the buildings had curved roofs. Unbaked pottery was what they looked like to me, and they looked as if they would be brittle as coffee-colored chalk. Actually, their ceramic surfaces were at least as hard as steel.
The Azure had welcomed Ellik with an outstretched hand. Mike wasn’t one to jump to conclusions, so he just held out his own hand. The native grabbed and let it go after pulling it some.
The alien saw me apparently carrying Ellik on a seat cushion with one hand, and he kicked me in the leg. To test my muscles, I guess. I managed to keep from yelling or jumping. The Azure looked impressed and the Indigos did a bad job of hiding a lot of envy and hate.
As the Indigos toted their man along on the litter and I guided Ellik’s seat cushion along the channel of magnetic feedback, the two riders began talking. Ellik’s translator collar broke the language barrier, of course. It was a two-way communicator on a direct hook-up to our cybernetic calculator on the ship. The brain analyzed the phonetic structure of the alien language under various systems of logic or anti-logic and fed the translation into Ellik’s ear. Then it went through its memory banks and played back the right sounds to translate Ellik’s talk into the alien language. I understand things like that. I’m a pretty good mechanic.
I didn’t have my translator turned on, but it seemed to me that somehow I could understand what the plug-uglies, the Indigos, were saying.
Ellik told me that it was because all their speech was based on the one universal humanoid sound, “mama.” Everything good in the way of nouns and verbs (there were no other particles of speech) was some inflection of “m-m” and everything bad was “uh-m-m.”
Ellik was pretty “uh-m-m.”
I was plenty “uh-m-m.” I threatened their jobs, they thought.
They were a real miserable bunch of slobs, those Indigos.
We passed through the wide places between the houses—I wouldn’t call them streets—and saw a lot of Indigos crouched in doorways, watching us, and Azures being toted around.
The clothing they wore was also pretty universal for sentient bipeds—a tunic or sarong, kind of. For the Azures, it was smooth and colorful; and for the Indigos, a loincloth of some rough, dun-colored stuff.
Ellik chinned off his translator switch and leaned down toward my ear. “They are two distinct races, Johnny. Notice that all the Indigos are menials. There does not appear to be anything to correspond to a freedman or even a higher-ranked house servant. The Azures treat the Indigos only as animals.”
“Slobs,” I said. “Poor dumb slobs.”
The nuclear flash washed over us, peppering us with a few excess roentgens.
We couldn’t look at the spaceship going up, but we knew it was going. It was making a dawn.
The aliens were all frightened. They fell on the ground and started praying to the ship, all of them, the Azures and the Indigos.
“What’s wrong with that crazy Chinaman?” Ellik yelped.
“Lee knows what he’s doing,” I said.
Ellik unsnapped his communicator from his belt. “Johnny says you know what you’re doing, Chon. Do you?”
“I know.” Chon’s voice sounded right beside us, perfectly natural. Belt communicators work just as well as those consoles. People only buy consoles for prestige.
“Well?” Ellik demanded. “What are you doing, Lee?”
I thought maybe something had gone wrong with the communicator.
Chon’s voice finally reached us.
“I’m leaving you and Johnny on this planet, Mike,” he said.
*
An Indigo brought us in our morning supply of fruit.
Ellik kicked the Indigo. “It’s overripe, blockhead. Amum, amum.”
The Indigo backed out, bowing, eyes very round.
Ellik felt me looking at him.
“Well, I don’t like kicking the oaf, but that’s all he’s been conditioned to understand as a sign of disapproval.”
“Sure,” I said.
Ellik passed through the scimitar of gray shadow into the sunlight that washed lines and years out of his face. He braced a hand against the doorframe and craned his head back. It stopped and steadied.
“He’s still there,” Ellik said. “Sometimes I wish his orbit would decay enough to burn him up in this damned sour air.” He coughed into his fist.
“He could probably correct,” I suggested.
Ellik sneered. “He hasn’t got the brains.”
“Pretty hard for one man to manage a takeoff. He was lucky to make it into orbit.”
“I just wish he would come down. Somehow, someway, I’d get to him, no matter where he went on this planet.”
“I suppose that’s why he stays up.”
Ellik slammed his fist into his palm. “I’m going to call him again. He can’t get away without us. If he fouled up a takeoff that badly, he’s not going to try to solo into hyperspace.”
“I don’t think anyone would solo into hyperspace. I don’t think he would be able to come back.”
“Oh, what do you know about it?” Ellik said shortly. “He’s just building up his courage to try the big jump. He’s yellow, sure, but sooner or later he’ll get desperate enough, or scared enough, to actually go. Then we’ll be stranded for fair. This planet may not be colonized for centuries!”
“Probably never,” I said. “Not after Lee’s reports.”
“You think he would falsify reports?” Ellik asked, blinking at me.
“I suppose he’ll have to.”
Ellik held his head with his hands. “Of course, of course. There’s no limit to the depths to which he would plummet.” He ran over to the corner and snatched a communicator off the pile of our gear. “I’m going to call him and tell him what I think of him and his wild obsession.”
I didn’t remind Ellik that he had been telling Chon just that at least once a day for a month. I knew his nerves got tighter and tighter and cussing out Chon helped release them and make him feel better.
“Come down, Lee!” Ellik called. “The three of us can make the jump together. You’re martyring yourself for a crazy reason!”
“We’ve talked this over before,” Chon answered. “This is the last time I’m going to respond to your call. I’ve made it clear to you that I think knowledge of this world will cause great suffering, a lot of death, among the majority of Earth’s people.”
“You’re talking prejudice, Lee! Your
