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NAUDSONCE
Bishop Berkeley's famous question about the sound of a falling tree may have no standing in Science. But there is a highly interesting question about "sound" that Science needs to consider....
BY H. BEAM PIPER
ILLUSTRATED BY MOREY
* * * * *
The sun warmed Mark Howell's back pleasantly. Underfoot, themosslike stuff was soft and yielding, and there was a fragrancein the air unlike anything he had ever smelled. He was going tolike this planet; he knew it. The question was, how would it,and its people, like him? He watched the little figures advancingacross the fields from the mound, with the village out of sighton the other end of it and the combat-car circling lazily oncontragravity above.
Major Luis Gofredo, the Marine officer, spoke without loweringhis binoculars:
"They have a tubular thing about twelve feet long; six of themare carrying it on poles, three to a side, and a couple more arewalking behind it. Mark, do you think it could be a cannon?"
So far, he didn't know enough to have an opinion, and said so,adding:
"What I saw of the village in the screen from the car, it lookedpretty primitive. Of course, gunpowder's one of those things aprimitive people could discover by accident, if the ingredientswere available."
"We won't take any chances, then."
"You think they're hostile? I was hoping they were coming out toparley with us."
That was Paul Meillard. He had a right to be anxious; his wholefuture in the Colonial Office would be made or ruined by what wasgoing to happen here.
The joint Space Navy-Colonial Office expedition was looking fornew planets suitable for colonization; they had been out, now,for four years, which was close to maximum for an exploringexpedition. They had entered eleven systems, and made landingson eight planets. Three had been reasonably close to Terra-type.There had been Fafnir; conditions there would correspond to Terraduring the Cretaceous Period, but any Cretaceous dinosaur wouldhave been cute and cuddly to the things on Fafnir. Then there hadbeen Imhotep; in twenty or thirty thousand years, it would bea fine planet, but at present it was undergoing an extensiveglaciation. And Irminsul, covered with forests of gigantic trees;it would have been fine except for the fauna, which was nasty,especially a race of subsapient near-humanoids who had justgotten as far as clubs and _coup-de-poing_ axes. Contact withthem had entailed heavy ammunition expenditure, with two men anda woman killed and a dozen injured. He'd had a limp, himself,for a while as a result.
As for the other five, one had been an all-out hell-planet, andthe rest had been the sort that get colonized by irreconcilableminority-groups who want to get away from everybody else. TheColonial Office wouldn't even consider any of them.
Then they had found this one, third of a G0-star, eighty millionmiles from primary, less axial inclination than Terra, which wouldmean a more uniform year-round temperature, and about half landsurface. On the evidence of a couple of sneak landings forspecimens, the biochemistry was identical with Terra's and theorganic matter was edible. It was the sort of planet every explorerdreams of finding, except for one thing.
It was inhabited by a sapient humanoid race, and some of them werecivilized enough to put it in Class V, and Colonial Office doctrineon Class V planets was rigid. Friendly relations with the nativeshad to be established, and permission to settle had to be guaranteedin a treaty of some sort with somebody more or less authorized tomake one.
If Paul Meillard could accomplish that, he had it made. He wouldstay on with forty or fifty of the ship's company to makepreparations. In a year a couple of ships would come out from Terra,with a thousand colonists, and a battalion or so of Federationtroops, to protect them from the natives and vice versa. Meillardwould automatically be appointed governor-general.
But if he failed, he was through. Not out--just through. When hegot back to Terra, he would be promoted to some home office positionat slightly higher base pay but without the three hundred per centextraterrestrial bonus, and he would vegetate there till he retired.Every time his name came up, somebody would say, "Oh, yes; heflubbed the contact on Whatzit."
It wouldn't do the rest of them any good, either. There wouldalways be the suspicion that they had contributed to the failure.
* * * * *
_Bwaaa-waaa-waaanh!_
The wavering sound hung for an instant in the air. A few secondslater, it was repeated, then repeated again.
"Our cannon's a horn," Gofredo said. "I can't see how they'reblowing it, though."
There was a stir to right and left, among the Marines deployedin a crescent line on either side of the contact team; a metallicclatter as weapons were checked. A shadow fell in front of themas a combat-car moved into position above.
"What do you suppose it means?" Meillard wondered.
"Terrans, go home." He drew a frown from Meillard with thesuggestion. "Maybe it's supposed to intimidate us."
"They're probably doing it to encourage themselves," Anna de Jong,the psychologist, said. "I'll bet they're really scared stiff."
"I see how they're blowing it," Gofredo said. "The man who's walkingbehind it has a hand-bellows." He raised his voice. "Fix bayonets!These people don't know anything about rifles, but they know whatspears are. They have some of their own."
So they had. The six who walked in the lead were unarmed, unlessthe thing one of them carried was a spear. So, it seemed, were thehorn-bearers. Behind them, however, in an open-order skirmish-line,came fifty-odd with weapons. Most of them had spears, the pointsglinting redly. Bronze, with a high copper content. A few had bows.They came slowly; details became more plainly visible.
The leader wore a long yellow robe; the thing in his hand was abronze-headed staff. Three of his companions also wore robes; theother two were bare-legged in short tunics. The horn-bearers woreeither robes or tunics; the spearmen and bowmen behind either woretunics or were naked except for breechclouts. All wore sandals. Theywere red-brown in color, completely hairless; they had long necks,almost chinless lower jaws, and fleshy, beaklike noses that gavethem an avian appearance which was heightened by red crests, likeroosters' combs, on the tops of their heads.
"Well, aren't they something to see?" Lillian Ransby, the linguist asked.
"I wonder how we look to them," Paul Meillard said.
That was something to wonder about, too. The differences betweenone and another of the Terrans must puzzle them. Paul Meillard, asclose to being a pure Negro as anybody in the Seventh Century ofthe Atomic Era was to being pure anything. Lillian Ransby, almostash-blond. Major Gofredo, barely over the minimum Service heightrequirement; his name was Old Terran Spanish, but his ancestrymust have been Polynesian, Amerind and Mongolian. Karl Dorver,the sociographer, six feet six, with red hair. Bennet Fayon,the biologist and physiologist, plump, pink-faced and balding.Willi Schallenmacher, with a bushy black beard....
They didn't have any ears, he noticed, and then he was taking stockof the things they wore and carried. Belts, with pouches, and kniveswith flat bronze blades and riveted handles. Three of the delegationhad small flutes hung by cords around their necks, and a fourth hada reed Pan-pipe. No shields, and no swords; that was good. Swordsand shields mean organized warfare, possibly a warrior-caste. Thiscrowd weren't warriors. The spearmen and bowmen weren't arrayed forbattle, but for a drive-hunt, with the bows behind the spears tostop anything that broke through the line.
"All right; let's go meet them." The querulous, uncertain note wasgone from Meillard's voice; he knew what to do and how to do it.
* * * * *
Gofredo called to the Marines to stand fast. Then they wereadvancing to meet the natives, and when they were twenty feet apart,both groups halted. The horn stopped blowing. The one in the yellowrobe lifted his staff and said something that sounded like,"_Tweedle-eedle-oodly-eenk_."
The horn, he saw, was made of strips of leather, wound spirallyand coated with some kind of varnish. Everything these people hadwas carefully and finely made. An old culture, but a static one.Probably tradition-bound as all get-out.
Meillard was raising his hands; solemnly he addressed the natives:
"'Twas brillig and the slithy toves were whooping it up in theMalemute Saloon, and the kid that handled the music box did gyreand gimble in the wabe, and back of the bar in a solo game allmimsy were the borogoves, and the mome raths outgabe