He began almost reluctantly to have hopes. But there were definite reasons against hoping.
“You thought there was something watching the yacht,” he added. “These are some of the eyes.”
The three small figures regarded Karen amiably. They spoke, using their own language with intonations and with gestures. It became clear that they wanted Karen and Breen, as well as Howell and Ketch to go somewhere with them.
“I think,” said Howell, “that we’d better go along. We owe them a small debt of gratitude, Ketch and I.”
Hesitantly, Karen disappeared. She came back with the weapon she’d carried in the fight outside the space-yacht, and with the heavier weapon her father had used. Breen’s expression remained blank and astonished, but he descended to the ground with her. The small figures set out briskly in the lead. The Marintha’s party followed them.
Ketch said in a peculiar voice, “These youngsters are trained. They aren’t even excited over having killed that creature. I’d say they must be a fighting breed.”
“They’re human,” said Howell drily. “That may explain it.”
Ketch said in sudden warmth, “You didn’t pick up any artificial radiation from the whole planet! But here they are! They’ve got weapons! They evidently know a lot about the slug-things! They aren’t even curious about them! So they’ve got a hidden civilization of a pretty high order!”
“They’re not much interested in the Marintha, though.”
“Maybe,” said Ketch with sudden enthusiasm, “maybe they make their cities underground. Then they wouldn’t leak signals to space. The slug-ships wouldn’t find them. Maybe all they need to handle the slug-ships is spaceships and weapons we can design for them! They’ve been driven into hiding. We could bring them out—”
“No evidence,” said Howell. “You’re guessing. But I doubt they’ve survived by hiding. The slug-ships travel in pairs, with one ready to run home if anything happens to the other. They wouldn’t do that if they’d driven this human race into caves! It wouldn’t be necessary!”
Karen said uneasily, “You said they killed a slug-creature when it was—”
“About to kill us. Yes,” he admitted.
He told her he wasn’t pleased with himself for being so incautious that but for a grinning child skipping on ahead, he and Ketch would have died as they looked into the shattered slug-ship.
She went pale and looked at him appealingly.
“I won’t take a chance like that again,” he said reassuringly. Then he reported, “Ketch is expanding. He’s been a big game hunter. This is big game hunting to the nth degree. I think he likes it.”
He hadn’t lowered his voice particularly, but ordinarily Ketch wouldn’t have heard. Ketch did, though, and said with an air of great significance, “We’re shipwrecked, and plenty! It’s not likely we’ll get home again, ever. I’m thinking ahead you’d better do the same.”
Howell shrugged. Ketch was acting oddly, but it could well enough be a reaction to the very unpleasant experience just past for all of them. So far as planning ahead was concerned, there are times when it is quite useless to make plans, but impossible to refrain. Right now the appearance of the three seeming children had changed the entire situation into something that couldn’t be guessed. But already Howell was trying to think ahead—quite uselessly, of course.
The Marintha was another problem. The slug-ships must use units equivalent to those of the space-yacht. Physical laws dictate the use of similar devices for similar purposes. The slug-ship would have the equivalent of a capacitor moulded somewhere in its massive plastic substance. But it might or might not be usable in the Marintha. Certainly to find it and dissect it out and test it and determine its properties, and then install it and modify the other units that had to work with it… It might be done, but it would take either exact information, known in advance, or time to work in that simply couldn’t be had. Long before such a thing could be done, there’d be a whining slug-fleet overhead, sending down lightning from the skies.
In short, there was no point in making plans for the Marintha. Howell grimly decided that the yacht could be written off.
And there was no point, either, in making plans based on contact with three children of a certainly human race, before the meaning of the contact was clear. Howell knew that he could hope, and the temptation was extreme. But he resolutely clung to his pessimism. On the whole, it was a sounder way to look at things.
They went on and on, toward the tip of the peninsula jutting out into a world-girdling sea. They picked their way through not impassable jungle-growths. Presently they came upon two other small figures, coming from ahead and moving smartly toward the Marintha and the alien spaceship. There was an exchange of greetings only, but it seemed that these two already knew what had happened. They spoke briefly to the three guiding small ones, and cordially if unintelligibly to Breen—whose eyes opened wider than before, if that were possible—and then to Ketch, and then to Howell and Karen walking together. The two small figures went on to the rear.
Karen said in an astounded whisper, “Did you see that? One of them had whiskers! Gray whiskers!”
Howell nodded stiffly. He’d seen, and all his speculations had to be revised again. The children were not children. But they were human. After a dozen paces his pessimism took firm hold of him again. He was partly amazed, and partly disappointed, but much of his feeling was simple, grim loss of any hope of real help from the other human race he’d only guessed at before. Because such miniature creatures—
“They’re grown-up, but tiny! ” protested Karen bewilderedly, “Are they midgets?”
“No,” said Howell drearily. “There were small races back on Earth. It’s reasonable enough! If their ancestors and ours built the rubble-heap cities together, and the slug-ships came out of nowhere, there were no survivors on most worlds. But on Earth, where there was no city, there were some few people—maybe hunting parties or yachting parties like ours. They weren’t spotted by the slug-ships, and we’re descended from them.”
“I know,” said Karen anxiously. “You’ve guessed at that before.”
Howell went on, doubting his own words:
“Somewhere else, on another world probably with heavier gravity than Earth’s, there were some other accidental survivors. Their home worlds were blasted. They didn’t know but that the murderers might come again. So they stayed where they were, They adapted to heavier gravity by not growing so large. They built up a civilization. And now they’ve run into the slug-creatures again.”
It was not an improvisation. He’d worked out a part of it for a guess at how the skeletons of human children could be found in a booby trap light-centuries from the part of the galaxy he knew. But he hadn’t guessed that they weren’t children. Now he spread out his hands.
“They can’t be doing so well,” he said, pessimistically. “The slug-ships travel in pairs, like patrols. One of each pair is ready to take back news of any concentration of human ships to wherever the slug-ships come from. That’s proof that the slug-creatures have the stronger fleet. They want to use it. The humans fight hit-and-run. They haven’t a war fleet that can stage a full-scale space-battle. You can tell it by the patrol system. They’re losing. And how can we get any help from men—miniature men!—who’re already losing and already spread out so thin that the slug-ships set booby traps for them? Maybe we can hope for no more than help in destroying the Marintha so there’ll be nothing to tell the slug-creatures that she came from where there’s still another race of men.”