“You were free to use your judgment,” King reminded
“Yes, yes. Anyhow we did it. By the time the techs had sampled the air and checked for hazards there was quite a crowd around us. They-well, you’ve seen the stereographs.”
“Yes. Incredibly android.”
“Android, hell! They’re men. Not humans, but men just the same.” Lazarus looked puzzled. “I don’t like it.”
King did not argue. The pictures had shown bipeds seven to eight feet tall, bilaterally symmetric, possessed of internal skeletal framework, distinct heads, lens-and-camera eyes. Those eyes were their most human and appealing features; they were large, limpid, and tragic, like those of a Saint Bernard dog.
It was well to concentrate on the eyes; their other features were not as tolerable. King looked away from the loose, toothless mouths, the bifurcated upper lips. He decided that it might take a long, long time to learn to be fond of these creatures. “Go ahead,” he told Lazarus.
“We opened up and I stepped out alone, with my hands empty and. trying to look friendly and peaceable. Three of them stepped forward-eagerly, I would say. But they lost interest in me at once; they seemed to be waiting for somebody else to come out. So I gave orders to carry Hans out.
“Skipper, you wouldn’t believe it. They fawned over Hans like a long lost brother. No, that doesn’t describe it. More like a king returning home in triumph. They were polite enough with the rest of us, in an offhand way, but they fairly slobbered over Hans.” Lazarus hesitated. “Skipper? Do you believe in reincarnation?”
“Not exactly. I’m open-minded about it. I’ve read the report of the Frawling Committee, of course.” –
“I’ve never had any use for the notion myself. But how else could you account for the reception they gave Hans?”
“I don’t account for it. Get on with your report. Do you think it is going to be possible for us to colonize here?”
“Oh,” ~’üd Lazarus, “they left no doubt on that point. You see, Hans really can talk to them, telepathically. Hans tells us that – their gods have authorized us to live here-and the natives have already made plans to receive us.”
“That’s right. They want us.” –
“Well! That’s a relief.”
“Is it?”
King studied Lazarus’ glum features. “You’ve made a report favorable on every point. Why the sour look?”
“I don’t know. I’d just rather we found a planet of our own. Skipper, anything this easy has a hitch in it.”
Chapter 2
THE Jockaira (or Zhacheira, as some prefer) turned an entire city over to the colonists.
Such astounding cooperation, plus the sudden discovery by almost every member of the Howard Families that he was sick for the feel of dirt under foot and free air in his lungs, greatly speeded the removal from ship to ground. It had been anticipated that at least an Earth year would be needed for such transition and that somnolents would be waked only as fast as they could be accommodated dirtside, But the limiting factor now was the scanty ability of the ship’s boats to transfer a hundred thousand people as they were roused.
The Jockaira city was not designed to fit the needs of human beings. The Jockaira were not human beings, their physical requirements were somewhat different, and their cultural needs as expressed in engineering were vastly different. But a city, any city, is a machine to accomplish certain practical ends: shelter, food supply, sanitation, communication; the internal logic of these prime requirements. as applied by diiferent creatures to different environments, will produce an unlimited number of answers. But, as applied by any race of warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing androidal creatures to a particular environment, the results, although strange, are necessarily such that Terran humans can use them. In some ways the Jockaira city looked as wild as a pararealist painting, but humans have lived in igloos, grass shacks, and even in the cybernautomated burrow under Antarctina; these humans could and did move into the Jockaira city-and of course at once set about reshaping it to suit them better.
It was not difficult even though there was much to be done. There were buildings already standing-shelters with roofs on them, the artificial cave basic to all human shelter requirements. It did not matter what the Jockaira had used such a structure for; humans could use it for almost anything: sleeping, recreation, eating, storage, production. There were actual “caves” as well, for the Jockaira dig in more than we do. But humans easily turn troglodyte on occasion, in New York as readily as in Antarctica.