There was a terrible silence after the tumult. Then, very faintly,
the noises of the night came again. There were sounds like those of
organ-pipes, and very faint and apologetic noises like hiccoughs.
All these sounds increased, and suddenly Huyghens could hear quite
normally. As he watched, a side-port opened with a clattering,
something unfolded from where it had been inset into the hull of the
space-boat, and there was a metal passageway across the flame-heated
space on which the boat stood.
A man came out of the port. He reached back in and shook hands. Then
he climbed down the ladder-rungs to the walk-way, and marched above
the steaming baked area, carrying a traveling bag. At the end of the
walk he stepped to the ground, and moved hastily to the edge of the
clearing. He waved to the space-boat. The walk-way folded briskly
back up to the hull and vanished in it, and almost at once a flame
exploded into being under the tail-fins. There were fresh clouds of
monstrous, choking dust, a brightness like that of a sun, and noise
past the possibility of endurance. Then the light rose swiftly through
the dust-cloud, sprang higher, and climbed more swiftly still. When
Huyghens' ears again permitted him to hear anything, there was only a
diminishing mutter in the heavens and a faint bright speck of light
ascending to the sky, swinging eastward as it rose to intercept the
ship from which it had descended.
The night-noises of the jungle went on, even though there was a spot
of incandescence in the day-bright clearing, and steam rolled up in
clouds at the edge of the hottest area. Beyond that edge, a man with a
traveling bag in his hand looked about him.
Huyghens advanced toward him as the incandescence dimmed. Sourdough and
Sitka preceded him. Faro Nell trailed faithfully, keeping a maternal
eye on her offspring. The man in the clearing stared at the parade
they made. It would be upsetting, even after preparation, to land at
night on a strange planet, to have the ship's boat and all links with
the rest of the cosmos depart, and then to find oneself approached--it
might seem stalked--by two colossal male Kodiak bears, with a third
bear and a cub behind them. A single human figure in such company might
seem irrelevant.
The new arrival gazed blankly. He moved back a few steps. Then Huyghens
called:
"Hello, there! Don't worry about the bears! They're friends!"
Sitka reached the newcomer. He went warily down-wind from him and
sniffed. The smell was satisfactory. Man-smell. Sitka sat down with the
solid impact of more than a ton of bear-meat landing on packed dirt,
and regarded the man. Sourdough said "_Whoosh_!" and went on to
sample the air beyond the clearing. Huyghens approached. The newcomer
wore the uniform of the Colonial Survey. That was bad. It bore the
insignia of a senior officer. Worse.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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