Thordin shook his head in some bewilderment at the roar of voices. “I can’t understand,” he shouted to Skorrogan. “I know Cundaloan, both Laui and Muara tongues, but—”

  “Of course not,” answered Skorrogan. “Most of them here are speaking Solarian. The native languages are dying out fast.”

  A plump Solarian in shrieking sports clothes was yelling at an impassive native storekeeper who stood outside his shop. “Hey, you boy, gimme him fella souvenir chop-chop—”

  “Pidgin Solarian,” grimaced Skorrogan. “It’s on its way out, too, what with all young Cundaloans being taught the proper speech from the ground up. But tourists never learn.” He scowled, and for a moment his hand shifted to his blaster.

  But no—times changed. You did not wipe out someone who simply happened to be personally objectionable, not even on Skontar. Not any more.

  The tourist turned and bumped him. “Oh, so sorry,” he exclaimed, urbanely enough. “I should have looked where I was going.”

  “Is no matter,” shrugged Skorrogan.

  The Solarian dropped into a struggling and heavily accented High Naarhaym: “I really must apologize, though. May I buy you a drink?”

  “No matter,” said Skorragan, with a touch of grimness.

  “What a Planet! Backward as…as Pluto! I’m going on to Skontar from here. I hope to get a business contract—you know how to do business, you Skontarans!”

  Skorrogan snarled and swung away, fairly dragging Thordin with him. They had gone half a block down the motilator before the Valtam asked, “What happened to your manners? He was trying hard to be civil to us. Or do you just naturally hate humans?”

  “I like most of them,” said Skorrogan. “But not their tourists. Praise the Fate, we don’t get many of that breed on Skontar. Their engineers and businessmen and students are all right. I’m glad that relations between Sol and Skang are close, so we can get many of that sort. But keep out the tourists!”

  “Why?”

  Skorrogan gestured violently at a flashing neon poster. “That’s why.”

  He translated the Solarian:

  SEE THE ANCIENT MAUIROA CEREMONIES!

  COLORFUL! AUTHENTIC!

  THE MAGIC OF OLD CUNDALOA!

  AT THE TEMPLE OF THE HIGH ONE

  ADMISSION REASONABLE

  “The religion of Mauiroa meant something, once,” said Skorrogan quietly. “It was a noble creed, even if it did have certain unscientific elements. Those could have been changed— But it’s too late now. Most of the natives are either Neopantheists or unbelievers, and they perform the old ceremonies for money. For a show.”

  He grimaced. “Cundaloa hasn’t lost all its picturesque old buildings and folkways and music and the rest of its culture. But it’s become conscious that they are picturesque, which is worse.”

  “I don’t quite see what you’re so angry about,” said Thordin. “Times have changed. But they have on Skontar, too.”

  “Not in this way. Look around you, man! You’ve never been in the Solar System, but you must have seen pictures from it. Surely you realize that this is a typical Solarian city—a little backward, maybe, but typical. You won’t find a city in the Avaikian System which isn’t essentially—human.

  “You won’t find significant art, literature, music here any more—just cheap imitations of Solarian products, or else an archaistic clinging to outmoded native traditions, romantic counterfeiting of the past. You won’t find science that isn’t essentially Solarian, you won’t find machines basically different from Solarian, you’ll find fewer homes every year which can be told from human houses. The old society is dead; only a few fragments remain now. The familial bond, the very basis of native culture, is gone, and marriage relations are as casual as on Earth itself. The old feeling for the land is gone. There are hardly any tribal farms left; the young men are all coming to the cities to earn a million credits. They eat the products of Solarian-type food factories, and you can only get native cuisine in a few expensive restaurants.

  “There are no more handmade pots, no more handwoven cloths. They wear what the factories put out. There are no more bards chanting the old lays and making new ones. They look at the telescreen now. There are no more philosophers of the Araclean or Vranamauian schools, there are just second-rate commentaries on Aristotle versus Korzybski or the Russell theory of knowledge—”

  Skorrogan’s voice trailed off. Thordin said softly, after a moment, “I see what you’re getting at. Cundaloa has made itself over into the Solarian pattern.”

  “Just so. It was inevitable from the moment they accepted help from Sol. They’d have to adopt Solar science, Solar economics, ultimately the whole Solar culture. Because that would be the only pattern which would make sense to the humans who were taking the lead in reconstruction. And, since that culture was obviously successful, Cundaloa adopted it. Now it’s too late. They can never go back. They don’t even want to go back.

  “It’s happened before, you know. I’ve studied the history of Sol. Back before the human race even reached the other planets of its system, there were many cultures, often radically different. But ultimately one of them the so-called Western society, became so overwhelmingly superior technologically that…well, no others could coexist with it. To compete, they had to adopt the very approach of the West. And when the West helped them from their backwardness, it necessarily helped them into a Western pattern. With the best intentions in the world, the West annihilated all other ways of life.”

  “And you wanted to save us from that?” asked Thordin. “I see your point, in a way. Yet I wonder if the sentimental value of old institutions was equal to some millions of lives lost, to a decade of sacrifice and suffering.”

  “It was more than sentiment!” said Skorrogan tensely. “Can’t you see? Science is the future. To amount to anything, we had to become scientific. But was Solarian science the only way? Did we have to become second-rate humans to survive—or could we strike out on a new path, unhampered by the overwhelming helpfulness of a highly developed but essentially alien way of life? I thought we could. I thought we would have to.

  “You see no nonhuman race will ever make a really successful human. The basic psychologies—metabolic rates, instincts, logical patterns, everything—are too different. One race can think in terms of another’s mentality, but never too well. You know how much trouble there’s been in translating from one language to another. And all thought is in language, and language reflects the basic patterns of thought. The most precise, rigorous, highly thought out philosophy and science of one species will never quite make sense to another race. Because they are making somewhat different abstractions from the same great basic reality.

  “I wanted to save us from becoming Sol’s spiritual dependents. Skang was backward. It had to change its ways. But—why change them into a wholly alien pattern? Why not, instead, force them rapidly along the natural path of evolution—our own path?”

  Skorrogan shrugged. “I did,” he finished quietly. “It was a tremendous gamble, but it worked. We saved our own culture. It’s ours. Forced by necessity to become scientific on our own, we developed our own approach.

  “You know the result. Dyrin’s semantics was developed—Solarian scientists would have laughed it to abortion. We developed the tetrahedral ship, which human engineers said was impossible, and now we can cross the Galaxy while an old-style craft goes from Sol to Alpha Centauri. We perfected the spacewarp, the psychosymbology of our own race—not valid for any other—the new agronomic system which preserved the freeholder who is basic to our culture—everything! In fifty years Cundaloa has been revolutionized, Skontar has revolutionized itself. There’s a universe of difference.

  “And we’ve therefore saved the intangibles which are our own, the art and handicrafts and essential folkways, music, language, literature, religion. The élan of our success is not only taking us to the stars, making us one of the great powers in the Galaxy, but it is producing a renaissance in those intangibles equaling any Golden Age in history.

  “And all because we remained ourselves.”

  He fell into silence, and Thordin said nothing for a while. They had come into a quieter side street, an old quarter where most of the buildings antedated the coming of the Solarians, and many ancient-style native clothes were still to be seen. A party of human tourists was being guided through the district and had clustered about an open pottery booth.

  “Well?” said Skorrogan after a while. “Well?”

  “I don’t know.” Thordin rubbed his eyes, a gesture of confusion. “This all so new to me. Maybe you’re right. Maybe not. I’ll have to think a while about it.”

  “I’ve had fifty years to think about it,” said Skorrogan bleakly. “I suppose you’re entitled to a few minutes.”

  They drifted up to the booth. An old Cundaloan sat in it among a clutter of goods, brightly painted vases and bowls and cups. Native work. A woman was haggling over one of the items.

  “Look at it,” said Skorrogan to Thordin. “Have you ever seen the old work? This is cheap stuff made by the thousands for the tourist trade. The designs are corrupt, the workmanship’s shoddy. But every loop and line in those designs had meaning once.”

  Their eyes fell on one vase standing beside the old boothkeeper, and even the unimpressionable Valtam drew a shaky breath. It glowed, that vase. It seemed almost alive; in a simple shining perfection of clean lines and long smooth curves, someone had poured all his love and longing into it. Perhaps he had thought: This will live when I am gone.

  Skorrogan whistled. “That’s an authentic old vase,” he said. “At least a century old—a museum piece! How’d it get in this junk shop?”

  The clustered humans edged a little away from the two giant Skontarans, and Skorrogan read their expressions with a wry inner amusement: They stand in some awe of us. Sol no longer hates Skontar; it admires us. It sends its young men to learn our science and language. But who cares about Cundaloa any more?

  But the woman followed his eyes and saw the vase glowing beside the old vendor. She turned back to him: “How much?”

  “No sell,” said the Cundaloan. His voice was a dusty whisper, and he hugged his shabby mantle closer about him.

  “You sell.” She gave him a bright artificial smile. “I give you much money. I give you ten credits.”

  “No sell.”

  “I give you hundred credits. Sell!”

  “This mine. Fambly have it since old days. No sell.”

  “Five hundred credits!” She waved the money before him.

  He clutched the vase to his thin chest and looked up with dark liquid eyes in which the easy tears of the old were starting forth. “No sell. Go ’way. No sell oamaui.”

  “Come on,” mumbled Thordin. He grabbed Skorrogan’s arm and pulled him away. “Let’s go. Let’s get back to Skontar.”

  “So soon?”

  “Yes. Yes. You were right, Skorrogan. You were right, and I am going to make public apology, and you are the greatest savior of history. But let’s get home!”

  They hurried down the street. Thordin was trying hard to forget the old Cundaloan’s eyes. But he wondered if he ever would.

  Wildcat

  It was raining again, hot and heavy out of a hidden sky, and the air stank with swamp. Herries could just see the tall derricks a mile away, under a floodlight glare, and hear their engines mutter. Further away, a bull brontosaur cried and thunder went through the night.

  Herries’ boots resounded hollowly on the dock. Beneath the slicker, his clothes lay sweat-soggy, the rain spilled off his hat and down his collar. He swore in a tired voice and stepped onto his gangplank.

  Light from the shack on the barge glimmered off drenched wood. He saw the snaky neck just in time, as it reared over the gangplank rail and struck at him. He sprang back, grabbing for the Magnum carbine slung over one shoulder. The plesiosaur hissed monstrously and flipper-slapped the water. It was like a cannon going off.

  Herries threw the gun to his shoulder and fired. The long sleek form took the bullet—somewhere—and screamed. The raw noise hurt the man’s eardrums.

  Feet thudded over the wharf. Two guards reached Herries and began to shoot into the dark water. The door of the shack opened and a figure stood back against its yellow oblong, a tommy gun stammering idiotically in his hands.

  “Cut it out!” bawled Herries. “That’s enough! Hold your fire!”

  Silence fell. For a moment, only the ponderous rainfall had voice. Then the brontosaur bellowed again, remotely, and there were seethings and croakings in the water.

  “He got away,” said Herries. “Or more likely his pals are now stripping him clean. Blood smell.” A dull anger lifted in him, he turned and grabbed the lapel of the nearest guard. “How often do I have to tell you characters, every gangway has to have a man near it with grenades?”

  “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.” Herries was a large man, and the other face looked up at him, white and scared in the wan electric radiance. “I just went off to the head—”

  “You’ll stay here,” said Herries. “I don’t care if you explode. Our presence draws these critters, and you ought to know that by now. They’ve already snatched two men off this dock. They nearly got a third tonight—me. At the first suspicion of anything out there, you’re to pull the pin on a grenade and drop it in the water, understand? One more dereliction like this, and you’re fired—No.” He stopped, grinning humorlessly. “That’s not much of a punishment, is it? A week in hack on bread.”

  The other guard bristled. “Look here, Mr. Herries, we got our rights. The union—”

  “Your precious union is a hundred million years in the future,” snapped the engineer. “It was understood that this is a dangerous job, that we’re subject to martial law, and that I can discipline anyone who steps out of line. Okay—remember it.”

  He turned his back and tramped across the gangplank to the barge deck. It boomed underfoot. The shack had been closed again, with the excitement over. He opened the door and stepped through, peeling off his slicker.

  Four men were playing poker beneath an unshaded bulb. The room was small and cluttered, hazy with tobacco smoke and the Jurassic mist. A fifth man lay on one of the bunks, reading. The walls were gaudy with pinups.

  Olson riffled the cards and looked up. “Close call, boss,” he remarked, almost casually. “Want to sit in?”

  “Not now,” said Herries. He felt his big square face sagging with weariness. ‘‘I’m bushed.” He nodded at Carver, who had just returned from a prospecting trip further north. “We lost one more derrick today.”

  “Huh?” said Carver. “What happened this time?”

  “It turns out this is the mating season.” Herries found a chair, sat down, and began to pull off his boots. “How they tell one season from another, I don’t know—length of day, maybe—but anyhow the brontosaurs aren’t shy of us any more—they’re going nuts. Now they go gallyhooting around and trample down charged fences or anything else that happens to be in the way. They’ve smashed three rigs to date, and one man.”

  Carver raised an eyebrow in his chocolate-colored face. It was a rather sour standing joke here, how much better the Negroes looked than anyone else. A white man could be outdoors all his life in this clouded age and remain pasty. “Haven’t you tried shooting them?” he asked.

  “Ever tried to kill a brontosaur with a rifle?” snorted Herries. “We can mess ’em up a little with .50-caliber machine guns or a bazooka—just enough so they decide to get out of the neighborhood—but being less intelligent than a chicken, they take off in any old direction. Makes as much havoc as the original rampage.” His left boot hit the floor with a sullen thud. “I’ve been begging for a couple of atomic howitzers but it has to go through channels…Channels!” Fury spurted in him. “Five hundred human beings stuck in this nightmare world and our requisitions have to go through channels!”

  Olson began to deal the cards. Polansky gave the man in the bunk a chill glance. “You’re the wheel, Symonds,” he said. “Why the devil don’t you goose the great Transtemporal Oil Company?”

  “Nuts,” said Carver. “The great benevolent all-wise United States Government is what counts. How about it, Symonds?”

  You never got a rise out of Symonds, the human tape recorder; just a playback of the latest official line. Now he laid his book aside and sat up in his bunk. Herries noticed that the volume was Marcus Aurelius, in Latin yet.

  Symonds looked at Carver through steel-rimmed glasses and said in a dusty tone: “I am only the comptroller and supply supervisor. In effect, a chief clerk. Mr. Herries is in charge of operations.”

  He was a small shriveled man, with thin gray hair above a thin gray face. Even here, he wore stiff-collared shirt and sober tie. One of the hardest things to take about him was the way his long nose waggled when he talked.

  “In charge!” Herries spat expertly into a gobboon. “Sure, I direct the prospectors and the drillers and everybody else on down through the bull cook. But who handles the paperwork—all our reports and receipts and requests? You.” He tossed his right boot on the floor. “I don’t want the name of boss if I can’t get the stuff to defend my own men.”

  Something bumped against the supervisors’ barge; it quivered and the chips on the table rattled. Since there was no outcry from the dock guards, Herries ignored the matter. Some swimming giant. And except for the plesiosaurs and the non-malicious bumbling bronties, all the big dinosaurs encountered so far were fairly safe. They might step on you in an absent-minded way, but most of them were peaceful and you could outrun those which weren’t. It was the smaller carnivores, about the size of a man, leaping out of brush or muck with a skullful of teeth, which had taken most of the personnel lost. Their reptile life was too diffuse: even mortally wounded by elephant gun or grenade launcher, they could rave about for hours. They were the reason for sleeping on barges tied up by this sodden coast, along the gulf which would some day be Oklahoma.