This world wasn't very densely populated, apparently. Quite a few cities, but all just about on the equator. Nothing in the temperate zones at all; even the highest power revealed no handiwork of man. Virgin forest, untouched prairie. Lots of roads and things in the torrid zone, but nothing anywhere else. The speedster was making a rough and unskillful, but not catastrophic landing.
The field which was their destination lay just outside a large city. Funny—it wasn't a space-field at all. No docks, no pits, no ships. Low, flat buildings—hangars. An air-field, then, although not like any air-field upon Tellus. Too small. Gyros? 'Copters? Didn't see any—all little ships. Crates—biplanes and tripes. Made of wire and fabric. Wotta woil, wotta woil!
The Dauntless landed, fairly close to the now deserted speedster.
"Hold everything, men," Kinnison cautioned. "Something funny here. I'll do a bit of looking around before we open up."
He was not surprised that the people in and around the airport were human to at least ten places of classification; he had expected that from the planetary data. Nor was he surprised at the fact that they wore no clothing. He had learned long since that, while human or near-human races—particularly the women—wore at least a few ornaments, the wearing of clothing as such, except when it was actually needed for protection, was far more the exception than the rule. And, just as a Martian, out of deference to conventions, wears a light robe upon Tellus, Kinnison as a matter of course stripped to his evenly tanned hide when visiting planets upon which nakedness was de rigueur. He had attended more than one State function, without a quibble or a qualm, tastefully attired in a pair of sandals and his DeLameters.
No, the startling fact was that there was not a man in sight anywhere around the place; there was nothing male perceptible as far as his sense of perception could reach. Women were laboring, women were supervising, women were running the machines. Women were operating the airplanes and servicing them. Women were in the offices. Women and girls and little girls and girl babies filled the waiting rooms and the automobilelike conveyances parked near the airport and running along the streets.
And, even before Kinnison had finished uttering his warning, while his hand was in the air reaching for a spy-ray switch, he felt an alien force attempting to insinuate itself into his mind.
Fat chance! With any ordinary mind it would have succeeded, but in the case of the Gray Lensman it was just like trying to stick a pin unobtrusively into a panther. He put up a solid block automatically, instantaneously; then, a fraction of a second later, a thought-tight screen enveloped the whole vessel.
"Did any of you fellows—" he began, then broke off. They wouldn't have felt it, of course; their brains could have been read completely with them none the wiser. He was the only Lensman aboard, and even most Lensmen couldn't—this was his oyster. But that kind of stuff, on such an apparently backward planet as this? It didn't make sense, unless that zwilnik—Ah, this was his oyster, absolutely!
"Something funnier even than I thought—thought-waves," he calmly continued his original remark. "Thought I'd better undress to go out there, but I'm not going to. I'd wear full armor, except that I may need my hands or have to move fast. If they get insulted at my clothes, I'll apologize later."