Boles was festooned with all the impedimenta that regulations said should be carried on any journey on Oryx. It was still dead-dark outside. The dew-god still roared, though more faintly now.
"All right," said Boles curtly. "I'm off. Mind, you stick to regulations while I'm gone!"
"Just which ones do you think I'm planning to break?" asked Fahnes ironically. "The ones about leaving native women alone?"
Boles shook his head, unsmiling. Oryx females, with a greenish, semi-chitinous skin, were definitely not appealing to humans.
"Nope," said Boles heavily. "But you ain't got the right attitude. Regulations got sense behind 'em—even the Honkie regulations that they think are religion. Maybe I'd better—" He hesitated, and Fahnes knew coldly that Boles' life hung in the balance without his knowing anything at about it. "Oh, well," Boles said at last, and thereby removed the need for murder. "I guess you'll make out. So long."
He went out of the door and closed it behind him. Fahnes heard small splashings in between the dew-god's roarings. There was never any rain on Oryx. Never. So by dawn the jungle-trees were coated with dew in monstrous droplets. Boles, moving through the supple growths, marched sturdily under a constant waterfall from the trees his progress disturbed.
Then Fahnes laughed softly to himself. He took his hand from below the dry-blanket a man has to sleep under, on Oryx, if he isn't to wake in a pool of water. He had a bolt-pistol in his fingers. All the time Boles talked, there'd been that bolt-pistol ready to kill him. Perhaps—just possibly—it had been a mistake to let him live. But he'd gone off unarmed, anyhow. There was no need of weapons on Oryx. The Honkies didn't kill things. Their religion forbade it. And besides men had red blood like Honkies, and there was a religious prohibition against Honkies ever looking at anything which was red.
Fahnes got up and made an adjustment on the space-radio. It had been silent for four days—since he heard the first notice from the supply-ship that it was ten days ahead of schedule and would arrive before Boles expected it. He still didn't expect it, because Fahnes hadn't told him. And he'd gone off, now, and the ship would have come and gone and many things would have happened before his return. Now Fahnes readjusted the set for reception and dressed leisurely, smiling to himself.
Off through the jungle the noise of the dew-god died away. Fahnes glanced through the trading-post window. There was grayness to the east where the local sun rose. No coloring at all. Just light. As he watched, the white disk of the sun appeared. There was never any rain on Oryx, and the reason for that anomaly also prevented colorings in the sky at dawn and sunset.
Oryx was a magnesium planet. Magnesium was omnipresent on its surface, as sodium is everywhere on Earth. The chloride was the common compound. And just as on earth there is salt in some concentration everywhere, so on Oryx there was magnesium chloride in the body-fluids of the Honkies and the insects—there were no animals to speak of—and in the sap of the trees, and impregnated in every particle of the soil. The results were outstanding. A deliquescent substance is one which absorbs moisture from the air until it can dissolve in the water it has collected, and magnesium chloride is deliquescent to a high degree.
Everything on Oryx, therefore, attracted moisture to itself and held it. Everything on the planet was at least moist. If dust were formed by some extraordinary event, it could not remain dust on the ground. It would stick because of dampness.
So there was no dust on Oryx, and since there was no dust, there could be no sunset or sunrise coloring, no condensation of moisture on dust-particles to form clouds, and therefore no rain. And since there could be no rain there could be no brooks, ponds, pools, or lakes. The jungle covered everything, watered by dew which could only condense on solid substances because there was nothing else for it to condense on.
It was not a pleasant environment for men, but the Honkies lived in it contentedly with their soapstone implements and houses, and their elaborate religion with its ceremonies and taboos. Their culture was low. They had no fire, because there had never been lightning to show them that such a thing could be. They had no metals, because metals cannot be smelted without a fire. They lived a life of elaborate ritual.
Even the location of their villages was determined by a religious abhorrence of the color red. Cultivation of land with a red-clay under-soil was therefore impossible. But the local village was safe against accidental impiety. The fields in which the dew-god had roared were of a slaty-blue, sticky soil which Fahnes knew by experience was incredibly adhesive until the sun dried it.
He breakfasted comfortably. So far he had not done a single overt act save the muting of the space-radio, and that could not ever be proved. He had not murdered Boles. He could drop everything, make a formal report to the Company on what he had discovered, and undoubtedly receive a promotion and a few hundred credits a year more pay. He was enormously amused at the stupidity of which some men would be capable, when they could do as he was going to, and spend the rest of his life in the luxury and lavish enjoyment only unlimited riches could provide. But Fahnes, of course, was very clever. He approved of himself very much.
He finished his breakfast and looked out again. The sun was just two diameters high and the top of the jungle was a scintillating glory. Huge dew-drops covered every leaf. Each reflected all the rays of the sun. The landscape seemed covered with diamonds, save where Boles had marched. The jungle-trees he'd touched in passing were no longer jewel-studded. Their movements as he pushed them aside had made the dew coalesce and run down. His trail was clear. He had gone on to the Lamphian hills.
The restored space-radio muttered curtly:
"CHECK FOR ORYX TRADING-POST. COURSE AND SPEED HELD. WE WILL LAND AT YOUR POST IN THIRTY-TWO HOURS FIFTEEN MINUTES, EARTH MEASURE."
It was a repeat-notification from the supply-ship on the way.
That was the last thing Fahnes needed to be sure of. He buckled the pistol-belt about him. He went into the store-room and opened a soldered case in which a flame-rifle had remained in store since the post was opened. He cleaned it carefully. He loaded it from ammunition packed with it. He went to the store-room door and aimed at the jungle. He pulled the trigger.
There was a ten-yard circle of pure devastation. Smoke poured up. Then it stopped. Smoke-particles do not remain smoke in air which is super-saturated with moisture. Water condenses upon them. They become droplets of mist. The mist becomes rain. An appreciable shower fell upon the smoldering jungle-spot. The smoldering embers went out.
Fahnes grinned. He had not anticipated that, but it was amusing. Everything was amusing today. The sun rose higher and the glittering dew evaporated. It did not form a mist, but made the air actually thick to breathe. Fahnes remembered an authoritative lecture from Boles. Each dew-drop, said Boles, was a tiny burning-glass as long as it remained. Until it dried up it focused morning sunlight on the leaf under it, scorching its own support. So the roaring of the dew-god every morning, so loud that leaves vibrated near it, shook the dew-drops into flowing fluid which ran off. The Honkie crops, then, weren't scorched. But without the dew-god, the Honkies would starve.
Fahnes slung the flame-rifle over his shoulder, made sure the bolt-pistol was ready for action, and marched off toward the Honkie village. There were four or five hundred Honkies in the soapstone huts of the settlement. They were greenish in tint, and while their skin was not in actual plates like insects, it was thick and stiff and really flexible only at the joints. They were solemn-faced and quiet and lived their whole lives in impassioned absorption in their religion, as Boles lived his in devotion to regulations. Boles said that their religion was regulations, and that it made sense. But Fahnes had no religion, and he heeded no regulations save those he made himself.