The techneer shrugged. “I can try. But I’11 have to get at machines we packed in the bottom storeroom-and that will take some doing.”
“And"- Cully had been poking about in the interior of the now empty carrier-"there’s an engine in here must have supplied the motive power. I’d like to dig it out and see what makes it tick.”
Kimber ran his hands over the tight cap of his hair. “And you’ll need a machine shop to do that in, I suppose?” He was very close to sarcasm. “There’s the problem of those still in the ship-what will we do?”
Carlee broke in. “You haven’t found any signs of civilization yet-except this. And you don’t know how long this could have lain where you discovered it. We can’t hold off settlement until we are sure. The cities, or centers of civilization-if there are any-may he hundreds of miles away. Suppose a space ship had landed on Terra in a center section of the Canadian northwest, on the steppes of Central Asia, or in the middle of Australia-any thinly populated district. It would have been months, perhaps years, before its arrival became known-especially since Pax forbade travel. There may exist a similar situation here. Our landing may go undiscovered for a long time-if we do share this world.”
“And that, you know,” Kordov added, “is common sense. Let us explore the valley-if it is promising, make a place there for our people. But at the same time an exploring team can operate to map the district. Only, let us not make contact with any race we find, until we know its attitude.”
“Or what manner of creature,” Carlee said softly to herself.
"What manner of creature.” Dard had caught that. Carlee most likely believed that the intelligence which might share this world was nonhuman. Man’s old fear of the unknown, the not-understood, would again haunt them. This was an alien world, could they ever make it home?
“These- these are beautiful!” Trude Harmon had knelt beside him in the sand to see the small carvings he was mechanically unwrapping.
The one he held represented an animal which was a weird cross between horse and deer-possessing flowing mane, tail and horns. Presented as rearing, with snorting nostrils, it was a miniature of savage fury. Tiny gems were set in the eye sockets and the hooves were plated with a contrasting metal. Some master-craftsman had endowed it with life.
“All these things-they are so wonderful!”