The Hairy One halted his tree-climbing efforts when he saw them, but made no move to either retreat or advance. As before, he stood immobile and watched. Ronal and Marla approached with the palms of their hands opened and outward, hanging limply at their sides. And as they approached, Ronal swept the jungle edge with his eyes, to peer as deeply into its tangled growth as he could. Nothing moved.
Within scant yards of the beast, they stopped.
The Hairy One was watching Marla.
Ronal dropped to all fours. And it was a peculiar, silent melodrama that followed then. A highly-cultured man from a well-ordered, civilized galaxy, making a crude attempt to teach a beast to walk, on the face of a planet which, but a few days before, he had never known existed.
Why? Marla wondered. What fascination had there always been between alien cultures, that had always made one attempt to instruct the other in its ways? Certainly Ronal was no scientist, no explorer. Yet, as though he were an appointed ambassador of his own kind, he was attempting the always risky job of finding a common level of understanding with an alien mind.
Or perhaps it was just natural curiosity, and an overabundance of self-confidence!
Ronal had imitated the creature's all-fours shamble until he was beneath the tree limb.
"Careful," Marla said. "Don't give him the idea you're trying to steal his fruit, or we will be in trouble."
Far out from where the fruit hung, Ronal stood up slowly. Then he raised his arms, opened his hands, touched the limb with his fingers.