Worden said sourly into his helmet microphone, “It’s a present for Butch. His kinfolk know he was captured alive. They suspect he’s hungry: They’ve left some grub for him of the kind he wants or needs most.”
That was plainly what it was. It did not make Worden feel proud. A baby—Butch—had been kidnapped by the enemies of its race. That baby was a prisoner and its captors would have nothing with which to feed it. So someone, greatly daring—Worden wondered somberly if it was Butch’s father and mother—had risked their lives to leave food for him with a rocking stone to tag it for recognition as food.
“It’s a dirty shame,” said Worden bitterly. “All right! Let’s carry it back. Careful not to spill the powdered stuff!”
His lack of pride was emphasized when Butch fell upon the unidentified powder with marked enthusiasm. Tiny pinch by tiny pinch Butch consumed it with an air of vast satisfaction. Worden felt ashamed.
“You’re getting treated pretty rough, Butch,” said Worden. “What I’ve already learned from you will cost a good many hundred of your folks’ lives. And they’re taking chances to feed you! I’m making you a traitor and myself a scoundrel.”
Butch thoughtfully held up the hoop diaphragm to catch the voice vibrations in the air. He was small and furry and absorbed. He decided that he could pick up sounds better from the rock underfoot. He pressed the communicator microphone on Worden. He waited.
“No!” said Worden roughly. “Your people are too human. Don’t let me find out any more, Butch. Be smart and play dumb!”
But Butch didn’t, It wasn’t very long before Worden was teaching him to read. Oddly, though, the rock microphones that had given the alarm at the station didn’t help the tractor parties at all. Butch’s kinfolk seemed to vanish from the neighborhood of the station altogether. Of course if that kept up, the construction of a fuel base could be begun and the actual extermination of the species carried out later. But the reports on Butch were suggesting other possibilities.
“If your folks stay vanished,” Worden told Butch, “it’ll be all right for a while—and only for a while. I’m being urged to try to get you used to Earth gravity. If I succeed, they’ll want you on Earth in a zoo. And if that works—why, they’ll be sending other expeditions to get more of your kinfolk to put in other zoos.”
Butch watched Worden, motionless. “And also”—Worden’s tone was very grim—“there’s some miniature mining machinery coming up by the next rocket. I’m supposed to see if you can learn to run it.”
Butch made scratching sounds on the floor. It was unintelligible of course, but it was an expression of interest at least. Butch seemed to enjoy the vibrations of Worden’s voice, just as a dog likes to have his master talk to him. Worden grunted.
“We humans class you as an animal, Butch. We tell ourselves that all the animal world should be subject to us. Animals should work for us. If you act too smart we’ll hunt down all your relatives and set them to work digging minerals for us. You’ll be with them. But I don’t want you to work your heart out in a mine, Butch! It’s wrong!”
Butch remained quite still. Worden thought sickishly of small furry creatures like Butch driven to labor in airless mines in the Moon’s frigid depths. With guards in spacesuits watching lest any try to escape to the freedom they’d known before the coming of men. With guns mounted against revolt. With punishments for rebellion or weariness.
It wouldn’t be unprecedented. The Indians in Cuba when the Spanish came … Negro slavery in both Americas … concentration camps …
Butch moved. He put a small furry paw on Worden’s knee. Worden scowled at him.
“Bad business,” he said harshly. “I’d rather not get fond of you. You’re a likable little cuss but your race is doomed. The trouble is that you didn’t bother to develop a civilization. And if you had, I suspect we’d have smashed it. We humans aren’t what you’d call admirable.”
Butch went over to the blackboard. He took a piece of pastel chalk—ordinary chalk was too hard for his Moon-gravity muscles to use—and soberly began to make marks on the slate. The marks formed letters. The letters made words. The words made sense.
YOU, wrote Butch quite incredibly in neat pica lettering, GOOD FRIEND.
He turned his head to stare at Worden. Worden went white. “I haven’t taught you those words, Butch!” he said very quietly. “What’s up?”
He’d forgotten that his words, to Butch, were merely vibrations in the air or in the floor. He’d forgotten they had no meaning. But Butch seemed to have forgotten it too. He marked soberly:
MY FRIEND GET SPACESUIT. He looked at Worden and marked once more. TAKE ME OUT. I COME BACK WITH YOU.
He looked at Worden with large incongruously soft and appealing eyes. And Worden’s brain seemed to spin inside his skull. After a long time Butch printed again—YES.
Then Worden sat very still indeed. There was only Moon gravity in the nursery and he weighed only one eighth as much as on Earth. But he felt very weak. Then he felt grim.
“Not much else to do, I suppose,” he said slowly. “But I’ll have to carry you through Earth gravity to the air lock.”
He got to his feet. Butch made a little leap up into his arms. He curled up there, staring at Worden’s face. Just before Worden stepped through the door Butch reached up a skinny paw and caressed Worden’s cheek tentatively.
“Here we go!” said Worden. “The idea was for you to be a traitor. I wonder—”
But with Butch a furry ball, suffering in the multiplied weight Earth-gravity imposed upon him, Worden made his way to the air lock. He donned a spacesuit. He went out.
It was near sunrise then. A long time had passed and Earth was now in its last quarter and the very highest peak of all that made up the crater wall glowed incandescent in the sunshine. But the stars were still quite visible and very bright. Worden walked away from the station, guided by the Earth-shine on the ground under foot.
Three hours later he came back. Butch skipped and hopped beside his spacesuited figure. Behind them came two other figures. They were smaller than Worden but much larger than Butch. They were skinny and furry and they carried a burden. A mile from the station he switched on his suit radio. He called. A startled voice answered in his earphones.
“It’s Worden,” he said dryly. “I’ve been out for a walk with Butch. We visited his family and I’ve a couple of his cousins with me. They want to pay a visit and present some gifts. Will you let us in without shooting?”
There were exclamations. There was confusion. But Worden went on steadily toward the station while another high peak glowed in sunrise light and a third seemed to burst into incandescence. Dawn was definitely on the way.
The air-lock door opened. The party from the airless Moon went in. When the air lock filled, though, and the gravity coils went on, Butch and his relatives became helpless. They had to be carried to the nursery. There they uncurled themselves and blinked enigmatically at the men who crowded into the room where gravity was normal for the Moon and at the other men who stared in the door.
“I’ve got a sort of message,” said Worden. “Butch and his relatives want to make a deal with us. You’ll notice that they’ve put themselves at our mercy. We can kill all three of them. But they want to make a deal.”
The head of the station said uncomfortably, “You’ve managed two-way communication, Worden.”
“I haven’t,” Worden told him. “They have. They’ve proved to me that they’ve brains equal to ours. They’ve been treated as animals and shot as specimens They’ve fought back—naturally! But they want to make friends. They say that we can never use the Moon except in spacesuits and in stations like this, and they could never take Earth’s gravity. So there’s no need for us to be enemies. We can help each other.”