"You see, they had a good cranial capacity. As soon as human beings can think at all, they start trying to impose their will on the universe. I think they met here by the shore to perform some sort of magic. The woman and the baby watched, the old man played his drum, the two young men sang and danced. Perhaps this bit of the coast was sacred to them. Perhaps, when we set our ship down here, we profaned a sacred place."
"The woman and the baby bother me," Rossiter said thoughtfully. "It seems a dreadful thing to me to kill a woman. Ever since Kate died...."
Bernard rested his hand for a moment on the older man's shoulder in sympathy. "It was wrong. We shouldn't have done it," he responded. "But we must forget it. Tomorrow, when it's light, we'll bury them."
"I wonder if they were the only humanoid life on the planet," Rossiter said, pursuing his own train of thought "This island was the only land mass we found anywhere. If those five, so few.... When we blasted them, did we wipe out the planet's native humanoid life?"
"Possibly," Bernard admitted uneasily. He cleared his throat. "If they hadn't attacked us we could have helped them. They were primitive, superstitious, blankly ignorant, of course. But they had good skulls. They could have learned. We'd have taught them, as we did the primitives on Earth. We'd have led them gently away from their superstition and ignorance. As we did on Earth. Let's not talk about it any more."
Rossiter made a sort of noise. Bernard leaned forward quickly. "What's the matter, Dick? Are you all right?"
"I—what you said—" Rossiter seemed to grope for words. "Be quiet a minute, Tom. I want to think. What you said then—I—it—" He laid his hands over his eyes.
"I'll get Dr. Ferguson," Bernard offered.
"No, I'm all right." Once more he fumbled for words. "I've suddenly come to understand. You made me understand—as we did on Earth."
"What—"