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What followed was a dreary round of ceremony, an exchange of platitudes and empty good wishes and greetings. No one mentioned Koros stones or even perfume bark that he was willing to offer the off-world traders.
Lumbrilo pattered forward, his bare feet making little sound on the stones of the terrace. Now he was only an arm's-length away from the medic. "You have challenged me, off-world man." Was that a question or a statement? Dane wondered. "Why should I challenge you, Lumbrilo? To each race its own magic. I come not to offer battle." His eyes held steady with the Khatkan's. "You have challenged me."
The lights in the bubbles went out one by one. Within the circle barrier of the force field men slept. And by midnight the rain began to fall, streaming down the sides of the bubbles, soaking the ashes of the fire. Out of the dark crept that which was not thought, not substance, but alien to the off-world men.
And before the hour was out the reason for the Captain's uneasiness was common property throughout the ship. Having sampled the delights of off-world herbs, the Salariki were determined to not be cut off from their source of supply.
Perhaps they believed they had no necessity to fear his off-world weapon. "Have you grown wings?" The words formed in his brain, bringing with them a sense of calm amusement to reduce all his bold exploration to the level of a child's first staggering steps. Shann fought his first answering flare of pure irritation. To lose even a fraction of control was to open a door for them.
He hoped they did not willingly venture out of the trees where the leaves were their protection. Rynch went flat on the stream bank, made a worm's progress up the slope to crouch behind a bush and survey the land immediately ahead. There stood an off-world spacer, fins down, nose skyward, and grouped not too far from its landing ramp, a collection of bubble tents.
The box struck one of the dead water-cats, flashed as fur and flesh were singed. Rynch watched dispassionately before he caught the needler, jerking it away from the prisoner. The man eyed him steadily, and his expression did not alter even when Rynch swung the off-world weapon to center its sights on the late owner. "Suppose," Rynch's voice was rusty sounding in his own ears, "we talk now."
"If any off-world explorers had set down on Terra after the Burn-Off," observed Soriki softly, "they would have come up against Pax. And just how long would they have lasted?" Hobart had turned away. If he heard that half-whisper, he did not choose to acknowledge it.
Mankind's age-old hatred, brought from his native planet to the distant stars, was evil symbolized by a coil in a twisted, belly-path across the ground. And on Nahuatl, as well as a dozen other worlds, Wass was the serpent. A night wind was rising, stirring the exotic, half-dozen other worlds' foliage planted cunningly on the terrace to simulate the mystery of an off-world jungle. "Hume?"
Just as contact mines sown in a harbor could close that landfall to ships not knowing the secret channel, so was this world supposedly closed to any spaceship not equipped with the signal to ward off the sphere missiles. That was the theory of the new off-world settlers whose protection they were to be, already tested as well as possible, but as yet not put to the ultimate proof.
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