"It's been two days now," he went on, "and I'm convinced at last that this one party is all. Scouts, perhaps, from a parent ship off in deep space. And I've listened to them talk. If they don't return, nobody's going to come looking for them. They come from that kind of society. The others will mark Sol off as a bad bet and move on."
He clicked the gun together. "They still think we're the race pictured in the Martian crypts and temples—and in your translations, Randolph. Coincidence eh? that the old Martians were humanoid and their appearance not discrepant with ours."
"We colonize Mars," mused Randolph, "and Beta Centauri colonizes us as Martians. Ring around the rosy."
Burke stood there, the proton-buster in his hand. "And it was cosmic coincidence that the Centaurians landed their ship at practically the same spot we'd set down only three days before. And it's almost incredible that they came to this village where we had taken up headquarters and addressed us in English!" He turned to Barnes. "You're the Psych-man ... let's have it again. Slowly."
Barnes half turned from the wall slit where he had been keeping an eye out for Centaurians. "They found our ship and took it to be a primitive shrine of some sort, never dreaming it was a vehicle, a space-craft." He waved another man to the slit and stretched his legs as he sat down on a crate. He struck a match and cupped it into his pipe. "I'm almost certain that they didn't even recognize the mechanisms as such. Their ship, as you've all seen, is a cube of pure energy, configurated—they're that alien. Also, I believe they're military men, soldiers and minor technicians. The top specialists are probably on the other ship, away from possible danger and biding their talents until called."
The watcher's hand went up and fluttered for silence, and Barnes paused while heavy, meaty footsteps scuffled the clay outside. When they had passed, he spoke again, softly:
"Fortunately, there wasn't room in our ship for a library, or they might have encountered the Terrestrial mind and caught on. But they learned our language—English, and a damned neat trick—from Randolph's written translations of the Martian inscriptiones sensuales he was working on. And when they came here and addressed us in that language and we responded, nolens-volens they took us for Martians and judged us by the context of those translations—foolish, vain and harmless, but perhaps with some value as workers. They even took our names from the nameplates on our bunks, something that would have found favor with the perverse Fourth-Era Martians they presumed us to be." He sucked at his pipe which had gone out. "Their Psychologists are clever—maybe a little too clever. They think we have no violence potential."