Therefore, as soon as the tribe understood how the stone culvert had been built, we proposed building stone cabins. So rapidly had they learned that most of the labor was performed by the tribe. The Earth people merely advised and suggested. And we did very little of that, allowing them a great deal of trial and error experimentation.
It was the happiest time of our merger with the tribe. Everyone worked, and worked in unison. I had never made any explanation of my point of view to the other members of the expedition. I hadn't considered it necessary. No Earthman was certified for space travel unless he had first been successfully psycho-processed. In effect, that meant that we took a scientific rather than an emotional view of any given set of data. Since each of us was faced with an identical pattern of facts, I assumed that each of us would approximate the same generalization.
To a degree, that happened. We all realized the need to teach the tribe; no one proposed bringing machines from the Olympus to give the savages the products of our culture without their specifics. One by one members of the expedition followed my lead and mated with the women of the tribe.
Only our own women—the fifteen astrographical clerks—and half a dozen men held off. I failed to perceive the significance until it was too late. The six men were Baiel's closest friends; each of them had spent at least a year at the Academy, while the rest of us were Rankers, traditionally considered their inferiors. And the women, being clerks rather than crewmen, had not been psycho-processed.
The breach into factions came when our village of stone huts was completed. We were faced with the problem of heating. I wanted the solution to be worked out by the tribe without our help. Slowly they made progress in their efforts to discover how to build fires within the huts without filling the rooms with smoke. They had just discovered how to pierce the roofs with chimneys when I awoke, one morning, to find that Baiel had presented them with a pat answer to the problem.
During the night he had stealthily returned to the Olympus with four of his men. They had brought back to the village a dozen solar heaters. Before I was awake, he had presented the heaters to the tribe as gifts of the sun god.
In wonder the tribe gathered around the tiny machines, holding out their hands to feel the mysterious warmth. Then they thronged at Baiel's feet as he stood on the rock pedestal above the village fire. They swayed and chanted their prayers which had once been reserved solely for the majesty of brother glacier.
As I approached, Baiel began to address them.
"The sun god sends you these because of your obedience to his ways. Through me—through Baiel, the high priest—he makes you promise of even greater gifts than this, if your faith continues."