Of course the cohort were excused from the next morning’s shipwork—being given an audience by the Major Seniors took precedence over any routine duty. The bad part of that was that ChinTekki-tho first put them through a long twelfth-day of interrogation and rehearsal, since it was unthinkable that any of them should say or do the wrong thing.
It was still hot in the common room, and they were all a little irritable from trying to adjust to the queer Earth time ChinTekki-tho had insisted they adopt. Obie was a distracting influence, too. Even Lysander could smell that Obie was close to entering his sexual phase, and more than once ChinTekki-tho had to reprove one or another of the females for showing more interest in Obie than in the lecture. “You must all pay very close attention!” he demanded. “Especially you, Lysander!”
ChinTekki-tho’s s’s were as sharp as any of the cohort’s; he was the best of the ship’s experts on Earth languages and customs, which was why he was their tutor. But he wasn’t always fair. “I am paying attention,” Lysander said, aggrieved. “I’m not the one who wants to get laid.”
“I hope that is true,” snapped ChinTekki. “Now observe!” He displayed a section of the Earth on the screen, pointing to a land area. “This is where you will land. It is a northern area, easily accessible to your landing craft as you come in over the Earth’s pole—”
“It’s called ‘Alaska,’ “Tanya put in, showing off.
“We know it is called Alaska,” the tutor said irritably. “Because of its location it is a cold part of the planet. It will probably be covered with the solid-phase water they call ‘snow.’ So you will all need appropriate clothing. Then, Lysander, after the ship lands, you will go out alone among the natives, carrying a radio. Your mission is to learn what things are like on Earth now, since we are no longer receiving as many broadcasts as heretofore. You will report to your cohort, who will remain with the ship. They will instruct you on what to do. When you speak on the radio you will speak Hakh’hli only, no English. Do you understand why all this is necessary, Lysander?”
“Yes, of course. It appears that we must be very careful in dealing with human beings because—” He hesitated, then finished sulkily. “Because some of them behave very badly.”
“Not just some, Lysander. Very many of them. I am sure there are good ones, but by and large they are spoilers. You know what they have done to their planet—to your home planet, Lysander! What would our ship be like if we permitted such uncontrolled emission of dangerous pollutants?”
“It would be awful,” Polly volunteered smugly.
“That is true, Hippolyta,” said ChinTekki-tho, “but I am addressing Lysander. Do you know why your human people need our help, Lysander?”
“With verifiable accuracy and no uncertainty at all,” Sandy said, using English words but the Hakh’hli locution just to show his independence. But it did not pay to be too independent in the presence of any Senior, so he hastily went on with the familiar recital. “The human race has raised the heat-retaining capacity of its atmosphere, released acid-forming compounds into the ambient air, cluttered up its low-orbit space with debris, saturated the surface waters with reduced and organic materials, discharged long-half-life radionuclides into the environment, and permitted deforestation and soil erosion.”
“Also,” Demmy chipped in eagerly, “eutrophication. You forgot eutrophication of the lakes.”
“No, I didn’t. That’s part of what I said about reduced and organic materials, isn’t it, ChinTekki-tho? Of course it is.”
“Yes, it is,” the teacher agreed. “But you left out something even worse. Also, your human people are combative. They have weapons. They fight wars among themselves, even, with much killing.”
“I have seen the broadcasts,” Lysander said shortly.
“Yes, you have. So you know that we must be very cautious in approaching them. If it turns out that there can be a peaceful meeting between humans and the Hakh’hli, then we will reveal ourselves. But first we must be certain, and that is your job. We cannot risk the ship.”
“Praise to the ship,” cried Obie, and all the females immediately joined in.
“Yes, praise to the ship,” ChinTekki-tho echoed. “Now, what is your story, Lysander?”
“First off,” Lysander said rebelliously, “my name isn’t Lysander, not when I’m on Earth it isn’t.”
“A good point,” the tutor said with approval. “Go on.”
“My name is John William Washington. I am twenty-three years old. My home is in Miami Beach, Florida, but my parents, who were named Peter and Alice, were killed in an automobile accident. I am a college student, but after my parents’ death I was very upset and I took some time off from school to get away. I have been traveling in Alaska, because I always thought it would be an interesting place to visit. I have been off by myself, mining gold, and I am now getting ready to go back to Miami Beach, but I have lost my way.”
“Yes, that is all right,” ChinTekki-tho said approvingly. He paused, looking them over thoughtfully. Then he asked, “Are there any questions?”
Tanya put up her hand, Earth style. “Why don’t we get as many transmissions anymore, ChinTekki-tho? We’re getting tired of all these old movies.”
“That is not known, Titania. There are certain electromagnetic signals being received all the time, so it is certain that the Earth people have survived their difficulties. To some degree, at least. But the signals we have detected do not seem to carry data. We don’t know what they are. Anyone else?”
Obie piped up, “Why can’t we see the friends who trained with us now?” He was referring to the thirty and more other Hakh’hli youths who had been brought up with them and then, just a few twelve-days before, had been removed to another part of the ship.
“The Major Seniors have decided to segregate you,” ChinTekki-tho explained. That was, really, the only explanation that was needed for any Hakh’hli, but he added graciously, “After all, you six—seven, I mean, Lysander—are special. You are the ones who will land first on this planet.”
“But there were many attractive females in the rest of the group, and all we have left here are these three,” Obie complained. All three of the females hissed angrily, but the tutor overrode them. “That’s enough, Oberon! Now we will go to the chamber of the Major Seniors for your audience. However, there is one thing more. To prepare yourselves for your mission, you must all only speak English even among yourselves from now on—except to the Major Seniors, of course.”
Because the Major Seniors weren’t ready to see them, Sandy and the rest of his cohort had to wait in the compression room for one hour fifty-two minutes by their new watches. At first they were all subdued, because of the solemnity of the occasion. Lysander rubbed his ears ruefully; the compression still hurt, in spite of what had already been done to his ears to relieve it.
The subdued atmosphere didn’t last long; the occasion was too exciting. Obie and Helen began roughhousing, as usual, and Polly had to sit on them to calm them down. That was normal enough, though. Going into the big part of the ship was always an adventure for them. At least it was an adventure when it wasn’t simply drudgery, as when they had to take their turn at shipwork. But there wasn’t much that was interesting in the compression room. It was just a room. It had benches to squat on, and the ship’s screens to watch for entertainment, but what those showed was seldom really entertaining. True, once a twelve-day the whole ship was allowed to view a recorded Earth movie, selected out of the many thousands on file. That was interesting even to the cohort, because in these movies the dialogue was dubbed into Hakh’hli by some of the English-speaking scholars, and it was always amusing to hear a cheth female voice speaking the lines of, say, a hard-bitten infantry sergeant in World War Two. The rest of the time the screens were slaved to the standard ship’s circuits, and all you could get on any of its channels was the check-shots of the engines and farms and pilotage and housekeeping functions, and maybe now and then a boring, a really boring, look at the sun they had just circled and then perhaps a shot of the planet they were aiming at. That would have been interesting enough, except that Sandy’s cohort had their own screens, which were a lot better. They had all the recorded stories and documentaries and gleanings of half a century’s eavesdropping on the planet’s radio and TV transmissions. Although they had been watching those recorded transmissions for three-twelfths of every day for all of their lives, the old broadcasts were still exciting, simply because they were from Earth.