“Do you think I’m a native?” he asked.
She sat down beside him and said, “I really don’t see what else you could be. Everyone knows how fast a ship can travel and—”
“Times have changed since your people left Earth. They weren’t in space all that time, were they?”
“Of course not. The Hutter ship went to H’gastro I, but it wasn’t fertile enough, so the next generation moved to Ktedi. But the corn mutated and almost wiped them out, so they went to Lan II. They thought that would be a permanent home.”
“What happened?”
“The natives,” Anita said sadly. “I guess they were friendly enough, at first, and everyone thought the situation was well in hand. Then, one day, we were at war with the entire native population. They only had spears and things, but there were too many of them, so the ship left again and we came here.”
“Hmm,” Danton said. “I see why you’re so nervous about aboriginals.”
“Well, of course. While there’s any possibility of danger, we’re under military rule. That means my father and Jedekiah. But as soon as the emergency is past, our regular Hutter government takes over.”
“Who runs that?”
“A council of Elders,” Anita said, “men of goodwill, who detest violence. If you and your people are really peaceable—”
“I haven’t any people,” Danton said wearily.
“—then you’ll have every opportunity to prosper under the rule of the Elders,” she finished.
They sat together and watched the sunset. Danton noticed how the wind stirred her hair, blowing it silkily across her forehead, and how the afterglow of the sun outlined and illuminated the line of her cheek and lip. He shivered and told himself it was the sudden chill of evening. And Anita, who had been talking animatedly about her childhood, found difficulty in completing her sentences, or even keeping her train of thought.
After a while, their hands strayed together. Their fingertips touched and clung. For a long time, they said nothing at all. And at last, gently and lingeringly, they kissed.
“What the hell is going on here?” a loud voice demanded.
Danton looked up and saw a burly man standing over him, his powerful head silhouetted black against the moon, his fists on his hips.
“Please, Jedekiah,” Anita said. “Don’t make a scene.”
“Get up,” Jedekiah ordered Danton, in an ominously quiet voice. “Get up on your feet.”
Danton stood up, his hands half-clenched into fists, waiting.
“You,” Jedekiah said to Anita, “are a disgrace to your race and to the whole Hutter people. Are you crazy? You can’t mess around with a dirty native and still keep any self-respect.” He turned to Danton. “And you gotta learn something and learn it good. Natives don’t fool with Hutter women! I’m going to impress that little lesson on you right here and now.”
There was a brief scuffle and Jedekiah found himself sprawled on his back.
“Hurry!” Jedekiah shouted. “The natives are revolting!”
An alarm bell from the spaceship began to peal. Sirens wailed in the night. The women and children, long trained for such an emergency, trooped back into the spaceship. The men were issued rifles, machine guns, and hand grenades, and began to advance on Danton.
“It’s just man to man,” Danton called out. “We had a disagreement, that’s all. There’s no natives or anything. Just me.”
The foremost Hutter commanded, “Anita, quick, get back!”
“I didn’t see any natives,” the girl said staunchly. “And it wasn’t really Danta’s fault—”
“Get back!”
She was pulled out of the way. Danton dived into the bushes before the machine guns opened up.
He crawled on all fours for fifty yards, then broke into a dead run.
Fortunately, the Hutters were not pursuing. They were interested only in guarding their ship and holding their beachhead and a narrow stretch of jungle. Danton heard gunfire throughout the night and loud shouts and frantic cries.
“There goes one!”
“Quick, turn the machine gun! They’re behind us!”
“There! There! I got one!”
“No, he got away. There he goes...But look, up in the tree!”
“Fire, man, fire!”
All night, Danton listened as the Hutters repulsed the attacks of imaginary savages.
Toward dawn, the firing subsided. Danton estimated that a ton of lead had been expended, hundreds of trees decapitated, acres of grass trampled into the mud. The jungle stank of cordite.
He fell into a fitful slumber.
At midday, he awakened and heard someone moving through the underbrush. He retreated into the jungle and made a meal for himself out of a local variety of bananas and mangoes. Then he decided to think things over.
But no thoughts came. His mind was filled with Anita and with grief over her loss.
All that day, he wandered disconsolately through the jungle, and in the late afternoon heard again the sound of someone moving through the underbrush.
He turned to go deeper into the island. Then he heard someone calling his name.
“Danta! Danta! Wait!”
It was Anita. Danton hesitated, not sure what to do. She might have decided to leave her people, to live in the green jungle with him. But more realistically, she might have been sent out as a decoy, leading a party of men to destroy him. How could he know where her loyalties lay?
“Danta! Where are you?”
Danton reminded himself that there could never be anything between them. Her people had shown what they thought of natives. They would always distrust him, forever try to kill him....
“Please, Danta!”
Danton shrugged his shoulders and walked toward her voice.
They met in a little clearing. Anita’s hair was disheveled and her khakis were torn by the jungle briars, but for Danton there could never be a lovelier woman. For an instant, he believed that she had come to join him, flee with him.
Then he saw armed men fifty yards behind her.
“It’s all right,” Anita said. “They’re not going to kill you. They just came along to guard me.”
“Guard you? From me?” Danton laughed hollowly.
“They don’t know you as I do,” Anita said. “At the Council meeting today, I told them the truth.”
“You did?”
“Of course. That fight wasn’t your fault and I told everybody so. I told them you fought only to defend yourself. And Jedekiah lied. No pack of natives attacked him. There was only you, and I told them this.”
“Good girl,” Danton said fervently. “Did they believe you?”
“I think so. I explained that the native attack came later.”
Danton groaned. “Look, how could there be a native attack when there aren’t any natives?”
“But there are,” Anita said. “I heard them shouting.”
“Those were your own people.” Danton tried to think of something that would convince her. If he couldn’t convince this one girl, how could he possibly convince the rest of the Hutters?
And then he had it. It was a very simple proof, but its effect would have to be overwhelming.
“You actually believe there was a full-scale native attack,” Danton stated.
“Of course.”
“How many natives?”
“I heard you outnumbered us by at least ten to one.”
“And we were armed?”
“You certainly were.”
“Then how,” Danton asked triumphantly, “do you account for the fact that not a single Hutter was wounded!”
She stared at him wide-eyed. “But, Danta dear, many of the Hutters were wounded, some seriously. It’s a wonder no one was killed in all that fighting!”
Danton felt as though the ground had been kicked out from under him. For a terrifying minute, he believed her. The Hutters were so certain! Perhaps he did have a tribe, after all, hundreds of bronzed savages like himself, hidden in the jungle, waiting....