"A man like that," Vassi, the merchant, summed up, "damned well doesn't even deserve to die!"
Hadwell wondered if they had all gone temporarily insane. He stood up, a bit shakily, and appealed to the priest.
"What is all this?" Hadwell asked.
Lag, with mournful eyes and pale, set lips, stared at him and did not answer.
"Can't I have the Ultimate ceremony?" Hadwell asked, a plaintive note in his voice.
"You do deserve it," the priest said. "If any man has ever deserved the Ultimate, you do, Hadwell. I feel you should have it, as a matter of abstract justice. But there is more involved here than abstract justice. There are principles of mercy and human pity which are dear to Thangookari. By these principles, Hadwell, you did a terrible and inhuman thing when you rescued poor Kataga from the river. I am afraid the action is unforgivable."
Hadwell didn't know what to say. Apparently there was some taboo against rescuing men who had fallen into the river. But how could they expect him to know about it? How could they let this one little thing outweigh all he had done for them?
"Isn't there some ceremony you can give me?" he begged. "I like you people, I want to live here. Surely there's something you can do."
The old priest's eyes misted with compassion. He gripped his mace, started to lift it.
He was stopped by an ominous roar from the crowd.
"There is nothing I can do," he said. "Leave us, false emissary. Leave us, oh Hadwell — who does not deserve to die!"
"All right!" Hadwell shouted, his temper suddenly snapping. "To hell with you bunch of dirty savages. I wouldn't stay here if you begged me. I'm going. Are you with me, Mele?"
The girl blinked convulsively, looked at Hadwell, then at the priest. There was a long moment of silence. Then the priest murmured, "Remember your father, Mele. Remember the beliefs of your people."
Mele's proud little chin came up. "I know where my duty lies," she said. "Let's go, Richard dear."
"Right," said Hadwell. He stalked off to his spaceship, followed by Mele.
In despair, the old priest watched. He cried, "Mele!" once, in a heartbroken voice. But Mele did not turn back. He saw her enter the ship, and the port slide shut.
Within minutes, red and blue flames bathed the silver sphere. The sphere lifted, gained speed, dwindled to a speck, and vanished.
Tears rolled down the old priest's cheeks as he watched it go-
Hours later, Hadwell said, "Darling, I'm taking you to Earth, the planet I come from. You'll like it there."
"I know I will," Mele murmured, staring out of a porthole at the brilliant spear points of the stars.
Somewhere among them was her home, lost to her for ever. She was homesick already. But there had been no other choice. Not for her. A woman goes with the man she loves. And a woman who loves truly and well never loses faith in her man.
Mele hadn't lost faith in Hadwell.
She fingered a tiny sheathed dagger concealed in her clothing. The dagger was tipped with a peculiarly painful and slow-acting poison. It was a family heirloom to be used when there was no priest around, and only on those one loved most dearly.
"I'm through wasting my time," Hadwell said. "With your help I'm going to do great things. You'll be proud of me, sweetheart."
Mele knew he meant it. Some day, she thought, Hadwell would atone for the sin against her father. He would do perhaps next year. And then she would give him the most precious thing a woman can give to a man.
A painful death.
Shall We Have A Little Talk?
The landing was a piece of cake despite gravitational vagaries produced by two suns and six moons. Low-level cloud cover could have given him some trouble if Jackson had been coming in visually. But he considered that to be kid stuff. It was better and safer to plug in the computer and lean back and enjoy the ride.
The cloud cover broke up at two thousand feet. Jackson was able to confirm his earlier sighting: there was a city down there, just as sure as sure.
He was in one of the world's loneliest jobs; but his line of work, paradoxically enough, required an extremely gregarious man. Because of this built-in contradiction, Jackson was in the habit of talking to himself. Most of the men in his line of work did. Jackson would talk to anyone, human or alien, no matter what their size or shape or colour.
It was what he was paid to do, and what he had to do anyhow. He talked when he was alone on the long interstellar runs, and he talked even more when he was with someone or something that would talk back. He figured he was lucky to be paid for his compulsions.
"And not just paid, either," he reminded himself. "Well paid, and with a bonus arrangement on top of that. And furthermore, this feels like my lucky planet. I feel like I could get rich on this one — unless they kill me down there, of course."
The lonely flights between the planets and the imminence of death were the only disadvantages of this job; but if the work weren't hazardous and difficult, the pay wouldn't be so good.
Would they kill him? You could never tell. Alien life forms were unpredictable — just like humans, only more so.
"But I don't think they'll kill me," Jackson said. "I just feel downright lucky today."
This simple philosophy had sustained him for years, across the endless lonely miles of space, and in and out of ten, twelve, twenty planets. He saw no reason to change his outlook now.
The ship landed. Jackson switched the status controls to standby.
He checked the analyser for oxygen and trace-element content in the atmosphere, and took a quick survey of the local micro-organisms. The place was viable. He leaned back in his chair and waited. It didn't take long, of course, They — the locals, indigenes, autochthons, whatever you wanted to call them — came out of their city to look at the spaceship. And Jackson looked through the port at them.
"Well now," he said. "Seems like the alien life forms in this neck of the woods are honest-to-Joe humanoids. That means a five-thousand-dollar bonus for old Uncle Jackson."
The inhabitants of the city were bipedal monocephaloids. They had the appropriate number of fingers, noses, eyes, ears and mouths. Their skin was a flesh-coloured beige, their lips were a faded red, their hair was black, brown, or red.
"Shucks, they're just like home folks!" Jackson said. "Hell, I ought to get an extra bonus for that. Humanoid-issimus, eh?"
The aliens wore clothes. Some of them carried elaborately carved lengths of wood like swagger sticks. The women decorated themselves with carved and enamelled ornaments. At a flying guess, Jackson ranked them about equivalent to Late Bronze Age on Earth.
The talked and gestured among themselves. Their language was, of course, incomprehensible to Jackson; but that didn't matter. The important thing was that they had a language and that their speech sounds could be produced by his vocal apparatus.
"Not like on that heavy planet last year," Jackson said. "Those supersonic sons of bitches! I had to wear special earphones and mike, and it was a hundred and ten in the shade."
The aliens were waiting for him, and Jackson knew it. That first moment of actual contact — it always was a nervous business.
That's when they were most apt to let you have it.
Reluctantly he moved to the hatch, undogged it, rubbed his eyes, and cleared his throat. He managed to produce a smile. He told himself, "Don't get sweaty; "member, you're just a little old interstellar wanderer — kind of galactic vagabond — to extend the hand of friendship and all that jazz. You've just dropped in for a little talk, nothing more. Keep on believing that, sweety, and the extraterrestrial Johns will believe right along with you. Remember Jackson's Law: all intelligent life forms share the divine faculty of gullibility; which means that the triple-tongued Thung of Orangus V can be conned out of his skin just as Joe Doakes of St Paul."