Blish,James – And all the Stars a Stage

deputation cooperated completely, confirmed and widened this impression.

For all their intelligence, the natives had no technology. They had no

shelters except flimsy temporary ones against rain and sun; they had almost

no tools, and those that they did make were those expectable, at best, from

the most refined and sophisticated era of a late Stone Age, they were

nomadic hunters, dependent about equally upon fleetness of foot and fire-

hardened thorn daggers. The closest thing to a missile weapon that anyone

could find among them was a sling, used only against game they could not

outrun.

Except for the stuffed tigers, whose fatal secret they knew with surgical

precision, they had no natural enemies. They used neither thom nor sling

against each other, and seemed completely shocked at the Idea after it was

conveyed to them, with much linguistic difficulty. It was in fact so

unthinkable that their codes contained no prohibition against it. In all

other respects their social and religious structures were elaborate in the

extreme, and both were buttressed by a long and equally elaborate literary

tradition, mostly oral, but with key works preserved upon fine parchment in

a written language which was the despair of everyone on board the favelim

And yet, trimmed of all these riches, the central tenet of their religion

seemed to be that of utter resignation to anything that a completely

malignant Fate might bring.

“Which is a peculiarly anomolous notion in such a paradise as this planet

seems to be,” Ertak said, when he was appraised of it ‘And yet I don’t see