway leading to a veranda that seemed to run completely around the building.
How could our sensors have missed all this? Jordan asked himself. All right, the roofs might appear to be natural greenery and the stone is probably local material, so the cameras and multispectral sensors might have concluded it’s all natural formations. But the straight streets? That should have been an immediate tipoff that this is artificial. Straight lines don’t appear in nature. Not gridworks of city streets.
As if he was reading Jordan’s thoughts, Adri turned slightly in his seat and said, “I’m afraid we disguised our little community from your orbiting cameras.”
“How could you do that?” Jordan asked. “And why?”
“We were very fearful of shocking you, you must realize. We wanted our first contact to be as gentle as possible. As nonthreatening as possible.”
“Nonthreatening,” Jordan echoed.
“Despite the guns you were carrying,” Adri chided softly.
The people walking along the streets were perfectly human-looking men and women. Some wore ankle-length robes, as Adri did, but there were plenty of other styles of clothing, some of them very colorful. Small doglike animals scampered among them, apparently free to scurry wherever they wished. Many of the people turned to stare in curiosity at their buggy rolling past, although others seemed to ignore it. New Yorkers, said a cynical voice in Jordan’s head.