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The canoes were apparently dugouts, hollowed out sufficiently so that only the head end of each crew member could be seen; from their distribution, Lackland suspected that they lay herring-bone fashion inside, with the paddles operated by the foremost sets of pincer-equipped arms.
The Bree’s leeward flame throwers were ma
Any chance there might have been to make effective use of the flame dust vanished as the fleet of canoes opened out to surround the Bree. Two or three yards from her on all sides, they glided to a stop, and for a minute or two there was silence. To Lackland’s intense a
With sunrise, however, he discovered that the night had not been wholly uneventful. By rights, the Bree should have drifted some distance downstream during the darkness; actually, she was still opposite the village. Furthermore she was no longer far out in the river, but only a few yards from the bank. Lackland was about to ask Barle
Wearing a slightly a
„Barl has let himself get into trouble already. I know he’s a smart fellow, but with over thirty thousand miles to go I don’t like to see him getting held up in the first hundred.”
„Aren’t you going to help him? There’s a couple of billion dollars, not to mention a lot of reputations, riding with him.”
„What can I do? All I could give would be advice, and he can size up the situation better than I can. He can see it better, and is dealing with his own sort of people.”
„From what I can see, they’re about as much his sort as the South Sea Islanders were Captain Cook’s. I grant they appear to be the same species, but if they’re, say, ca
„I still couldn’t help him, could I? How do you talk a ca
„While I’m not mind reader enough to predict that one in detail, I would suggest that in such a case he might just possibly be scared enough to do almost anything. As aa ethnologist I can assure you that there are primitive races on a lot of planets, including our own Earth, who would bow down, hold square dances, and even make sacrifices to a box that talked to them.”
Lackland digested that remark in silence for a few moments, nodded thoughtfully, and turned back to the screens.
A number of sailors had seized spare masts and were trying to pole back toward the center of the river, but were having no success. Dondragmer, after a brief investigation around the outer rafts, reported that they were in a cage formed of piles driven into the river bed; only the upstream side was open. It might or might not be coincidence that the cage was just large enough to accommodate the Bree. As this report was made, the canoes drifted away from the three closed sides of the cage and congregated on the fourth; and the sailors, who had heard the mate’s report and prepared to pole in the upstream direction, looked to Barle
As he passed one of the provision lockers he pulled back its cover and extracted a piece of meat. This he carried to the edge of the ship and held out toward the crowd of now silent captors. Presently some unintelligible gabbling sounded among them; then this ceased, as one of the canoes eased slowly forward and a native in the bow reared up and forward toward the offering. Barle
Any social consciousness the chief possessed must have been strictly in co
out of Barle
The sailors were completely unused to aerial assault, and had also relaxed a trifle when their captain began his negotiation; in consequence, there was nothing resembling a fight. The Bree was captured in something less than five seconds. A committee headed by the chief began at once to investigate the food lockers, and their satisfaction was evident even through the language barrier. Barle
„Charles!” he called, speaking English for the first time since the incident had begun. „Have you been watching?” Lackland, with mixed anxiety and amusement, answered at once.
„Yes, Barl; I know what’s been going on.” He watched the Bree’s captors for reaction as he spoke, and had no reason to feel disappointed. The chief, who had been facing away from the point where the radios were lashed, switched ends like a startled rattlesnake and then began looking around for the source of the voice with an unbelievably human air of bewilderment. One of his men who had been facing the radios indicated to him the one whose speaker Lackland had used, but after poking around the impenetrable box with knife and lance the chief obviously rejected this suggestion. This was the moment the Earthman chose for speaking again.