«What do you mean?»
The captain’s hands seemed to wander loosely without a mug of beer to tie them down. «Well, you seem to be willing to run a good deal of personal risk to live with these … eh, people. From the expedition’s viewpoint, you will also be risking our only anthropologist, you know. I think the wise thing to do, in that case, would be to have a running record of everything you see and hear.»
Lee nodded.
«So we can swap one of your eyes for a TV camera and plant a transmitter somewhere in your skull. I’m sure there’s enough empty space in your head to accommodate it.» The captain chuckled toothily at his joke.
«We can’t do an eye procedure here,» Pascual argued. «It’s too risky.»
«I understand that Dr. Tanaka is quite expert in that field,» the captain said. «And naturally we would preserve the eye to restore it afterward. Unless, of course, Professor Lee—» He let the suggestion dangle.
Lee looked at them sitting around the big table: Rasmussen, trying to look noncommittal; Pascual, upset and nearly angry; Lehman, staring intently right back into Lee’s eyes.
You’re just trying to force me to back down, Lee thought of Rasmussen. Then, of Lehman, And if I don’t back down, you’ll be convinced that I’m crazy.
For a long moment there was no sound in the crowded conference room except the faint whir of the air blower.
«All right,» Lee said. «If Tanaka is willing to tackle the surgery, so am I.»
When Lee returned to his cubicle, the message light under the phone screen was blinking red. He flopped on the bunk, propped a pillow under his head, and asked the computer, «What’s the phone message?»
The screen lit up: PLS CALL DR. LEHMAN. My son, the psychiatrist. «Okay,» he said aloud, «get him.»
A moment later Lehman’s tanned face filled the screen.
«I was expecting you to call,» Lee said.
The psychiatrist nodded, «You agreed to pay a big price just to get loose among the natives.»
«Tanaka can handle the surgery,» he answered evenly.
«It’ll take a month before you are fit to leave the ship again.»
«You know what our Viking captain says … we’ll stay here as long as the beer holds out.»
Lehman smiled. Professional technique, Lee thought. «Sid, do you really think you can mingle with these people without causing any cultural impact? Without changing them?»
Shrugging, he answered, «I don’t know. I hope so. As far as we know, they’re the only humanoid group on the planet. They may have never seen a stranger before.»
«That’s what I mean,» Lehman said. «Don’t you feel that—»
«Let’s cut the circling, Rich. You know why I want to see them first-hand. If we had the time I’d study them remotely for a good long while before trying any contact. But it gets back to the beer supply. We’ve got to squeeze everything we can out of them in a little more than four years.»
«There will be other expeditions, after we return to Earth and tell them about these people.»
«Probably so. But they may be too late.»
«Too late for what?»
His neck was starting to hurt; Lee hunched up to a sitting position on the bunk. «Figure it out. There can’t be more than about fifty people in the group we’ve been watching. I’ve only seen a couple of children. And there aren’t any other humanoid groups on the planet. That means they’re dying out. This gang is the last of their kind. By the time another expedition gets here, there might not be any of them left.»
For once, Lehman looked surprised. «Do you really think so?»
«Yes. And before they die, we have to get some information out of them.»
«What do you mean?
«They might not be natives of this planet,» Lee said, forcing himself to speak calmly, keeping his face a mask, freezing any emotion inside him. «They probably came from somewhere else. That elsewhere is the home of the people who built the Titan machine … their real home. We have got to find out where it is.» Flawless logic.
Lehman tried to smile again. «That’s assuming your theory about an ancient war is right.»
«Yes. Assuming I’m right.»
«Assume you are,» Lehman said. «And assume you find what you’re looking for. Then what? Do you just take off and go back to Earth? What happens to the people here?»
«I don’t know,» Lee said, ice-cold inside. «The main problem will be how to deal with the home world of their people.»
«But the people here, do we just let them die out?»
«Maybe. I guess so.»
Lehman’s smile was completely gone now; his face didn’t look pleasant at all.
It took much more than a month. The surgery was difficult. And beneath all the pain was Lee’s rooted fear that he might never have his sight fully restored again. While he was recovering, before he was allowed out of his infirmary bed, Hatfield turned his skin black with a series of enzyme injections. He was also fitted for a single quartz contact lens.
Once he was up and around, Marlene followed him constantly. Finally she said, «You’re even better looking with black skin; it makes you more mysterious. And the prosthetic eye looks exactly like your own. It even moves like the natural one.»
Rasmussen still plodded. Long after Lee felt strong enough to get going again, he was still confined to the ship. When his complaints grew loud enough, they let him start on a diet of native foods. The medics and Hatfield hovered around him while he spent a miserable week with dysentery. Then it passed. But it took a while to build up his strength again; all he had to eat now were fish, insects, and pulpy greens.
After more tests, conferences, a two-week trial run out by the Glass Mountains, and then still more exhaustive physical exams, Rasmussen at last agreed to let Lee go.
Grote took him out in the skimmer, skirting the long way around the Glass Mountains, through the surf and out onto the gently billowing sea. They kept far enough out at sea for the beach to be constantly beyond their horizon.
When night fell, Grote nosed the skimmer landward. They came ashore around midnight, with the engines clamped down to near silence, a few kilometers up the beach from the humanoids’ site. Grote, encased in a powersuit, walked with him part way and buried a relay transceiver in the sand, to pick up the signals from the camera and radio imbedded in Lee’s skull.
«Good luck.» His voice was muffled by the helmet.
Lee watched him plod mechanically back into the darkness. He strained to hear the skimmer as it turned and slipped back into the sea, but he could neither see nor hear it.
He was alone on the beach.
Clouds were drifting landward, riding smoothly overhead. The breeze on the beach, though, was blowing warmly out of the desert, spilling over the bluffs and across the beach, out to sea. The sky was bright with the all-night twilight glow, even though the clouds blotted out most of the stars. Along the foot of the cliffs, though, it was deep black. Except for the wind, there wasn’t a sound: not a bird nor a nocturnal cat, not even an insect’s chirrup.
Lee stayed near the water’s edge. He wasn’t cold, even though naked. Still, he could feel himself trembling.
Grote’s out there, he told himself. If you need him, he can come rolling up the beach in ten minutes.
But he knew he was alone.
The clouds thickened and began to sprinkle rain, a warm, soft shower. Lee blinked the drops away from his eyes and walked slowly, a hundred paces one direction, then a hundred paces back again.
The rain stopped as the sea horizon started turning bright. The clouds wafted away. The sky lightened, first gray, then almost milky white. Lee looked toward the base of the cliffs. Dark shadows dotted the rugged cliff face. Caves. Some of them were ten feet or more above the sand.
Sirius edged a limb above the horizon, and Lee, squinting, turned away from its brilliance. He looked back at the caves again, feeling the warmth of the hot star’s might on his back.