Chad Oliver by The Winds of Time

Author:The Winds of Time [Time, The Winds of]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2012-02-11T00:27:03+00:00

TWELVE

Instinctively they moved toward the dark port of the ship. Wherever he was found, whatever else could be said about him, man was dangerous. He was the supreme killer animal, and even his own kind faced him at their peril.

“Hold it,” Wyik snapped. “There are only four of them. Nlesine, go inside and get some stun guns. The rest of you stay where you are.”

Lajor moved a little closer to the port. He seemed about to challenge Wyik’s authority, but he could sense that he would be a minority of one. “I think we should get inside the ship,” he said. “We’d be safer there.”

“But we couldn’t see,” Arvon pointed out. “What are we going to do—run and hide every time a hunting party comes our way?”

“Depends on what they’re hunting,” Tsriga said, smiling. “Stone Age men are often cannibals, aren’t they?”

“The point is,” Wyik said, “that we don’t know anything about them. We’ve got to find out. I can’t see any great danger—the range of our guns will be better than anything they’ve got.”

“I hope you’re not going to just open up on them,” Kolraq said. “They may mean no harm.”

“No one will fire unless we are attacked,” Wyik stated evenly, looking at Lajor. “Ah—thanks, Nlesine.”

Nlesine distributed the small hand guns.

They waited.

The four men who were walking across the plains were as silent as the wind. But they had a dog with them, and the dog barked a warning as he caught the alien scent.

Arvon watched the natives with a curious sense of awe. The figures moved closer, walking steadily and with no effort at concealment. He could almost make out details, but not quite. It was like looking into the past, staring into that vast and shadowed fog that was the cradle of man on many worlds. Here were men who had never known cities or agriculture or writing, men of the dawn, men only beginning the long climb that might one day lead to the stars—or to oblivion.

The contrast between their experience and his gave to the natives a kind of innocence. They would know fears and selfishness and perhaps horror, but they had yet to discover the evil that was within themselves.

They came on, walking out of youth, out of time. They stopped some thirty yards away, and Arvon could see them now.

They stood in a line, silent and unafraid. The dog that was half wolf put his belly in the grass and whined, his pink tongue dripping with saliva.

The reality, as usual, was something of an anticlimax when you saw it up close. And yet it had its own drama about it, the drama of sweat and hopes and smells.

The natives were not tall; there was not a man among them who approached six feet. Their hair was long, straight, and black. Their eyes were narrow and dark. Their skin was a yellowish bronze in color, and they were dressed in crudely sewn hides.

The men were proud. They stood quite still and did not fidget.

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