they just went and talked for a few minutes andcame back with a decision."
They hadn't any organization, or any place to maintain on anorganizational pecking-order. Nobody was obliged to attack anybodyelse's proposition in order to keep up his own status. He thought of theColonial Government taking ten years not to build those storm-shelters.
Foxx Travis was commenting on the ship, now:
"I never saw that ship before; didn't know there was anything like thaton the planet. Why, you could lift a whole regiment, with supplies andequipment--"
"She's been laid up for the last five years, since the heat and thenative troubles stopped the tourist business here. She's the old_Hesperus_. Excursion craft. This sun-chasing trip we're going to makeused to be a must for tourists here."
"I thought she was something like that, with all the glassedobservation deck forward. Who's the owner?"
"Kwannon Air Transport, Ltd. I told them what I needed her for, and theymade her available and furnished officers and crew and provisions forthe trip. They were working to put her in commission while we werefitting up the fourth and fifth floors, downstairs."
"You just asked for that ship, and they just let you have it?" EdithShaw was incredulous and shocked. They wouldn't have done that for theGovernment.
"They want to see these native troubles stopped, too. Bad for business.You know; selfish profit-move. That's another social force it's a goodidea to work with instead of against."
The shoonoon were getting aboard, now, shepherded by the K.N.I. officerand a couple of his men and some of the ship's crew. A couple of sepoyswere lugging the big globe that had been brought up from below afterthem. Everybody assembled on the forward top observation deck, and Milescalled for attention and, finally, got it. He pointed out the threeviewscreens mounted below the bridge, amidships. One on the left, wastuned to a pickup on the top of the Air Terminal tower, where the Terrancity, the military reservation and the spaceport met. It showed the viewto the west, with Alpha on the horizon. The one on the right, from thesame point, gave a view in the opposite direction, to the east. Themiddle screen presented a magnified view of the navigational globe onthe bridge.
Viewscreens were no novelty to the shoonoon. They were a very familiartype of oomphel. He didn't even need to do more than tell them that thelittle spot of light on the globe would show the position of the ship.When he was sure that they understood that they could see what washappening in Bluelake while they were away, he called the bridge andordered Up Ship, telling the officer on duty to hold her at fivethousand feet.
The ship rose slowly, turning toward the setting M-giant. Somebodycalled attention that the views in the screens weren't changing.Somebody else said:
"Of course not. What we see for real changes because the ship is moving.What we see in the screens is what the oomphel on the big building sees,and it does not move. That is for real as the oomphel sees it."
"Nice going," Edith said. "Your class has just discovered relativity."Travis was looking at the eastward viewscreen. He stepped over besideMiles and lowered his voice.
"Trouble over there to the east of town. Big swarm of combatcontragravity working on something on the ground. And something's onfire, too."
"I see it."
"That's where those evacuees are camped. Why in blazes they had to bringthem here to Bluelake--"
That had been EETA, too. When the solar tides had gotten high enough toflood the coastal area, the natives who had been evacuated from thedistrict had been brought here because the Native Education peoplewanted them exposed to urban influences. About half of the shoonoon whohad been rounded up locally had come in from the tide-inundated area.
"Parked right in the middle of the Terran-type food production area,"Travis was continuing.
That was worrying him. Maybe he wasn't used to planets where thebiochemistry wasn't Terra-type and a Terran would be poisoned or, atbest, starve to death, on the local food; maybe, as a soldier he knewhow fragile even the best logistics system can be. It was something toworry about. Travis excused himself and went off in the direction of thebridge. Going to call HQ and find out what was happening.
Excitement among the shoonoon; they had spotted the ship on which theywere riding in the westward screen. They watched it until it hadvanished from "sight of the seeing-oomphel," and by then were over theupland forests from whence they had been brought to Bluelake. Now andthen one of them would identify his own village, and that would startmore excitement.
Three infantry troop-carriers and a squadron of air cavalry were rushingpast the eastward pickup in the right hand screen; another fire hadstarted in the trouble area.
The crowd that had gathered around the globe that had been broughtaboard began calling for Mailsh Heelbare to show them how they would goaround the world and what countries they would pass over. Edithaccompanied him and listened while he talked to them. She was bubblingwith happy excitement, now. It had just dawned on her that shoonoon werefun.
None of them had ever seen the mountains along the western side of thecontinent except from a great distance. Now they were passing over them;the ship had to gain altitude and even then make a detour around onesnow-capped peak. The whole hundred and eighty-four rushed to thestarboard side to watch it as they passed. The ocean, half an hourlater, started a rush forward. The score or so of them from theTidewater knew what an ocean was, but none of them had known that therewas another one to the west. Miles' view of the education program of theEETA, never bright at best, became even dimmer. _The young men who havegone to the Terran schools ... who listens to them? They are fools._
There were a few islands off the coast; the shoonoon identified them onthe screen globe, and on the one on deck. Some of them wanted to knowwhy there wasn't a spot of light on this globe, too. It didn't have theoomphel inside to do that; that was a satisfactory explanation. Edithstarted to explain about the orbital beacon-stations off-planet and theradio beams, and then stopped.
"I'm sorry; I'm not supposed to say anything to them," she apologized.
"Oh, that's all right. I wouldn't go into all that, though. We don'twant to overload them."
She asked permission, a little later, to explain why the triangle tipof the arctic continent, which had begun to edge into sight on thescreen globe, couldn't be seen from the ship. When he told her to goahead, she got a platinum half-sol piece from her purse, held it on theglobe from the classroom and explained about the curvature and told themthey could see nothing farther away than the circle the coin covered. Itwas beginning to look as though the psychological-warfare experimentmight show another, unexpected, success.
There was nothing, after the islands passed, but a lot of empty water.The shoonoon were getting hungry, but they refused to go below to eat.They were afraid they might miss something. So their dinner was broughtup on deck for them. Miles and Travis and Edith went to the officers'dining room back of the bridge. Edith, by now, was even more excitedthan the shoonoon.
"They're so anxious to learn!" She was having trouble adjusting to that;that was dead against EETA doctrine. "But why wouldn't they listen tothe teachers we sent to the villages?"
"You heard old Shatresh--the fellow with the pornographic sculpture andthe yellow robe. These young twerps act like fools, and sensible peopledon't pay any attention to fools. What's more, they've been sent outindoctrinated with the idea that shoonoon are a lot of lying old fakes,and the shoonoon resent that. You know, they're not lying old fakes.Within their limitations, they are honest and ethical professionalpeople."
"Oh, come, now! I know, I think they're sort of wonderful, but let'sdon't give them too much credit."
"I'm not. You're doing that."
"_Huh?_" She looked at him in amazement. "Me?"
"Yes, you. You know better than to believe in magic, so you expect themto know better, too. Well, they don't. You know that under themacroscopic world-of-the senses there exists a complex of biological,chemical and physical phenomena down to the subnucleonic level. Theyrealize
that there must be something beyond what they can see andhandle, but they think it's magic. Well, as a race, so did we until onlya few centuries pre-atomic. These people are still lower Neolithic, ahunting people who have just learned agriculture. Where we were twentythousand years ago.
"You think any glib-talking Kwann can hang a lot of rags, bones and oldiron onto himself, go through some impromptu mummery, and set up asshoonoo? Well, he can't. The shoonoon are a hereditary caste. A shoonoofather will begin teaching his son as soon as he can walk and talk, andhe keeps on teaching him till he's the age-equivalent of a graduate M.D.or a science Ph. D."
"Well, what all is there to