"We are friends," said Gary. They didn't move a muscle.
Gary held up his empty hands, palms outward in the human gesture of peace.
"We are friends," he said.
The silence was on the world again — the dreadful, empty silence. The goblins were gone.
Slowly Gary came back to the ship.
"It doesn't work," he said. "I had no reason to believe it would.”
"All things," said Caroline, "would not necessarily communicate by sound.
That's just one way of making yourself understood. There would be many other ways. These things make sounds, but that doesn't mean they would have to talk with sound. They may have no auditory apparatus. They may not even know that they make sounds, might not know what sound is.”
"They're back again," said Gary. "You try this time. Try thinking at them.
Pick out one of them and concentrate on him.”
A minute passed, a minute of utter silence.
"It's funny," said Caroline. "I couldn't reach them at all. There wasn't even a flicker of response. But I had the feeling that they knew and that they rejected what I tried to tell them. They closed their minds and would not listen.”
"They don't talk," said Gary. "And they either can't or won't telepath.
What's next?”
"Sign language," Caroline said. "Pictures after that. Pantomime.”
But it did no good. The goblins watched with interest when Gary tried sign language. They crept close to watch as he drew diagrams in the sandy soil.
And they squealed and chortled when he tried pantomime. But that they understood any of it they gave not a single sign.
Gary came back to the ship.
"They're intelligent," he said. "They have to be, otherwise how would they ever have been brought to the rim of the universe by the Engineers.
Something like that takes understanding, a mechanical aptitude, a penchant for higher mathematics.”
He gestured in disgust. "And yet," he said, "they do not understand even the most elementary symbolism.”
"These ones may not be trained," said Caroline. "There may be others here who are. There may be an elite, an intelligentsia. These may be the peasants and the serfs.”
Gary said wearily: "Let's get out of here. Make a circuit or two of the planet. Watch closely for some sign of development, some evidence of culture.”
Caroline nodded. "We could have missed it before.”
They went into the ship and closed the port behind them. Through the vision plates they saw the goblins, a large crowd of them by now, lined up at the edge of the mushroom forest, staring at the ship.
Gary lowered himself into the pilot's chair, reached out for the warming knob and twisted it over. Nothing happened. He twisted it back and turned it on again. Silence swam within the ship — no sound of warming jets.
Lord, thought Gary, what a place to get stuck.
Outside the ship, equipped with a kit of tools, he crawled into the take-off tubes, took off the plates that housed the warming assembly and pried into their innards.
An hour later he had finished. He crawled out, grimed and smudged with carbon.
"Nothing wrong," he told Caroline. "No reason why they shouldn't work.”
He tried again and they didn't work.
He checked the feed line and the wiring. He ripped off the control panel and went over it, wire by wire, relay by relay, tube by tube. There was nothing wrong. But still it wouldn't work.
"The goblins," Caroline guessed.
He agreed. "It must be the goblins. There is nothing else to think.”
But how, he asked himself, could such simple-minded things turn an almost foolproof, letter-perfect spaceship into a heap of junk?
Chapter Fourteen
The next morning the Hellhounds came, a small ship quartering down out of the dawn light of the great red sun. It came down on a long smooth slant and landed not more than half a mile away, plowing a swath through the mushroom forest as it grounded. There was no mistaking its identity, for its lines were distinctive and the insignia upon its bow was the insignia that both Caroline and Gary had seen many times on the ships that screamed down to lay bombs upon the mighty city of the Engineers.
"And us," said Gary, "with nothing but hand guns in the locker and a ship that we can't lift.”
He saw the stricken look on Caroline's face and tried to make amends.
"Maybe they won't know who we are," he said. "Maybe they…”
"Don't let's fool ourselves," Caroline told him. "They know who we are, all right. More than likely we're the reason that they're here. Maybe they…”
She hesitated and Gary asked, "Maybe they what?”
"I was thinking," she said, "that they might have twisted the tunnel. The mathematics might have been all right. Somebody might have brought us here.
It might have been the Hellhounds who trapped us here, knowing what we had, knowing the knowledge that we carried. They might have brought us here and now they've come to finish up the job.”
"They were not the ones who brought you here," said a voice out of nowhere.
"You were brought here but they were not the ones who brought you. They were brought themselves.”
Gary whirled around. "Who said that?" he shouted.
"You cannot find me," said the voice, still talking out of nowhere. "Don't waste your time in trying to find me. I brought you here and I brought the others here and only the one of you may leave… the humans or the Hellhounds.”
"I don't understand," said Gary. "You are mad…”
"You are enemies, you and the Hellhounds," said the voice. "You are equal in number and in strength of arms. There are two of you and there are two of them. You have small weapons only and so have they. It will be a fair encounter.”
Fantastic, thought Gary. A situation jerked raw from a latter-day Alice in Wonderland. A nightmare twisted out of the strange and grotesque alienness of this splotched planet. A planet filed with goblins and with nightmares — a fairyland turned sour.
"You want us to fight?" he asked. "Fight the Hellhounds? A sort of — well, you might call it a duel?”
"That is exactly it," the voice told him.
"But what good will it do?”
"You are enemies, aren't you, human?”
"Why, yes, we are," said Gary, "but anything that we do here won't affect the war one way or the other.”
"You will fight," said the voice. "You are two and they are two and…”
"But one of us is a woman," protested Gary. "Female humans do not engage in duels.”
The voice did not answer, but Gary sensed frustration in a mind — perhaps a presence rather than a mind — that was near to them.
He pressed his advantage. "You say that our arms are equal, that they have small arms only and so have we. But you can't be sure that the arms are equal. Their arms, even if they are no bigger than ours, may be more powerful. Size is not a measure for power. Or their arms may be equal, but the Hellhounds may be better versed in their use.”
"They are small weapons," said the voice. "They are…”
"You want this to be a fair fight, don't you?”
"Why, yes," said the voice. "Yes, of course, I do. That is the purpose of it, that everything be even, so that in all fairness the two species may test their true and proper fitness for survival.”
"But, you see," said Gary, "you can't be sure it's even. You never can be sure.”
"Yes, I can," the voice told him and there was an insane ring of triumph in it. "I can make sure that it will be even. You will fight without weapons.
None of you will have weapons. Just bare hands and teeth or whatever else you may have.”
"Without…”
"That's it. Neither of you will have weapons.”
"But they have guns," said Gary.
"Their guns won't work," the voice said. "And yours won't either. Your ship won't work and your guns won't work and you will have to fight.”