One of the traders, said the report, claimed he had even learned to converse in a limited way with what he called monkey-rats. These had about the intelligence of a five-year-old human, and displayed the group cooperation common to many Azuran forms.
Too bad the trader hadn't been able to stay there longer. He had finally found some of the natives, just at the time they had found him. He was preparing to leave his ship and accept their thanks for the fine gifts he had set out, when gifts, trees, and nearby boulders began to blow up all around. He had taken off without further discussion.
Four other traders and three Patrol ships had failed. A small freighter, landing to make emergency repairs, had disappeared. The only weapon the natives had, apparently, was a disrupter of some sort, with a range of only two or three kilometers. But the wreckage of the cities showed plainly that the invaders had used weapons of the same type as Earth's, probably with a range of hundreds of kilometers. That meant—
He awoke, struggling, as if from a nightmare. The klaxon was sounding off, jarring his teeth. Gordon's slightly nasal voice came over the loudspeaker: "Landing stations, everybody. We're sitting down in fifteen minutes."
The linguist hastily unfastened his safety belts, rolled out, and scrambled into primary space gear. "Secondary equipment?" he asked Rogers, who was getting dressed beside him.
"Naw, no armor. Leave your oxygen off, too. This is a Class E planet, just like home."
Stuart scrambled down to the control room and strapped himself in beside the stern-view screen. He could hear White and Brettner in the drive room, sleepily arguing about who had mislaid the coffee jug. Such nonchalance! he thought. Trembling with excitement, he nearly dropped his camera. "I wonder how soon I can get some pictures," he muttered. "If I could only photograph our landing ... that would really liven up the next meeting of the Philological Society!" He had already taken over a hundred pictures of the expedition, and his hobby was the subject of much ribbing from the rest of the six-man corporation.
Gordon looked over from the control board and interrupted his thoughts. "Stuart! See anything out there?"
A dial over the linguist's head indicated only a hundred meters to go. His screen showed a dark landscape, illuminated by two of the four moons. "Tree directly below," he announced. "Better move to the red side about twenty meters."
The vessel shifted slightly and eased down smoothly under Gordon's practised handling. Relays clacked; the drive hummed softly.