Chapter 13

For an hour Superintendent Philander escorted George Hanlon about the diggings, showing him the various buildings and the workers’ stockade. (“Prison” would be a better word, Hanlon thought, enraged that there were still men who would enslave others for their own personal gain.)

The young Earthman got a real shock of surprise at his first sight of the native. They were so entirely different from anything he had ever suspected might exist. They were tall and slender, and their greenish-brown skin was rough and irregular. They seemed possessed of considerable wiry strength, however.

Hanlon had the peculiar feeling that they were somehow familiar, as though related to something he already knew, even though they were so alien. But, strain as he might, he could not at first bring that elusive thought into recognition.

He examined more particularly each item of the natives’ appearance. They had small triangular eyes, wide-spaced on their narrow faces, almost like a bird’s yet not set quite as far back. They could see forward and somewhat to either side, he guessed, with a much wider range of vision than humans have. They also had triangular-shaped mouths which worked somewhat on the sphincter method. Even though their faces were sort of silly-looking, there was somehow a strange beauty to them.

He noticed that when two or more faced each other they often worked their mouths, and guessed they were conversing, although not a sound could be heard coming from them, other than a peculiar, faint rustling as they moved.

It was the latter that gave him the clue. Animated trees! That’s what they reminded him of. That skin of theirs was like new bark; their limbs were irregular, suggesting the branches of a tree, rather than the graceful roundness of human and Terran animal’s limbs.

He turned excitedly to Philander. “Hey, those natives are partly vegetable, aren’t they? Like trees that can move and think?”

“That’s what they say,” Philander said shortly, “though I don’t know about the ‘think’ part. No one’s ever been able to figure ‘em out. They don’t talk, and can’t seem to hear us, no matter how loud we yell. We have to show ‘em everything we want ‘em to do, and give ‘em orders by signs. Whips don’t do any good when they loaf--they don’t seem to feel ‘em. So we use electric shock-rods, like you see that guard there carrying.”

Hanlon was silent for several moments, but his mind was attempting to probe into that of the native nearest him. Nor was he surprised to discover that this native had a really respectable mind--alert and keen.

Hanlon could read quite easily pictures of various things--but he could not interpret them. Yet he could feel their sense of shame and degradation at such an enslaved condition, and the dull anger they felt for the humans who had made them so.

This promised to be a fertile field for study, and the young SS man felt a thrill that he could do a lot of prowling and studying without seeming to break the rules Philander had laid down for his conduct. “This certainly is my field,” he thought. “I’m sure glad I decided to take the chance of coming here--the Corps must learn of this situation.”

The superintendent broke in on his thoughts. “I’ve got to go back to the office before dinner. Go to the commissary store, there, and get your chronom exchanged for one that runs on Algonian time. Yours will be stored for safekeeping and changed back if or when you leave here.”

As he walked away Hanlon thrilled to the knowledge that he had gained two valuable pieces of information.

First, and most important, the name of this planet--Algon. Second, but this one a bit dismaying, that there might be some doubt as to whether or not he would ever leave here. Was there some danger here of which he had not been told ... or was it that the leader’s promise of four months’ work and then a vacation back to Simonides perhaps meant nothing at all--was merely a “come on”?

It was more than the perspiration from the terrible heat that dampened Hanlon’s skin as he walked thoughtfully over to the store. Yet he tingled with the knowledge that at least he knew where he was. Now, his only worry was getting that knowledge to the Corps.

At dinner a little later he had his first chance to meet all the men with whom he would be working. The superintendent introduced them, all around when they sat down at the long table.

There were eleven other guards, all older, all bigger men than he. They were alike in that all appeared to be swaggering bullies, and he could well imagine how ready they were with the use of those shock-rods, or other forms of brutality, to torture the Algonians at the least provocation or no provocation whatever. Without exception these guards had heavy faces, most of them unshaven, and most with thick, shaggy eyebrows. Even in that air-cooled room their generally unwashed condition was noticeable.

Hanlon knew instinctively he would make no friends among them. “I only hope I make no enemies. Why was I, so drastically different from them, chosen as a guard? What’s that leader got in his devious mind, anyway?”

There were four mining engineers, and these men were keen, alert fellows. One seemed about forty-five, another in his late thirties, and the two others young men evidently not long out of school. They were clean-shaven, and friendly where the guards were surly and sneering at Hanlon’s youth and slimness.

There was an accountant, the store clerk, two checkers who tallied ore brought up each shift. A half dozen others, who apparently were truckmen and hoistmen, completed, with Philander, the cook and the bunkhouse cleaner, the human crew at this mine.

Hanlon had been seated between one of the guards, a huge man by the name of Groton, and one of the young engineers. The latter made him welcome, and asked where he came from.

“I’d just moved to Simonides when I got the chance to come here,” Hanlon explained. “I was born and raised on Terra.”

“Terra!” the young man’s voice was interested, and several others about the table raised their heads at that name. “I’ve always wanted to see the Mother World.”

When all had finished eating, several of the other men who had never seen Terra moved closer to Hanlon, asking many questions.

“I understand Terra has the best technicians in the universe,” one of the hoistmen said.

“That used to be the case,” Hanlon answered honestly, “but now I understand Simonides has, just as she is the wealthiest planet. Of course, Terra being the original world, was bound to have the best the race could breed in all lines of endeavor. But when so many people migrated to other planets, she gradually lost many of her finest brains. Later, those other planets offered such fabulous wages to men and women with skills and trainings her first inhabitants lacked, that Terra was further drained.”

“That’s the pity of colonization,” the elder engineer sighed. “It builds new lands at the expense of the old, taking all their strongest, most adventurous and most imaginative. Soon the original country or continent or planet is peopled only by the dregs.”

“I don’t like to think Terra has only dregs left. After all, I came from there, you know,” Hanlon grinned and they smiled back companionably. “But I know you’re right in part--at least, that will probably be the case in time. Just as it will with the other planets as their best and younger top-notchers go out to open up still more worlds.”

In the middle of that first night on Algon something, perhaps his sub-conscious, brought George Hanlon wide awake, his every mental faculty clear and alert.