Hinckley touched a button. Flaming rockets drove their fire in to the ground. The great spaceship shuddered, rose on a column of flame.
"At last," Compton sighed. "At last."
"We'll have to come back, though," Hinckley said. "I knew we'd have to turn in a report, and now I know we'll have to come back here to find Parker, to jail him as a deserter, and perhaps worse. I hate to think of what'll happen to those people down there when the Earthmen come."
They looked into a viewscreen. Below them, the planet dwindled and became nothing.
From the edge of the forest, Parker watched the spaceship rise into the sky and disappear. He chuckled contentedly. He had won the game of hide-and-seek, and the planet was his prize. Earthmen always took what they could from newly discovered planets, only this time he would have first choice well ahead of any others. It would be months before an Earth ship would arrive. But he could last that long easily. Longer if necessary. During that time he could make up some story to account for his absence. They'd have to prove him a liar, and that would be difficult. Any story he made up would certainly be no less fantastic than this planet certainly was.
Meanwhile, there were things to do.
He took off his cumbersome spacesuit and left it in a clearing in the forest; he wouldn't need that for awhile, and it would only hamper him. He was in no mood to be delayed. There were a great many things to do, but first there was one special thing to do. There was a girl, he remembered, a young woman in a small hut at the other end of the village. He licked his lips in anticipation. There was a man with her, but there was nothing he could do—nothing at all. Parker laughed loudly into the silence and trotted down the street.
When he reached the other end of the village, he walked eagerly into the house. The girl sat on the couch. The man stood nearby. The walls were unmoving and the blue fire cast a cold light about the room. The Earthman sat down beside the girl, and his hands reached out, unhesitating.
But suddenly the man said something in an alien tongue, a sound that was like a whiplash, angry and bitter.