Two more landing craft had come down from the _Hubert Penrose_;
they found Dave Questell superintending the unloading of more
prefab-huts, and two were already up that had been brought down
with the first landing.
A name for the planet had also arrived.
"Svantovit," Karl Dorver told him. "Principal god of the Baltic
Slavs, about three thousand years ago. Guy Vindinho dug it out
of the 'Encyclopedia of Mythology.' Svantovit was represented as
holding a bow in one hand and a horn in the other."
"Well, that fits. What will we call the natives; Svantovitians,
or Svantovese?"
"Well, Paul wanted to call them Svantovese, but Luis persuaded him
to call them Svants. He said everybody'd call them that, anyhow,
so we might as well make it official from the start."
"We can call the language Svantovese," Lillian decided. "After
dinner, I am going to start playing back recordings and running off
audiovisuals. I will be so happy to know that I have a name for what
I'm studying. Probably be all I will know."
* * * * *
After dinner, he and Karl and Paul went into a huddle on what sort
of gifts to give the natives, and the advisability of trading with
them, and for what. Nothing too far in advance of their present
culture level. Wheels; they could be made in the fabricating shop
aboard the ship.
"You know, it's odd," Karl Dorver said. "These people here have
never seen a wheel, and, except in documentary or historical-drama
films, neither have a lot of Terrans."
That was true. As a means of transportation, the wheel had been
completely obsolete since the development of contragravity, six
centuries ago. Well, a lot of Terrans in the Year Zero had never
seen a suit of armor, or an harquebus, or even a tinder box or
a spinning wheel.
Wheelbarrows; now there was something they'd find useful. He
screened Max Milzer, in charge of the fabricating and repair shops
on the ship. Max had never even heard of a wheelbarrow.
"I can make them up, Mark; better send me some drawings, though.
Did you just invent it?"
"As far as I know, a man named Leonardo da Vinci invented it, in
the Sixth Century Pre-Atomic. How soon can you get me half a dozen
of them?"
"Well, let's see. Welded sheet metal, and pipe for the frame and
handles. I'll have some of them for you by noon tomorrow. Now, about
hoes; how tall are these people, and how long are their arms, and
how far can they stoop over?"
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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