He couldn\'t be blamed for being jumpy, Eckert realized. This was his first time out, his first mission like this. And, of course, Pendleton had been a pretty good friend of his.
"I\'d be very careful what I did," Eckert said softly. "I would hate to start something merely because I misunderstood their intentions."
The committee of one was a middle-aged man dressed in a simple strip of white cloth twisted about his waist and allowed to hang freely to his knees. When he got closer, Eckert became less sure of his age. He had the firm, tanned musculature of a much younger man, though a slightly seamed face and white hair aged him somewhat. Eckert still had the feeling that if you wanted to know his exact age, you\'d have to look at his teeth or know something about his epiphyseal closures.
"You are menshars from Earth?" The voice was husky and pleasant and the pronunciation was very clear. Eckert regarded him thoughtfully and made a few mental notes. He wasn\'t bowing and scraping like most natives who weren\'t too familiar with visitors from the sky, and yet he was hardly either friendly or hostile.
"You learned our language from Pendleton and Reynolds?" Reynolds had been the anthropologist.
"We have had visitors from Earth before." He hesitated a moment and then offered his hand, somewhat shyly, Eckert thought, in the Terrestrial sign of greeting. "You may call me Jathong if you wish." He paused a moment to say something in his native tongue to the kids who were around. They promptly scattered and picked up the luggage. "While you are here, you will need a place to stay. There is one ready, if you will follow me."
He was polite, Eckert thought. He didn\'t ask what they were there for or how long they were going to stay. But then again, perhaps the natives were a better judge of that than he and Templin.
The town was larger than he had thought at first, stretching over a wide expanse of the countryside. There wasn\'t, so far as he could see, much manufacturing above the level of handicrafts and simple weaving. Colored patches on far hillsides indicated the presence of farms, and practically every house in the village had its small garden.
What manufacturing there was seemed to be carried on in the central square of the town, where a few adults and children squatted in the warm afternoon sun and worked industriously at potter\'s wheels and weaver\'s looms. The other part of the square was given over to the native bazaar where pots and bolts of cloth were for sale, and where numerous stalls were loaded with dried fruits and vegetables and the cleaned and plucked carcasses of the local variety of fowl.
It was late afternoon when they followed Jathong into a small, white-washed house midway up a hill.
"You are free to use this while you are here," he said.
Eckert and Templin took a quick tour of the few rooms. They were well furnished, in a rustic sort of way, and what modern conveniences they didn\'t have they could easily do without. The youngsters who had carried their luggage left it outside and quietly faded away. It was getting dark; Eckert opened one of the boxes they had brought along, took out an electric lantern and lighted it. He turned to Jathong.
"You\'ve been very kind to us and we would like to repay you. You may take what you wish of anything within this box." He opened another of the boxes and displayed the usual trade goods—brightly colored cloth and finely worked jewelry and a few mechanical contrivances that Eckert knew usually appealed to the primitive imagination.
Jathong ran his hand over the cloth and held some of the jewelry up to the light. Eckert knew by the way he looked at it that he wasn\'t at all impressed. "I am grateful," he said finally, "but there is nothing I want." He turned and walked away into the gathering darkness.
"The incorruptible native." Templin laughed sarcastically.
Eckert shrugged. "That\'s one of the things you do out of habit, try and buy some of the natives so you\'ll have friends in case you need them." He stopped for a moment, thinking. "Did you notice the context? He didn\'t say he didn\'t want what we showed him. He said there was nothing that he wanted. Implying that everything he wanted, he already had."
"That\'s not very typical of a primitive society, is it?"
"No, I\'m afraid it\'s not." Eckert started unpacking some of the boxes. "You know, Ray, I got a kick out of the kids. They\'re a healthy-looking lot, aren\'t they?"
"Too healthy," Templin said. "There didn\'t seem to be any sick ones or ones with runny noses or cuts or black eyes or bruises. It doesn\'t seem natural."
"They\'re probably just well brought-up kids," Eckert said sharply. "Maybe they\'ve been taught not to get in fights or play around in the mud on the way home from school." He felt faintly irritated, annoyed at the way Templin had put it, as if any deviation from an Earth norm was potentially dangerous.
"Ted." Templin\'s voice was strained. "This could be a trap, you know."
"In what way?"
The words came out slowly. "The people are too casual, as though they\'re playing a rehearsed part. Here we are, from an entirely different solar system, landed in what must be to them an unusual manner. They couldn\'t have seen rockets more than three or four times before. It should still be a novelty to them. And yet how much curiosity did they show? Hardly any. Was there any fear? No. And the cute, harmless little kids." He looked at Eckert. "Maybe that\'s what we\'re supposed to think—just an idyllic, harmless society. Maybe that\'s what Pendleton thought, right to the very end."
He was keyed up, jumpy, Eckert realized. He would probably be seeing things in every shadow and imagining danger to be lurking around every corner.
"It hasn\'t been established yet that Pendleton was killed, Ray. Let\'s keep an open mind until we know for certain."
He flicked out the light and lay back on the cool bed, letting his body relax completely. The cool night wind blew lazily through the wood slat blinds, carrying the fragrance of the trees and the grass, and he inhaled deeply and let his thoughts wander for a moment. It was going to be pleasant to live on Tunpesh for six months—even if the six months were all they had to live. The climate was superb and the people seemed a cut above the usual primitive culture. If he ever retired some day, he thought suddenly, he would have to remember Tunpesh. It would be pleasant to spend his old age here. And the fishing was probably excellent....
He turned his head a little to watch Templin get ready for bed. There were advantages in taking him along that Templin probably didn\'t even realize. He wondered what Templin would do if he ever found out that the actual reason he had been chosen to go was that his own psychological chart was very close to Pendleton\'s. Pendleton\'s own feelings and emotions would almost exactly be duplicated in Templin\'s.
A few stray wisps of starlight pierced through the blinds and sparkled for an instant on a small metal box strapped to Templin\'s waist. A power pack, Eckert saw grimly, probably leading to the buttons on his tunic. A very convenient, portable, and hard to detect weapon.
There were disadvantages in taking Templin, too.
"Just how primitive do you think the society is, Ted?"
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