The Conquistadors Come by M. E. COUNSELMAN _The handsome, fair-haired Conquistadors were welcomed by the S'zetnurs with open arms--the grasping, grotesque arms of a lost race of beauty-worshippers._ [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories November 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The Conquistadors were tall men, tall and bronzed by many suns, and splendid as they strode down the gangplank in a seemingly endless procession. They were fair-haired, with flashing black eyes like polished onyx, and their straight profiles might have been copied from the faces of the silver coins that jingled in their pockets. In the steamy-hot atmosphere of the new-found planet, S'zetnu, they stripped to the waist almost at once, and their muscles rippled in the blue-green sunlight.... At the edge of the pallid forest surrounding the clear spot where the great rocket had landed, many eyes were watching their advent. Wondering eyes, wistful and excited eyes ... but eyes that peered and squinted, rheumy with disease and almost blind. The Conquistadors, after the manner of their ancient ancestors, knelt down in a ring, hands folded, heads bowed. One of them--the tallest, the most splendid--stood in the center of the circle and lifted both arms to the sky. His lips moved, and lovely rolling sounds issued from them.... The watchers in the forest gasped, looking at one another in silent wonder. Two centuries ago, their kind had lost the power of speech; and for a half century their deformed ears had been able to hear only the loudest of sounds--the screech of a giant beetle stalking them through the swampland, the crash of thunder, the rumble of a waterfall ... the sound of this great rocket-ship roaring down upon them out of nowhere. Now, holding little seashells to their ears to amplify the voice of the Tall One, they began to jump up and down ecstatically, like children promised a treat. They nodded. They hugged one another with their short deformed arms, bumping their foreheads together in the ancient gesture of happiness and good will. The Conquistadors stood up. The leader raised his hand--and suddenly, from all their open mouths, came beautiful noises that made the listeners in the forest shiver with pleasure. It was a strange thing, a magic thing! Cocking their hideous little heads this way and that, and holding the shells to their ears, they began to sway in cadence, mesmerized with delight; for not even their Elders could remember _singing_.