You see how it went. That was the reason it didn’t pay to think too much about the Shadows. Once you started trying to get them figured out, you got all tangled up.
I sneaked a quick look sidewise to see how Benny might be taking this business of Greasy beating up his pal, but Benny was just the same as ever. He was all rag doll.
Men began to drift out of the tents and the Shadows galloped over to rejoin their humans, and everywhere a man might go, his Shadow tagged behind him.
The project center lay there on its hilltop, and from where I stood beside my sector table, I could see it laid out like a blueprint come to life.
Over there, the beginning of the excavation for the administration building, and there the gleaming stakes for the shopping center, and beyond the shopping center, the ragged, first-turned furrows that in time would become a street flanked by neat rows of houses.
It didn’t look much like a brave beginning on a brand-new world, but in a little while it would. It would even now, if we’d not run into so much hard luck. And whether that hard luck could be traced to the Shadows or to something else, it was a thing that must be faced and somehow straightened out.
For this was important. Here was a world on which Man would not repeat the ancient, sad mistakes that he had made on Earth. On this, one of the few Earth-like planets found so far, Man would not waste the valuable resources which he had let go down the drain on the old home planet. He’d make planned use of the water and the soil, of the timber and the minerals, and he’d be careful to put back as much as he took out. This planet would not be robbed and gutted as Earth had been. It would be used intelligently and operated like a well-run business.
I felt good, just standing there, looking out across the valley and the plains toward the distant mountains, thinking what a fine home this would be for mankind.
The camp was becoming lively now. Out in front of the tents, the men were washing up for breakfast and there was a lot of friendly shouting and a fair amount of horseplay. I heard considerable cussing down in the equipment pool and I knew exactly what was going on. The machines, or at least a part of them, had gone daffy again and half the morning would be wasted getting them repaired. It certainly was a funny deal, I thought, how those machines got out of kilter every blessed night.
After a while, Greasy rang the breakfast bell and everyone dropped everything and made a dash for it and their Shadows hustled along behind them.
I was closer to the cookshack than most of them and I am no slouch at sprinting, so I got one of the better seats at the big outdoor table. My place was just outside the cookshack door, where I’d get first whack at seconds when Greasy lugged them out. I went past Greasy on the run and he was grumbling and muttering the way he always was at chow, although sometimes I thought that was just a pose to hide his satisfaction at knowing his cooking still was fit to eat.
I got a seat next to Mack, and a second later Rick Thorne, one of the equipment operators, grabbed the place on the other side of me. Across from me was Stan Carr, a biologist, and just down the table, on the other side, was Judson Knight, our ecologist.
We wasted no time in small talk; we dived into the wheat cakes and the side pork and the fried potatoes. There is nothing in all the Universe like the morning air of Stella IV to hone an edge on the appetite.
Finally we had enough of the edge off so we would waste time being civil.
“It’s the same old story again this morning,” Thorne said bitterly to Mack. “More than half the equipment is all gummed up. It’ll take hours to get it moving.”
He morosely shoveled food into his mouth and chewed with unnecessary savagery. He shot an angry glance at Carr across the table. “Why don’t you get it figured out?” he asked.
“Me?” said Carr, in some astonishment. “Why should I be the one to get it figured out? I don’t know anything about machines and I don’t want to know. They’re stupid contraptions at best.”
“You know what I mean,” said Thorne. “The machines are not to blame. They don’t gum up themselves. It’s the Shadows and you’re a biologist and them Shadows are your business and –”
“I have other things to do,” said Carr. “I have this earthworm problem to work out, and as soon as that is done, Bob here wants me to run some habit-patterns on a dozen different rodents.”
“I wish you would,” I said. “I have a hunch some of those little rascals may cause us a lot of trouble once we try our hand at crops. I’d like to know ahead of time what makes the critters tick.”
That was the way it went, I thought. No matter how many factors you might consider, there were always more of them popping up from under rocks and bushes. It seemed somehow that a man never quite got through the list.
“It wouldn’t be so bad,” Thorne complained, “if the Shadows would leave us alone and let us fix the damage after they’ve done their dirty work. But not them. They breathe down our necks while we’re making the repairs, and they’ve got their faces buried in those engines clear up to their shoulders, and every time you move, you bump into one of them. Someday,” he said fiercely, “I’m going to take a monkey wrench and clear some space around me.”
“They’re worried about what you’re doing to their machines,” said Carr. “The Shadows have taken over those machines just like they’ve adopted us.”
“That’s what you think,” Thorne said.
“Maybe they’re trying to find out about the machines,” Carr declared. “Maybe they gum them up so that, when you go to fix them, they can look things over. They haven’t missed a single part of any machine so far. You were telling me the other day it’s a different thing wrong every time.”
Knight said, solemn as an owclass="underline" “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this situation.”
“Oh, you have,” said Thorne, and the way he said it, you could see he figured that what Knight might think would cut no ice.
“I’ve been seeking out some motive,” Knight told him. “Because if the Shadows are the ones who are doing it, they’d have to have a motive. Don’t you think so, Mack?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” said Mack.
“For some reason,” Knight went on, “those Shadows seem to like us. They showed up as soon as we set down and they’ve stayed with us ever since. The way they act, they’d like us to stay on and maybe they’re wrecking the machines so we’ll have to stay.”
“Or drive us away,” Thorne answered.
“That’s all right,” said Carr, “but why should they want us to stay? What exactly is it they like about us? If we could only get that one on the line, we might be able to do some bargaining with them.”
“Well, I wouldn’t know,” Knight admitted. “There might be a lot of different reasons.”
“Name just three of them,” Thorne challenged him nastily.
“Gladly,” said Knight, and he said it as if he were slipping a knife into the left side of Thorne’s gizzard. “They may be getting something from us, only don’t ask me what it is. Or they may be building us up to put the bite on us for something that’s important. Or they may be figuring on reforming us, although just what’s in us they object to, I can’t faintly imagine. Or they may worship us. Or maybe it’s just love.”
“Is that all?” asked Thorne.
“Just a start,” said Knight. “They may be studying us and they may need more time to get us puzzled out. They may be prodding us to get some reactions from us –”
“Studying us!” yelled Thorne, outraged. “They’re just lousy savages!”
“I don’t think they are,” Knight replied.
“They don’t wear any clothes,” Thorne thundered, slamming the table with his fist. “They don’t have any tools. They don’t have a village. They don’t know how to build a hut. They don’t have any government. They can’t even talk or hear.”