So Burl and Saya went forward, with the confident pleasure with which well-raised children and other persons of innate dignity greet strangers.
The ship was the Wapiti, a private cruiser doing incidental exploration for the Biological Survey in the course of a trip after good hunting. It had touched on the forgotten planet, and it would never be forgotten again.
EPILOGUE
The survey-ship Tethys made the first landing on the forgotten planet, and the Orana followed, and some centuries later the Ludred. Then the planet was forgotten until the Wapiti arrived. The arrival of the Wapiti was as much an accident as the loss of the punched card which caused the planet to be overlooked for some thousands of years. Somebody had noticed that the sun around which it circled was of a type which usually has useful planets, but there was no record that it had ever been visited. So a request to the sportsmen on the Wapiti had caused them to turn aside. They considered, anyhow, that it would be interesting to land on a brand-new world or two. They considered it fascinating to find human beings there before them. But they could not understand the use of such primitive weapons or garments of such barbaric splendor. They had trouble, too, because in forty-odd generations the speech of the universe had changed, while Burl and Saya spoke a very archaic language indeed.
But there was an educator on the Wapiti. It was quite standard apparatus,—simply basic-education for a human child, so that one's school-years could be begun with a backlog of correct speech, and reading, with the practical facts of mathematics, sanitation, and the general information that any human being anywhere needs to know. Children use it before they start school, and they absorb its information quite painlessly. It is rare that an adult needs it. But Burl and Saya did.
Burl was politely invited to wear the head-set, and he politely obliged. He found himself equipped with a new language and what seemed to him an astonishing amount of information. Among the information was the item that he was going to have—as an adult—a severe headache. Which he did. Also included was the fact that the making of records for such educators was so laborious a process that it took generations to compile one master-record for the instruments.
Burl, with a splitting headache, nevertheless urged Saya to join him in getting an education. And she did. And thereafter they were able to converse with the sportsmen on the Wapiti comfortably enough,—except for their headaches.
And all this led to extremely satisfactory arrangements. Sportsmen could not but be enthusiastic about the hunting of giant insects with dogs and spears. The sportsmen on the Wapiti wanted some of that kind of sport. Burl's fellow-tribesmen were delighted to oblige,—though they had not quite the zest of Burl. They had to acquire educations in their turn, so they could talk to their new hunting-companions. But the hunting was magnificent. The Wapiti abandoned its original plans and settled down for a stay.
Presently Burl's casual talk of the lowlands produced results. An atmosphere-flier came out of the ship's storage-compartments. And through the educator Burl was now a civilized man. He had not the specialized later information of his guests, but he had knowledge they could not dream of, and which it would take much of a century to put in recordable form for an educator.