“Yeah, the earrings,” I said. I took the pistol down from the wall and looked at it. It was an old-fashioned metal project weapon, twenty-shot, circa 2000. It was loaded and usable, but dirty. It hurts me to see a dirty gun.
I went on talking, but I sat back down on the bunk, took an old handkerchief out of my duffle-box and started to clean and polish the hand-gun while I talked.
I said, “He wouldn’t let us take the earring off. Acted just a little funny about it when Haynes wanted to analyze the metal. Told Haynes he could get one of his own if he wanted to mess with it. And then he went back to rhapsodizing over the superior knowledge the Ganymedeans had shown.”
“Next day all of them wanted to go to the village, but we’d made the rule that not more than three of the six of us would be outside the ship at once, and they’d have to take turns. Since Lecky could talk their grunt-lingo, he and Hilda went first, and Art went along to guard them. Looked safe enough to work that proportion now—two scientists to one guard. Outside of that one native that had thrown a spear at Art and me, there hadn’t been a sign of danger. And he’d looked like a half-wit and missed us by twenty feet anyway. We hadn’t even bothered to shoot at him.”
“They were back, panting for breath, in less than two hours. Hilda Race’s eyes were shining and she was wearing one of the rings in her left ear. She looked as proud as though it was a royal crown making her queen of Mars or something. She gushed about it, as soon as she got her wind back and stopped panting.”
“I went on the next trip, with Lecky and Haynes.”
“Haynes was kind of grumpy, for some reason, and said they weren’t going to put one of those rings in his ear, even if he did want one for analysis. They could just hand it to him, or else.”
“Again nobody paid much attention to me after we got there, and I wandered around the village. I was on the outskirts of it when I heard a yell—and I ran back to the center of town but fast, because it sounded like Haynes.”
“There was a crowd around a spot in the middle of—well, call it the compound. Took me a minute to wedge my way through, scattering natives to all sides as I went. And when I got to the middle of things, Haynes was just getting up, and there was a big stain of red on the front of his white linen coat.”
“I grabbed him to help him up, and said, ‘Haynes, what’s the matter? You hurt?’”
“He shook his head slowly, as though he was kind of dazed, and then he said, ‘I’m all right, Hank. I’m all right. I just stumbled and fell.’ Then he saw me looking at that red stain, and smiled. I guess it was a smile, but it didn’t look natural. He said, ‘That’s not blood, Hank. Some native red wine I happened to spill. Part of the ceremony.’”
“I started to ask what ceremony, and then I saw he was wearing one of the gold earrings. I thought that was damn funny, but he started talking to Lecky, and he looked and acted all right—well, fairly all right. Lecky was telling him what a few of the grunts meant, and he acted awful interested—but somehow I got the idea he was pretending most of that interest so he wouldn’t have to talk to me. He acted as though he was thinking hard, inside, and maybe he was making up a better story to cover that stain on his clothes and the fact that he’d changed his mind so quick about the earring.”
“I was getting the notion that something was rotten in the state of Ganymede, but I didn’t know what. I decided to keep my yap shut and my eyes open till I found out.”
“I’d have plenty of time to study Haynes later, though, so I wandered off again to the edge of the village and just outside it. And it occurred to me that if there was anything I wasn’t supposed to see, I might stand a better chance of seeing it if I got under cover. There were plenty of bushes around and I picked out a good clump of them and hid. From the way my lungs worked, I figured I had maybe a half hour before wed have to start back for the ship.”
“And less than half that time had gone by before I saw something.”
I stopped talking to hold the pistol up to the light and squint through the barrel. It was getting pretty clean, but there were a couple of spots left up near the muzzle end.
Blake said, “Let me guess. You saw a Martian traaghound standing on his tail, sing Annie Laurie.”
“Worse than that,” I said. “I saw one of those Ganymede natives get his legs bit off. And it annoyed him.”
“It would annoy anyone,” said Blake. “Even me, and I’m a pretty mild-tempered guy. What bit them off?”
“I never found out,” I told him. “It was something under water. There was a stream there, going by the village, and there must have been something like crocodiles in it. Two natives came out of the village and started to wade across the stream. About half-way over one of them gave a yelp and went down.”
“The other grabbed him and pulled him up on the other bank. And both his legs were gone just above the knees.”
“And the damnedest thing happened. The native with his legs off stood up on the stumps of them and started talking—or grunting—quite calmly to his companion, who grunted back. And if tone of voice meant anything, he was annoyed. Nothing more. He tried walking on the stumps of his legs, and found he couldn’t go very fast.”
“And then he gave a gesture that looked for all the world like a shrug, and reached up and took off his earring and held it out to the other native. And then came the strangest part.”
“The other native took it—and the very instant the ring left the hand of the first one—the one with his legs off—he fell down dead. The other one picked up the corpse and threw it in the water, and went on.”
“And as soon as he was out of sight I went back to get Lecky and Haynes and take them to the ship. They were ready to leave when I got there.”
“I thought I was worried a bit, but I hadn’t seen anything yet. Not till I started back to the ship with Lecky and Haynes. Haynes, first thing I noticed, had the stain gone from the front of his coat. Wine or—whatever it was—somebody’d managed to get it out for him, and the coat wasn’t even wet. But it was torn, pierced. I hadn’t noticed that before. But there was a place there that looked like a spear had gone through his coat.”
“And then he happened to get in front of me, and I saw that there was another tear or rip just like it in back of his coat. Taken together, it was like somebody’d pushed a spear through him, from front to back. When he’d yelled.”
“But if a spear’d gone through him like that, then he was dead. And there he was walking ahead of me back to the ship. With one of those earrings in his left ear—and I couldn’t help but remember about that native and the thing in the river. That native was sure enough dead, too, with his legs off like that, but he hadn’t found it out until he’d handed that earring away.”
“I can tell you I was plenty thoughtful that evening, watching everybody, and it seemed to me that they were all acting strange. Especially Hilda—you’d have to watch a hippopotamus acting kittenish to get an idea. Haynes and Lecky seemed thoughtful and subdued, like they were planning something, maybe. After a while Art came up from the glory hole and he was wearing one of those rings.”
“Gave me a kind of shiver to realize that—if what I was thinking could possibly be true—then there was only me and Dick left. And I’d better start comparing notes with Dick pretty soon. He was working on a report, but I knew pretty soon he’d make his routine inspection trip through the storerooms before turning in, and I’d corner him then.”
“Meanwhile, I watched the other four and I got surer and surer. And more and more scared. They were trying their darnedest to act natural, but once in a while one of them would slip. For one thing, they’d forget to talk. I mean, one of them would turn to another as though he was saying something, but he wouldn’t. And then, as though remembering, he’d start in the middle of it—like he’d been talking without words before, telepathically.”