(eng) Murray Leinster by Space Gypsies

Author:Space Gypsies [Gypsies, Space]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

Communication, of course, was the immediate problem, and Howell was fiercely impatient with its difficulties. But gestures and smiles expressed welcome, which was an abstraction, and everybody concerned discovered unanticipated artistic gifts. They drew pictures which, with gestures and emotions expressed by tones of voice, were much more informative than would have been suspected.

Brisk male members of the small-man race, of whom some were almost up to Howell’s shoulder, settled down with him to exchange information concerning slug-ships and the art of war. It shortly appeared that the art of war consisted, on the part of the slug-ships, of dirty tricks whenever possible. For example, the booby trap on this world. The Marintha had been observed long before her landing by the booby trap. It had been viewed with skepticism, as a possible dirty trick. Even after its landing and after Howell had been seen marching to the booby trap, the fact that he was oversize for a human being of their experience cast doubt upon his authenticity. It had been suspected that he was a new type of space-suit designed to deceive members of the small-man race.

It was, first, the roundabout way he went to the faked globe-ship in the killed space that had silenced those of the small people who insisted that he be shot. But on the way out of the dead area he’d gathered up the child-size skeletons of long-ago victims of the trap. He’d covered them decently, which no slug-creature could be imagined to do. And the small folk were urgently debating the question of making contact with him and the others—who were also oversized, but different from each other—when the slug-ship came in for its landing. And—then the small people were helpless to aid them. Somebody sketched a series of crude pictures which showed successive events in a battle between six small-men spacecraft-globes—and a single armed slug-ship. The small-men countered the lightning-bolts of the slug-ship by throwing out screens of metal pellets to break up the ball-lightning missiles the slug-ship used. They finally got the slug-ship with a guided missile, but lost one of their own number in the fight. So they’d been unable to try to help that strange ship, the Marintha.

They were apologetic about it, but they had women and children aboard and they weren’t even wholly sure that the Marintha was not herself a booby trap. Now they were sure. And would Howell show them how he’d destroyed the slug-ship?

He did, the more willingly because he’d have done exactly as these small folk had done if it were a question of endangering Karen in a hopeless attempt to aid a dubious stranger.

While he talked to the elders, Ketch demonstrated his hunting-rifle to interested younger small-men. They were vastly admiring. Breen worked at communication with still others. His drawings of leaves and flowers were professionally accurate.

He became the centre of an absorbed group interested in food-stuffs. The eight food-plants spread throughout the galaxy by the men of the rubble-heap cities were known to them, of course.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.