Chapter 17

Jed looked quickly at Cal when he told him how the colonists had spooked, bolted in panic. As if he expected disbelief.

“Maybe that seems funny to you,” he commented. “After taking so much we’d spook like crazy animals and hightail for the woods over not making footprints.”

“Pretty fundamental thing,” Cal said with a shrug. “Animals are aware of spoor long before they are aware of tools. It hit deep down into fundamental being, a thing like that.”

Jed looked relieved. Hussein and Van Tassel exchanged glances, as if confirming their belief that an E would understand their problems. Cal appreciated the confidence expressed in that glance, but did not feel it was justified. It was now pretty obvious that this was some alien co-ordinate system, never before encountered by man. But how to get hold of it? How to reconcile with it? Coexist with it?

Never before encountered by man? What if the myths of early man be true? And too authentic the legends of his being a pawn to the will of the gods? Could there have been some factual basis for the gods? And not, as was supposed, rationalizations dreamed up by man to account for the control of phenomena at a level beyond his own power to control?

“It’s been bad since then,” Jed continued. “Seems like once they got the wind up, the whole thing hit them all over again. Like cattle in a stampede, they didn’t have a lick of sense. They didn’t even stay together. They scattered in all directions, hid out in the bushes from each other.

“You could hunt for ‘em, call for ‘em, yell your lungs out. You could pass within ten feet of one of ‘em, callin’, pleadin’, and they wouldn’t say a word. Just stand there and watch you like a hunted animal, not even breathin’ lest you discover them.

“After a couple of days, some of us kind of pulled ourselves together--me and Martha, Ahmed and Dirk here. Maybe a dozen of us now have got together again. Funny thing though, even so, all we want is to hide. Can’t get over hidin’, somehow. That’s why you didn’t see us from the air. We was hidin’ from you.

“Martha, couple other womenfolks, they practically had to push us out of the woods to come greet you, lead you to us. They wouldn’t come themselves, being naked and all. They told us, first thing was to get some clothes for them from the ship.

“We was countin’ on the arrival of your ship to bring the rest of the colonists back to their senses. Some ain’t been found yet, not since the footprint thing. If they were watchin’ you from hidin’ places, if they also saw your ship disappear--well now, I just don’t know.”

“There’ll be another ship from Earth,” Cal said. “In a matter of fifteen or twenty hours at most. We were communicating at the time. They’ll know we didn’t cut out through choice.”

“Yes,” Tom Lynwood confirmed. “As I remember, I got cut off in the middle of a sentence. They’ll know something was wrong.”

“There’s another ship out there right now,” Cal added. “Not an E.H.Q. ship, but one that would have seen what happened. We’ll not count on anything from them, but an E.H.Q. ship will be here soon, probably with an E on board--McGinnis.”

“Don’t know what good it would do,” Jed said despondently. “That ship might disappear, too, soon as it landed. And the next, and the next.”

“I don’t plan to let it land,” Cal told them. “You’ll notice nothing happened to us until we touched ground. I’ll find a way to talk to the ship, keep it from landing until we’ve got a line on whatever this is.”

“You figger to solve this one?” Jed asked curiously, unbelieving.

“I’m going to try,” Cal said with more confidence than he felt. “It’s what I’m here for. Maybe I can’t solve it, but I can try.”

“I don’t know how you’re going to start,” Dirk spoke up. “We’re just like animals here. We can’t use tools.”

“But animals do use tools,” Cal answered after a moment. “Materials, anyway. Birds build nests using sticks, grass, clay. Monkeys and apes throw sticks and stones. Even insects use materials. Basic difference between man and the rest is that man gives special shapes to tools, where mainly the rest use whatever falls to hand. But all higher, organized protoplasmic life uses tools in one form or another.”

“We ain’t allowed to,” Jed said emphatically. “Not even what’s at hand. Somebody, or somethin’, is bound and determined we ain’t goin’ to.”

At that moment Cal felt close to a solution, or at least an understanding of the nature of the problem, which is the first step toward solution. But like the specter seen in twilight from the corner of the eye, as soon as he tried to focus on the problem, the concept disappeared. Something about protoplasmic life using materials. Non-protoplasmic life? Could there be, and still meet the definitions of what constitute life? As compared with our evolution, from its earliest beginning finding some other approach to the manipulation of the physical universe? A totally alien kind of science? Come to think of it, the use of material to affect other material was a cumbersome, indirect, awkward way of going about it, as compared with...