"Poor slob! God, I've seen beggars on Terra who weren't as...." Captain Rob Cantrell knelt slowly and set the child on its deformed feet. It toppled over at once, unable to stand, and the mother snatched it to her flat breast. She began to crawl again, dragging the child and backing away with her face still thrust into the spongy ground.
"Poor ugly slob ... thinks we're going to hurt her, doesn't she?"
On impulse, Cantrell strode forward, took her arm gently, and lifted her to her feet. She swayed, clinging to the child. Casting about for some gesture of friendship, he suddenly unstrapped the spacewatch from his left wrist and, smiling, buckled it about the woman's scrawny handless arm. She stared at it dumbly, milk-blue eyes darting from the jeweled band to Cantrell's face for a moment. Then, with a little bleating sound, she threw herself at his feet again, trembling with terror. She lay there, clutching her baby and sobbing uncontrollably.
"Well, I'll be a—!" Cantrell glanced helplessly at Harris, "What d'you make of that?"
"Doesn't understand about presents," the astrogator guessed. "Must mean something special on this planet.... Hey! Here come some more!"
He pointed toward the pale forest, from which a wary group of perhaps fourteen S'zetnurs, men and women, had emerged fearfully. Their hands—if they could be called hands—were flung up, like the woman's to cover their faces—if they could be called faces. And when they reached a distance of five yards from the silent group of Earthmen, all threw themselves down flat, their heads burrowing into the spiky grass.
"Don't get it," Rob Cantrell drawled, hands on hips, legs spread apart as he stood regarding this strange welcome. "Look; all of them are deformed. Inbreeding, do you suppose? Or some kind of plague?..."
"Sir, I believe it's a matter of vitamin deficiency," one of the biochemists spoke up from the group of Earthmen behind Harris. "I've been testing a few specimens under the micro. These white leaves—and look at that grass! It's the sunlight, I think. Not a bit of nutriment in the soil. Another thing," he pointed out shrewdly; "has anybody seen any animal-life yet? Ask me, I don't think there is any! These poor critters are just starving to death! Malnutrition. Years and years of it...."
Cantrell scowled, his lips pursed; he said slowly, "You know, Jim, I believe you're right.... Well, hell!" He gestured impatiently to one of the cooks who had wandered over to join the curious group. "Break out some solid chow for these ... people. On the double!"