Something flashed and hissed in the dusk. Curt Newton whirled. A long quivering spear stuck in the slope some distance below them.
“I thought the Vulcanians were still with us!” Otho muttered.
Newton said quietly, “Just stand still. Let me talk to them.”
He faced down the slope toward the fern jungle. He called out in the language he had learned on his first visit to this lost world — a debased form of the once— beautiful language of the Old Empire, sunk now into barbarism like the men who spoke it.
“Show us your faces, my brothers! We come as friends and our hands are empty of death!”
There was utter silence. In the distance the fading shaft of sunlight lay like a tarnished sword across the dusk. The dense jungle below was untouched by wind or motion of any kind. Even the beasts were stilled by that strong human voice, speaking out across the desolation.
Newton did not speak again. He waited. He seemed to have endless patience, and complete assurance. After a time, half furtively and yet with a curious and touching pride, a man came out of the jungle and looked up at them.
He was clad in garments of white leather and his skin was white and the falling mane of his hair was white and his eyes were pale as mist. His only weapons were a knife and a spear.
In his carriage, in the fine modeling of his head, Newton could still see lingering traces of the heritage that had given the men of the Old Empire supremacy over two galaxies. And it seemed sad that this man should look up at him with the shy feral untrusting eyes of a wild thing.
Simon Wright said quietly, “Do you not know him, Curtis?”