UNHUMAN SACRIFICE

BY KATHERINE MACLEAN (1925- )

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION NOVEMBER

Katherine MacLean is not nearly as well known as she deserves to be, partly because her career has been marked by long periods of comparative silence and partly because she has produced only a handful of novels—most notably Cosmic Checkmate (1962) and Missing Man (1975).

It is in her three collections—The Diploids and Other Flights of Fancy (1962), Trouble With Treaties (1975), and The Trouble With You Earth People (1980) that her finest work can be found. She debuted with “Defense Mechanism” in 1949, and that story, like most of her work, is concerned primarily with the social sciences, especially anthropology and psychology. Her story “Missing Man” the basis of the above mentioned novel, won a Nebula Award in 1971.

“Unhuman Sacrifice” is an outstanding example of what a talented science fiction writer can do with the subject of social customs. (MHG)

Knowing the absolute truth (or, to be more accurate, thinking you do) is a dangerous and hateful thing. When the Puritans settled in New England, they established Sunday as a day of rest. It was a cosmic affair, ordained by God for the whole world, as anyone could plainly see if they read the beginning of the book of Genesis.

The Puritan judges fined those misguided inhabitants of the colony who violated the Sabbath by engaging in profane activities. They also fined the Indians who had never heard of the Sabbath, and told the poor, confused aborigines that on a particular day of the week they shouldn’t go hunting.

It works the other way around, too. There are factories in the United States that are now owned by Japanese gentlemen, and the Japanese owners may tell American underlings how to behave in accordance with Japanese notions of politeness.

At least, I watched on television once, as a Japanese gentleman explained that drinking from a glass of water is a rather gross thing. It is unpleasant to watch the lips open, and slobber over the rim of the glass, and water cascading into the mouth and, therefore, the thing to do when you must drink (and what a pity Nature compels us to do so ugly a thing), is to hold the glass in one hand and raise the other to hide the sight from the world. And behold, we have invented a brand-new embarrassment.

Words cannot express my indignation over this. I’m going to drink as I please, I am, and I think Katherine MacLean would agree with me. (IA)

“Damn! He’s actually doing it. Do you hear that?”

A ray of sunlight and a distant voice filtered down from the open arch in the control room above. The distant voice talked and paused, talked and paused. The words were blurred, but the tone was recognizable.

“He’s outside preaching to the natives.”

The two engineers were overhauling the engines but paused to look up towards the voice.

“Maybe not,” said Charlie, the junior engineer. “After all, he doesn’t know their language.”

“He’d preach anyway,” said Henderson, senior engineer and navigator. He heaved with a wrench on a tight bolt, the wrench slipped, and Henderson released some words that made Charlie shudder.

On the trip, Charlie had often dreamed apprehensively that Henderson had strangled the passenger. And once he had dreamed that he himself had strangled the passenger and Henderson, too.

When awake the engineers carefully avoided irritating words or gestures, remained cordial towards each other and the passenger no matter what the temptation to snarl, and tried to keep themselves in a tolerant good humor.

It had not been easy.

Charlie said, “How do you account for the missionary society giving him a ship of his own? A guy like that, who just gets in your hair when he’s trying to give you advice, a guy with a natural born talent for antagonizing people?”

“Easy,” Henderson grunted, spinning the bolt. He was a stocky, square-built man with a brusque manner and a practised tolerance of other people’s oddities. “The missionary society was trying to get rid of him. You can’t get any farther away than they sent us!”

The distant voice filtered into the control room from the unseen sunlit landscape outside the ship. It sounded resonant and confident. “The poor jerk thinks it was an honor,” Henderson added. He pulled out the bolt and dropped it on the padded floor with a faint thump.

“Anyhow,” Charlie said, loosening bolt heads in a circle as the manual instructed, “he can’t use the translator machine. It’s not ready yet, not until we get the rest of their language. He won’t talk to them if they can’t understand.”

“Won’t he?” Henderson fitted his wrench to another bolt and spun it angrily. “Then, what is he doing?”

Without waiting for an answer he replied to his own question. “Preaching, that’s what he is doing!”

It seemed hot and close in the engine room, and the sunlight from outside beckoned.

Charlie paused and wiped the back of his arm against his forehead. “Preaching won’t do him any good. If they can’t understand him, they won’t listen.”

“We didn’t listen, and that didn’t stop him from preaching to us!” Henderson snapped. “He’s lucky we found a landing planet so soon, he’s lucky he didn’t drive us insane first. A man like that is a danger to a ship.” Henderson, like Charlie, knew the stories of ships which had left with small crews, and returned with a smaller crew of one or two red-eyed maniacs and a collection of corpses. Henderson was a conservative. He preferred the regular shipping runs, the ships with a regular sized crew and a good number of passengers. Only an offer of triple pay and triple insurance indemnity had lured him from the big ships to be co-engineer on this odd three-man trip.

“Oh … I didn’t mind being preached at,” Charlie’s tone was mild, but he stared upwards in the direction of the echoing voice with a certain intensity in his stance.

“Come off it, you twerp. We only have to be sweet to each other on a trip when we’re cabin-bound. Don’t kid old Harry, you didn’t like it.”

“No,” said Charlie dreamily, staring upwards with a steady intensity. “Can’t say that I did. He’s not such a good preacher. I’ve met better in bars.” The echoing voice from outside seemed to be developing a deeper echo. “He’s got the translator going, Harry. I think we ought to stop him.”

Charlie was a lanky redhead with a mild manner, about the same age as the preacher, but Henderson, who had experience, laid a restraining hand on his shoulder.

“I’ll do it,” said Henderson, and scrambled up the ladder to the control room.

The control room was a pleasant shading of greys, brightly lit by the sunlight that streamed in through the open archway. The opening to the outside was screened only by a billowing curtain of transparent sarantype plastic film, ion-coated to allow air to pass freely, but making a perfect and aseptic filter against germs and small insects. The stocky engineer hung a clear respirator box over a shoulder, brought the tube up to his mouth, and walked through the plastic film. It folded over him and wrapped him in an intimate tacky embrace, and gripped to its own surface behind him, sealing itself around him like a loose skin. Just past the arch he walked through a frame of metal like a man-sized croquet wicket and stopped while it tightened a noose around the trailing films of plastic behind him, cutting him free of the doorway curtain and sealing the break with heat.

Without waiting for the plastic to finish wrapping and tightening itself around him, the engineer went down the ramp, trailing plastic film in gossamer veils, like ghostly battle flags.

They could use this simple wrapping of thin plastic as an airsuit air lock, for the air of the new world was rich and good, and the wrapping was needed only to repel strange germs or infections. They were not even sure that there were any such germs; but the plastic was a routine precaution for ports in quarantine, and the two engineers were accustomed to wearing it. It allowed air to filter by freely, so that Henderson could feel the wind on his skin, only slightly diminished. He was wearing uniform shorts, and the wind felt cool and pleasant.

Around the spaceship stretched grassy meadow and thin forest, and beyond that in one direction lay the blue line of the sea, and in another the hazy blue-green of distant low mountains. It was so like the southern United States of Charlie’s boyhood that the young engineer had wept with excitement when he first looked out of the ship. Harry Henderson did not weep, but he paused in his determined stride and looked around, and understood again how incredibly lucky they had been to find an Earth-type planet of such perfection. He was a firm believer in the hand of fate, and he wondered what fate planned for the living things of this green planet, and why it had chosen him as its agent.

Down in the green meadow, near the foot of the ramp sat the translator machine, still in its crate and on a wheeled dolly but with one side opened to expose the controls. It looked like a huge box, and it was one of the most expensive of the new inductive language analysers, brought along by their passengers in the hope and expectation of finding a planet with natives.

Triumphant in his success, the passenger, the Revent Winton, sat cross-legged on top of the crate, like a small king on a large throne. He was making a speech, using the mellow round tones of a trained elocutonist, with all the transparent plastic around his face hardly muffling his voice at all.

And the natives were listening. They sat around the translator box in a wide irregular circle, and stared. They were bald, with fur in tufts about their knees and elbows. Occasionally one got up, muttering to the others, and hurried away; and occasionally one came into the area and sat down to listen.

“Do not despair,” called Revent Winton, in bell-like tones. “Now that I have shown you the light, you know that you have lived in darkness and sin all your lives, but do not despair…”

The translator machine was built to assimilate a vast number of words and sentences in any tongue, along with fifty or so words in direct translation, and from that construct or find a grammatical pattern and print a handbook of the native language. Meanwhile, it would translate any word it was sure of. Henderson figured out the meaning of a few native words the day before and recorded them in, and the machine was industriously translating those few words whenever they appeared, like a deep bell, tolling the antiphony to the preacher’s voice. The machine spoke in an enormous bass that was Henderson’s low tones recorded through a filter and turned up to twenty times normal volume.

“I … LIGHT … YOU… YOU … LIVED … DARK … LIFE …”

The natives sat on the green grass and listened with an air of patient wonder.

“Revent Winton,” Harry tried to attract his attention. Winton leaned towards the attentive natives, his face softened with forgiveness. “No, say to yourselves merely—I have lived in error. Now I will learn the true path of a righteous life.”

The machine in the box below him translated words into its voice of muted thunder. “SAY YOU … I … LIVED … I … PATH … LIFE… .”

The natives moved. Some got up and came closer, staring at the box, and others clustered and murmured to each other, and went away in small groups, talking.

Henderson decided not to tell the Revent what the machine had said. But this had to be stopped.

“Revent Winton!”

The preacher leaned over and looked down at him benevolently. “What is it, my son?” He was younger than the engineer, dark, intense and sure of his own righteousness.

“MY SON,” said the translator machine in its voice of muted thunder. The sound rolled and echoed faintly back from the nearby woods, and the natives stared at Henderson.

Henderson muttered a bad word. The natives would think he was Winton’s son! Winton did not know what it had said.

“Don’t curse,” Winton said patiently. “What is it, Harry?”

“Sorry,” Henderson apologized, leaning his arms on the edge of the crate. “Switch off the translator, will you?”

“WILL YOU …” thundered the translator. The preacher switched it off.

“Yes?” he asked, leaning forward. He was wearing a conservative suit of knitted dark grey tights and a black shirt. Henderson felt badly dressed in his shorts and bare hairy chest.

“Revent, do you think it’s the right thing to do, to preach to these people? The translator isn’t finished, and we don’t know anything about them yet. Anthropologists don’t even make a suggestion to a native about his customs without studying the whole tribe and the way it lives for a couple of generations. I mean, you’re going off half cocked. It’s too soon to give them advice.”

“I came to give them advice,” Winton said gently. “They need my spiritual help. An anthropologist comes to observe. They don’t meddle with what they observe, for meddling would change it. But I am not here to observe, I am here to help them. Why should I wait?”

Winton had a remarkable skill with syllogistic logic. He always managed to sound as if his position were logical, somehow, in spite of Henderson’s conviction that he was almost always entirely wrong. Henderson often, as now, found himself unable to argue.

“How do you know they need help?” he asked uncertainly. “Maybe their way of life is all right.”

“Come now,” said the preacher cheerfully, swinging his hand around the expanse of green horizon. “These are just primitives, not angels. I’d be willing to guess that they eat their own kind, or torture, or have human sacrifices.”

“Humanoid sacrifices,” Henderson muttered.

Winton’s ears were keen. “Don’t quibble. You know they will have some filthy primitive custom or other. Tribes on Earth used to have orgies and sacrifices in the spring. It’s spring here—the Great Planner probably intended us to find this place in time to stop them.”

“Oye,” said Henderson and turned away to strike his forehead with the heel of his hand. His passenger was planning to interfere with a spring fertility ceremony. If these natives held such a ceremony—and it was possible that they might—they would be convinced that the ceremony insured the fertility of the earth, or the health of the sun, or the growth of the crops, or the return of the fish. They would be convinced that without the ceremony, summer would never return, and they would all starve. If Winton interfered, they would try to kill him.

Winton watched him, scowling at the melodrama of this gesture.

Henderson turned back to try to explain.

“Revent, I appeal to you, tampering is dangerous. Let us go back and report this planet, and let the government send a survey ship. When the scientists arrive, if they find that we have been tampering with the natives’ customs without waiting for advice, they will consider it a crime. We will be notorious in scientific journals. We’ll be considered responsible for any damage the natives sustain.”

The preacher glared. “Do you think that I am a coward, afraid of the anger of atheists?” He again waved a hand, indicating the whole sweep of the planet’s horizon around them. “Do you think we found this place by accident? The Great Planner sent me here for a purpose. I am responsible to Him, not to you, or your scientist friends. I will fulfill His purpose.” He leaned forward, staring at Henderson with dark fanatical eyes. “Go weep about your reputation somewhere else.”

Henderson stepped back, getting a clearer view of the passenger, feeling as if he had suddenly sprouted fangs and claws. He was still as he had appeared before, an intense, brunet young man, wearing dark tights and dark shirt, sitting cross-legged on top of a huge box, but now he looked primitive somehow, like a prehistoric naked priest on top of an altar.

“Anthropology is against this kind of thing,” Henderson said.

Winton looked at him malevolently from his five foot elevation on the crate and the extra three feet of his own seated height. “You aren’t an anthropologist, are you, Harry? You’re an engineer?”

“That’s right,” Henderson admitted, hating him for the syllogism.

Wintons said sweetly: “Then why don’t you go back to the ship and work on the engine?”

“There will be trouble,” Henderson said softly.

“I am prepared for trouble,” the Revent Winton said equally softly. He took a large old-fashioned revolver out of his carry case, and rested it on his knee.

The muzzle pointed midway between the engineer and the natives.

Henderson shrugged and went back up the ramp.

“What did he do?” Charlie was finishing his check of the fuel timers, holding a coffee cup in his free hand.

Angrily silent, Harry cut an exit slit from the plastic coating. He ripped off the gossamer films of plastic, wadded them up together and tossed them in a salvage hopper.

“He told me to mind my own business. And that’s what I am going to do.”

The preacher’s impressive voice began to ring again from the distance outside, and, every so often, like a deep gong, the translator machine would speak a word in the native dialect.

“The translator is still going,” Charlie pointed out.

“Let it. He doesn’t know what it is saying.” Sulkily, Henderson turned to a library shelf, and pulled out a volume: The E.T. Planet, a manual of observation and behavior on extra-terrestrial planets, with examples.

“What is it saying?”

“Almost nothing at all. All it translated out of a long speech the creep made was ‘I life path.’ “

The younger engineer lost his smile. “That was good enough for others. Winton doesn’t know what the box is saying?”

“He thinks it’s saying what he is saying. He’s giving out with his usual line of malarky.”

“We’ve got to stop it!” Charlie began to climb the ladder.

Henderson shrugged. “So go out and tell him the translator isn’t working right. I should have told him. But if I get close to him now, I’d strangle him.”

Charlie returned later, grinning. “It’s O.K. The natives are scared of Winton, and they like the box; so they must think that the box is talking sense for itself, and Winton is gibbering in a strange language.”

“He is. And it is,” Henderson said sourly. “They are right.”

“You’re kind of hard on him.” Charlie started searching the shelves for another copy of the manual of procedure for survey teams. “But I can see what you mean. Anyhow, I told Winton that he was making a bad impression on the natives. It stopped him. It stopped him cold. He said he would put off preaching for a week and study the natives a little. But he said we ought to fix up the translator, so that it translates what he says.” Charlie turned, smiling, with a book in one hand, “That gives us time.”

“Time for what?” Henderson growled without looking up from his book. “Do you think we can change Winton’s mind? That bonehead believes that butting into people’s lives is a sacred duty. Try talking any bonehead out of a sacred duty! He’d butt into a cannibal banquet! I hope he does. I hope they eat him!”

“Long pig,” Charlie mused, temporarily diverted by the picture. “Tastes good to people, probably would taste foul to these natives, they’re not the same species.”

“He says he’s planning to stop their spring festival. If it has sacrifices or anything he doesn’t like, he says he’ll stop it.”

Charlie placed his fists on the table and leaned across towards Henderson, lowering his voice. “Look, we don’t know even if the natives are going to have any spring festival. Maybe if we investigate we’ll find out that there won’t be one, or maybe we’ll find out that Winton can’t do them any harm. Maybe we don’t have to worry. Only let’s go out and investigate. We can write up reports on whatever we find, in standard form, and the journals will print them when we get back. Glory and all like that.” He added, watching Henderson’s expression: “Maybe, if we have to, we can break the translator.”

It was the end of the season of dry. The river was small and ran in a narrow channel, and there were many fish near the surface. Spet worked rapidly, collecting fish from the fish traps, returning the empty traps to the water, salting the fish.

He was winded, but pleased with the recollection of last night’s feast, and hungry in anticipation of the feast of the evening to come. This was the season of the special meals, cooking herbs and roots and delicacies with the fish. Tonight’s feast might be the last he would ever have, for a haze was thickening over the horizon, and tomorrow the rains might come.

One of the strangers came and watched him. Spet ignored him politely and salted the fish without looking at him directly. It was dangerous to ignore a stranger, but to make the formal peace gestures and agreements would be implying that the stranger was from a tribe of enemies, when he might already be a friend. Spet preferred to be polite, so he pretended not to be concerned that he was being watched.

The haze thickened in the sky, and the sunlight weakened. Spet tossed the empty trap back to its place in the river with a skillful heave of his strong short arms. If he lived through the next week, his arms would not be strong and short, they would be weak and long. He began to haul in another trap line, sneaking side glances at the stranger as he pulled.

The stranger was remarkably ugly. His features were all misfit sizes. Reddish brown all over like a dead leaf, and completely bald of hair at knees and elbows, he shone as if he were wet, covered all over with a transparent shininess, like water, but the water never dripped. He was thick and sturdy and quick moving, like a youngling, but did not work. Very strange, unlike reality, he stood quietly watching, without attacking Spet, although he could have attacked without breaking a peace gesture. So he was probably not of any enemy tribe.

It was possible that the undripping water was an illusion, meant to indicate that the stranger was really the ghost of someone who had drowned.

The stranger continued to watch. Spet braced his feet against the grass of the bank and heaved on the next trap line, wanting to show his strength. He heaved too hard, and a strand of the net gave way. The stranger waded out into the water, and pulled in the strand, so that no fish escaped.

It was the act of a friend. And yet when the net trap was safely drawn up on the bank, the brown stranger stepped back without comment or gesture, and watched exactly as before—as if his help was the routine of one kinfolk to another.

That showed that the brown one was his kin and a member of his family. But Spet had seen all of his live kinfolk, and none of them looked so strange. It followed reasonably that the brown one was a ghost, a ghost of a relative who had drowned.

Spet nodded at the ghost and transferred the fish from the trap to the woven baskets and salted them. He squatted to repair the broken strand of the net.

The brown ghost squatted beside him. It pointed at the net and made an inquiring sound.

“I am repairing the trap, Grandfather,” Spet explained, using the most respectful name for the brown ghost relative.

The ghost put a hand over his own mouth, then pointed at the ground and released its mouth to make another inquiring noise.

“The ground is still dry, Grandfather,” Spet said cordially, wondering what he wanted to know. He rose and flung the trap net out on its line into the river, hoping that the brown ghost would admire his strength. Figures in dreams often came to tell you something, and often they could not speak, but the way they looked and the signs they made were meant to give you a message. The brown ghost was shaped like a youngling, like Spet, as if he had drowned before his adult hanging ceremony. Perhaps this one came in daylight instead of dreams, because Spet was going to die and join the ghosts soon, before he became an adult.

The thought was frightening. The haze thickening on the horizon looked ominous.

The brown ghost repeated what Spet had said, almost in Spet’s voice, blurring the words slightly. The ground is still dry Grandfather. He pointed at the ground and made an inquiring noise.

“Ground,” said Spet thinking about death, and every song he had heard about it. Then he heard the ghost repeat the word, and saw the satisfaction of his expression, and realized that the ghost had forgotten how to talk, and wanted to be taught all over again, like a newborn.

That made courtesy suddenly a simple and pleasant game. As Spet worked, he pointed at everything, and said the word, he described what he was doing, and sometimes he sang the childhood work songs, that described the work.

The ghost followed and helped him with the nets, and listened and pointed at things he wanted to learn. Around his waist coiled a blind silver snake that Spet had not noticed at first, and the ghost turned the head of the snake towards Spet when he sang, and sometimes the ghost talked to the snake himself, with explanatory gestures.

It was very shocking to Spet that anyone would explain things to a snake, for snakes are wise, and a blind snake is the wise one of dreams—he who knows everything. The blind snake did not need to be explained to. Spet averted his eyes and would not look at it.

The ghost and he worked together, walking up the river bank, hauling traps, salting fish, and throwing the traps back, and Spet told what he was doing, and the ghost talked down to the snake around his waist, explaining something about what they were doing.

Once the brown ghost held the blind silver snake out towards Spet, indicating with a gesture that he should speak to it.

Terrified and awed, Spet fell to his knees. “Tell me, Wisest One, if you wish to tell me, will I die in the hanging?”

He waited, but the snake lay with casual indifference in the ghost’s hand, and did not move or reply.

Spet rose from his knees and backed away. “Thank you, oh Wise One.”

The ghost spoke to the snake, speaking very quietly, with apologetic gestures and much explanation, then wrapped it again around his waist, and helped Spet carry the loads of salted fish, without speaking again, or pointing at anything.

It was almost sundown.

*

On the way back to his family hut, Spet passed the Box That Speaks. The black gibbering spirit sat on top of it and gibbered as usual, but this time the Box stopped him and spoke to him, and called him by his own name, and asked questions about his life.

Spet was carrying a heavy load of salted fish in two baskets hung on a yoke across one sturdy shoulder. He was tired. He stood in the midst of the green meadow that in other seasons had been a river, with the silver hut of the ghosts throwing a long shadow across him. His legs were tired from wading in the river, and his mind was tired from the brown ghost asking him questions all day; so he explained the thing that was uppermost in his mind, instead of discussing fishing and weather. He explained that he was going to die. The ceremony of Hanging, by which the almost-adults became adults, was going to occur at the first rain, five younglings were ready, usually most of them lived, but he thought he would die.

The box fell silent, and the ghost on top stopped gibbering, so Spet knew that it was true, for people fall silent at a truth that they do not want to say aloud.

He made a polite gesture of leave-taking to the box, and went towards his family hut, feeling very unhappy. During the feast of that evening all the small ones ate happily of fish and roots and became even fatter, and the thin adults picked at the roots and herbs. Spet was the only youngling of adult-beginning age, and he should have been eating well to grow fat and build up his strength, but instead he went outside and looked at the sky and saw that it was growing cloudy. He did not go back in to the feast again, instead he crouched against the wall of the hut and shivered without sleeping. Before his eyes rested the little flat-bottomed boats of the family, resting in the dust behind the hut for the happy days of the rain. He would never travel in those boats again.

Hanging upside down was a painful way to become an adult, but worth it, if you lived. It was going to be a very bad way to die.

Hurrying and breathless with his news, Revent Winton came upon the two engineers crouched at the river bank. “I found out …” he began.

“Shhh.” one said without turning.

They were staring at a small creature at the edge of the water.

Winton approached closer and crouched beside them. “I have news that might interest you.” He held his voice to a low murmur, but the triumph sounded in it like a rasp cutting through glass, a vibration that drew quick speculative glances from the engineers. They turned their attention back to the water’s edge.

“Tell us when this is over. Wait.”

The young preacher looked at what they were staring at, and saw a little four-legged creature with large eyes and bright pointed teeth struggling feebly in the rising water. The younger engineer, Charlie, was taking pictures of it.

“Its feet are stuck,” Winton whispered. “Why don’t you help it?”

“It’s rooting itself,” Henderson murmured back. “We’re afraid that loud noises might make it stop.”

“Rooting itself?” Winton was confused.

“The animal has two life stages, like a barnacle. You know, a barnacle is a little fish that swims around before it settles down to being just kind of a lump of rock. This one has a rooted stage that’s coming on it now. When the water gets up to its neck it rolls up underwater and sticks its front legs out and starts acting like a kind of seaweed. Its hind feet are growing roots. This is the third one we’ve watched.”

Winton looked at the struggling little creature. The water was rising towards its neck. The large bright eyes and small bared teeth looked frightened and uncomprehending. Winton shuddered.

“Horrible,” he murmured. “Does it know what is happening?”

Henderson shrugged, “At least it knows the water is rising, and it knows it must not run away. It has to stand there and dig its feet in.” He looked at Winton’s expression and looked away. “Instinct comes as a powerful urge to do something. You can’t fight instinct. Usually it’s a pleasure to give in. It’s not so bad.”

Revent Paul Winton had always been afraid of drowning. He risked another glance at the little creature that was going to turn into a seaweed. The water had almost reached its neck, and it held its head high and panted rapidly with a thin whimpering sound.

“Horrible,” Winton turned his back to it and pulled Henderson farther up the bank away from the river. “Mr. Henderson, I just found something.”

He was very serious, but now he had trouble phrasing what he had to say. Henderson urged him, “Well, go on.”

“I found it out from a native. The translator is working better today.”

“Charlie and I just recorded about four hundred words and phrases into it by distance pickup. We’ve been interviewing natives all day.” Henderson’s face suddenly grew cold and angry. “By the way, I thought you said that you weren’t going to use the translator until it is ready.”

“I was just checking it.” Winton actually seemed apologetic. “I didn’t say anything, just asked questions.”

“All right,” Henderson nodded grudgingly. “Sorry I complained. What happened? You’re all upset, man!”

Winton evaded his eyes and turned away, he seemed to be looking at the river, with its banks of bushes and trees. Then he turned and looked in the direction of the inland hills, his expression vague. “Beautiful green country. It looks so peaceful. God is lavish with beauty. It shows His goodness. When we think that God is cruel, it is only because we do not understand. God is not really cruel.”

“All right, so God is not really cruel,” Henderson repeated cruelly. “So what’s new?”

Winton winced and pulled his attention back to Henderson.

“Henderson, you’ve noticed that there are two kinds of natives, tall, thin ones that are slow, and quick, sturdy, short ones that do all the hard work. The sturdy ones we see in all ages, from child size up. Right?”

“I noticed.”

“What did you think it meant?”

“Charlie and I talked about it.” Henderson was puzzled. “Just a guess, but we think that the tall ones are aristocrats. They probably own the short ones, and the short ones do all the work.”

Thick clouds were piled up over the far hills, accounting for the slow rise in the river level.

“The short ones are the children of the tall thin ones. The tall thin ones are the adults. The adults are all sick, that is why the children do all the work.”

“What …..Henderson began, but Winton overrode his voice, continuing passionately, his eyes staring ahead at the hills.

“They are sick because of something they do to themselves. The young ones, strong and healthy, when they are ready to become adults they … they are hung upside down. For days, Henderson, maybe for more than a week, the translator would not translate how long. Some of them die. Most of them … most of them are stretched, and become long and thin. He stopped, and started again with an effort. “The native boy could not tell me why they do this, or how it started. It has been going on for so long that they cannot remember.”

Abruptly, and, to Henderson, shockingly, the preacher dropped to his knees and put his hands together. He tilted his head back with shut eyes and burst into prayer.

“Oh Lord, I do not know why You waited so long to help them to the true light, but I thank You that You sent me to stop this horrible thing.”

Quickly he stood up and brushed his knees. “You’ll help me, won’t you?” he asked Henderson.

“How do we know it’s true?” Henderson scowled. “It doesn’t seem reasonable.”

“Not reasonable?” Winton recovered his poise in sudden anger. “Come now Harry, you’ve been talking as if you knew some anthropology. Surely you remember the puberty ceremonies. Natives often have initiation ceremonies for the young males. It’s to test their manhood. They torture the boys, and the ones who can take it without whimpering are considered to be men, and graduated. Filthy cruelty! The authorities have always made them stop.”

“No one around here has any authority to order anyone else to stop,” Harry grunted. He was shaken by Winton’s description of the puberty ceremony, and managed to be sarcastic only from a deep conviction that Winton had been always wrong, and therefore would continue to be wrong. It was not safe to agree with the man. It would mean being wrong along with Winton.

“No authority? What of God?”

“Well, what of God?” Henderson asked nastily. “If He is everywhere. He was here before you arrived here. And He never did anything to stop them. You’ve only known them a week. How long has God known them?”

“You don’t understand.” The dark-haired young man spoke with total conviction, standing taller, pride straightening his spine. “It was more than mere luck that we found this planet. It is my destiny to stop these people from their ceremony. God sent me.”

Henderson was extremely angry, in a white-faced way. He had taken the preacher’s air of superiority in the close confine of a spaceship for two months, and listened patiently to his preaching without letting himself be angry, for the sake of peace in the spaceship. But now he was out in the free air again, and he had had his fill of arrogance, and wanted no more.

“Is that so?” he asked nastily. “Well, I’m on this expedition, too. How do you know that God did not send me, to stop you?”

Charlie finished taking pictures of the little animal under water as it changed, and came back up the bank, refolding the underwater lens. He was in time to see Winton slap the chief engineer in the face, spit out some profanity that would have started him on an hour of moral lecture, if he had heard either of them emit such words. He saw Winton turn and run, not as if he were running away, but as if he were running to do something, in sudden impatience.

Ten minutes later Henderson had finished explaining what was bothering the preacher. They lay on the bank lazily looking down into the water, putting half attention into locating some other interesting life form, and enjoying the reflection of sunset in the ripples.

“I wish I could chew grass,” Henderson said. “It would make it just like watching a river when I was a kid. But the plastic stuff on my face keeps me from putting anything into my mouth.”

“The leaves would probably be poisonous anyhow,” Charlie brushed a hand through the pretty green of the grass. It was wiry and tough with thin round blades, like marsh grass. “This isn’t really grass. This isn’t really Earth, you know.”

“I know, I wish I could forget it. I wonder what that creep, Winton, is doing now.” Henderson rolled on his back and looked lazily at the sky. “I’ve got one up on him now. I got him to act like a creep right out in the open. He won’t be giving me that superior, fatherly bilge. He might even call me Henderson now instead of Harry.”

“Don’t ask too much,” Charlie clipped a piece of leaf from a weed and absently tried to put it into his mouth. It was stopped by the transparent plastic film that protected him from local germs and filtered the air he breathed.

He flicked the leaf away, “How did that creep get to be a missionary? Nothing wrong with him, except he can’t get on with people. Doesn’t help in his line of work to be like that.”

“Easy, like I said,” said Henderson, staring into the darkening pink and purple of the sky. “They encouraged him to be a missionary so he would go far far away. Don’t ever tell him. He thinks that he was chosen for his eloquence.” Henderson rolled back on to his stomach and looked at the river. It was a chilly purple now, with silver ripples. “More clouds over the mountains. And those little clouds overhead might thicken up and rain. If the river keeps rising, there might be a flood. We might have to move the ship.”

“Winton said the native mentioned a flood.” Charlie got up lazily and stretched. “Getting dark out here anyhow. We’ll have to find out more about that interview.”

They went in search of the preacher.

What he told them was disturbing, and vague.

“That was Spet,” Henderson said. “That was the one I was learning words from all afternoon. And he told you he was going to die?”

Winton was earnest and pale. He sat crouched over the chart table as if his resolution to act had frightened him. “Yes. He said he was going to die. He said that they were going to hang him upside down in a tree as soon as the next rain starts. Because he is old enough.”

“But he said that other young males live through it? Maybe he’s wrong about dying. Maybe it’s not as tough as it sounds.”

“He said that many die,” Winton said tonelessly. His hands lay motionless on the table. He was moved to a sudden flare of anger. “Oh those stupid savages. Cruel, cruel!” He turned his head to Henderson, looking up at him without the usual patronizing expression. “You’ll fix the translator so that it translates me exactly, won’t you? I don’t want to shoot them to stop them from doing it. I’ll just stop them by explaining that God doesn’t want them to do this thing. They will have to understand me.”

He turned his head to Charlie, standing beside him. “The savages call me Enaxip. What does that mean? Do they think I’m a god’?”

“It means Big Box,” Henderson cut in roughly. “They still think that the box is talking. I see them watch the box when they answer, they don’t watch you. I don’t know what they think you are.”

That night it did not rain. Winton allowed himself to fall asleep near dawn.

To Spet also it made a difference that it did not rain.

The next day he fished in the river as he always had.

The river was swollen and ran high and swiftly between its banks and fishing was not easy at first, but the brown ghost returned, bringing another one like himself, and they both helped Spet with pulling in the fish traps. The new ghost also wanted to be told how to talk, like a small one, and they all had considerable amusement as the two ghosts acted out ordinary things that often happened, and Spet told them the right words and songs to explain what they were doing.

One of them taught him a word in ghost language, and he knew that he was right to learn, because he would soon be a ghost.

When Spet carried the fish back along the path to his family hut that evening, he passed the Box That Talks. It spoke to him again, and again asked him questions.

The spirit covered with black that usually gibbered on top of the box was not there. Nothing was on top of the box, but the brown ghost who had just been helping him fish stood beside the box and spoke to it softly each time it asked Spet a question. The box spoke softly back to the ghost after Spet answered, discussing his answers, as if they had a problem concerning him.

Spet answered the questions politely, although some of them were difficult questions, asking reasons for things he had never thought needed a reason, and some were questions it was not polite to ask. He did not know why they discussed him, but it was their business and they would tell him if they chose.

When he left them, the brown ghost made a gesture of respect and mutual aid in work, and Spet returned, warmed and pleased by the respect of the ghost-relative.

He did not remember to be afraid until he was almost home.

It began to rain.

Charlie came up the ramp and into the spaceship, and found Henderson pacing up and down, his thick shoulders hunched, his fists clenched, and his face wrinkled with worry. “Hi.” Charlie did not expect an answer. He kicked the lever that tightened the noose on the curtain plastic behind him, watched the hot wire cut him loose from the curtain and seal the curtain in the same motion. He stood carefully folding and smoothing his new wrapping of plastic around himself, to make sure that the coating he had worn outside was completely coated by the new wrapping. All outside dust and germs had to be trapped between the two layers of sterile germproof plastic.

He stood mildly smoothing and adjusting the wrappings, watching Henderson pace with only the very dimmest flicker of interest showing deep in his eyes. He could withdraw his attention so that a man working beside him could feel completely unwatched and as if he had the privacy of a cloak of invisibility. Charlie was well mannered and courteous, and this was part of his courtesy.

“How’re things?” he asked casually, slitting open his plastic cocoon and stepping out.

Henderson stopped pacing and took a cigar from a box on the table with savage impatience in his motions. “Very bad,” he said. “Winton was right.”

“Eh?” Charlie wadded up the plastic and tossed it into the disposal hopper.

“The natives, they actually do it.” Henderson clenched the cigar between his teeth and lit it with savage jerky motions. “I asked Spet. No mistake in the translator this time. He said, yes, they hang the young men upside down in the trees after the first spring rain. And yes, it hurt, and yes sometimes one died, and no he didn’t know why they had to do this or what it was for. Ha!” Henderson threw the cigar away and began to pace again, snarling.

“Oh yes, the translator was working fine! Generations of torturing their boys with this thing, and the adults can’t remember how it started, or why, and they go on doing it anyway… .”

Charlie leaned back against the chart table, following his pacing with his eyes. “Maybe,” he said mildly, “there’s some good reason for the custom.”

“A good reason to hang upside down for a week? Name one!”

Charlie did not answer.

“I just came from the native village,” he said conversationally as though changing the subject. “Winton has started. He’s got the translator box right in the center of their village now, and he’s sitting on top of it telling them that God is watching them, and stuff like that. I tried to reason with him, and he just pointed a gun at me. He said he’d stop the hanging ceremony even if he had to kill both of us and half the natives to do it.”

“So let him try to stop them, just by talking.” Henderson, who had stopped to listen, began to pace again, glowering at the floor. “That flapping mouth! Talking won’t do it. Talking by itself never does anything. I’m going to do it the easy way. I’m going to kidnap Spet, and keep them from getting him.

“Charlie, tribes only do things at the right season, what they call the right season. We’ll turn Spet loose after the week is up, and they won’t lay a hand on him. They’ll just wait until next year. Meanwhile they’ll be seeing that the trees aren’t angry at them or any of that malarky. When they see that Spet got away with it, they’ll have a chance to see a young male who’s becoming a healthy adult without being all stretched out and physically wrecked.

“And maybe next year, Spet will decide to get lost by himself. Maybe after looking at how Spet looks compared with an adult who was hanged, some of the kids due for hanging next year would duck into the forest and get lost when it’s due.”

“It’s a good dream,” Charlie said, lounging, following Henderson’s pacing with his eyes. “I won’t remind you that we swore off dreaming. But I’m with you in this, man. How do we find Spet?”

Henderson sat down, smiling. “We’ll see him at the stream tomorrow. We don’t need to do anything until it starts raining.” Charlie started rummaging in the tool locker. “Got to get a couple of flashlights. We have to move fast. Have to find Spet in a hurry. It’s already raining, been raining almost an hour.”

Darkness and rain, and it was very strange being upside down. Not formal and ceremonial, like a story-song about it, but real, like hauling nets and thatching huts, and eating with his brothers. The world seemed to be upside down. The tree trunk was beside him, strong and solid, and the ground was above him like a roof being held up by the tree, and the sky was below his feet and very far away … and looking down at the clouds swirling in the depth of the sky he was afraid of falling into it. The sky was a lake, and he would fall through it like a stone falling through water. If one fell into the sky, one would fall and fall for a long time, it looked so very deep.

Rain fell upwards out of the sky and hit him under the chin. His ankles and wrists were tightly bound, but did not hurt, for the elders had used a soft rope of many strands tied in a way that would not stop circulation. His arms were at his sides, his wrists bound to the same strand that pulled at his ankles, and the pull on his arms was like standing upright, carrying a small weight of something. He was in a standing position, but upside down. It was oddly comfortable. The elders had many generations of experience to guide them, and they had chosen a tall tree with a high branch that was above the flood. They had seemed wise and certain, and he had felt confidence in them as they had bound and hung him up with great gentleness, speaking quietly to each other.

Then they had left him, towing their little flat-boats across the forest floor that was now a roof above his head, walking tall and stork-like across the dim lit glistening ground, which looked so strangely like a rough, wet ceiling supported by the trunks of trees.

The steady rain drummed against the twigs and small spring leaves, splashing in the deepening trickles of water that ran along the ground. Spet knew that somewhere the river was overflowing its banks and spreading into the forest and across meadows to meet and deepen the rain water. In the village the street would be muddy, and the children would be shouting, trying already to pole the boats in the street, wild with impatience for the rising of the river, to see again the cold swift flow of water and watch the huts of the town sag and flow downwards, dissolve and vanish beneath the smooth surface.

For a month in the time of floods everyone would live in boats. His tribe would paddle and pole up the coast, meeting other tribes, trading baskets and fishhooks, salt fish for salt meat, and swapping the old stories and songs with new variations brought from far places. Last time they had been lucky enough to come upon a large animal caught in the flood, swimming and helpless to resist the hunters. The men of the enemy tribe had traded skin for half the roast meat on a raft, and sang a long story song that no one had heard before. That was the best feast of all.

Then the horde of small boats would come home to the lakes that were draining meadows and forest, and take down the sick and dying young men who had been hanging in the trees, and tend and feed them and call them “elder.” They would then travel again for food, to fight through storms to salt the meat of drowned animals and hunt the deep sea fish caught in the dwindling lakes.

When the rains had stopped and the land began to dry, they would return to the damp and drying land to sing and work and build a village of the smooth fresh clay left by the flood. But Spet would not see those good times again. He hung in his tree upside down with the rain beating coolly against his skin. It was growing too dark to see more than the dim light of the sky. He shut his eyes, and behind his shut eyes were pictures and memories, and then dreams.

Here he is. How do we get him down. Did you bring a knife. How do we get up to him. It’s slippery. I can’t climb this thing. Wait, I’ll give you a boost.

A flash of light, too steady for lightning, lasting a full second. Spet awoke fully, staring into the darkness, looking for the light which now was gone, listening to the mingled voices in the strange language.

“Don’t use the flashlight, it will frighten him.”

“Going to try to explain to him what we’re doing?”

“No, not right away. He’ll come along. Spet’s a pal of mine already.”

“Man, do these trees have roots. As big as the branches!”

“Like mangroves?”

“You’re always claiming the South has everything. What are mangroves?”

“Florida swamp trees. They root straight into deep water. Give a hand here.”

“Keeps raining like this and they’re going to need their roots. How high can we climb just on the roots anyhow?”

“Think you’re kidding? Why else would they have roots like this? This territory must be underwater usually, deep water. This flat land must be delta country. We’re just in the dry season.”

“What do you mean delta country? I’m a city boy, define your terms.”

“I mean, we’re at the mouth of one of those big wandering rivers like the Mississippi or the Yellow River that doesn’t know where it’s going to run next, and splits up into a lot of little rivers at the coast, and moves its channel every spring. I noticed that grass around the ship looked like salt water grass. Should have thought about it.”

A dark figure appeared beside Spet and climbed past him toward the branch where the rope was tied. The next voice was distant. “You trying to tell me we landed the ship in a riverbed? Why didn’t you say something when we were landing?”

“Didn’t think of it, then.” That voice was loud and close. “It’s a fine time to think of it now. I left the ship wide open. You up there yet?”

“Uh huh. I’m loosening the rope. Going to lower him slow. Catch him and keep him from landing on his head, will you?”

“Ready. Lower away.”

The voices stopped and the world began to spin, and the bole of the tree began to move past Spet’s face.

Suddenly a pair of wet arms gripped him, and the voice of the brown ghost called, “Got him.”

Immediately the rope ceased to pull at Spet’s ankles, and he fell against the brown ghost head-first and they both tumbled against the slippery high roots and slid down from one thick root to another until they stopped at the muddy ground. The ghost barked a few short words and began to untie the complex knots from Spet’s ankles and wrists.

It was strange sitting on the wet ground with its coating of last year’s leaves. Even right-side up the forest looked strange, and Spet knew that this was because of death, and he began to sing his death song.

The brown ghost helped him to his feet, and said clearly in ordinary words, “Come on, boy, you can sing when we get there.”

His friend dropped down from a low branch to the higher roots of the tree, slipped and fell on the ground beside them.

In Spet’s language the standing one said to the other, “No time for resting, Charlie, let’s go.”

It was very dark now, and the drips from the forest branches poured more heavily, beating against the skin.

The ghost on the ground barked a few of the same words the relative-ghost had made when he had fallen, and got up. The two started off through the forest, beckoning Spet to follow. He wondered if he were a ghost already. Perhaps the ghosts had taken him to be a ghost without waiting for him to die. That was nice of them, and a favor, possibly because they were kinfolk. He followed them.

The rain had lightened, and become the steady, light falling spray that it would be for the next several days. Walking was difficult, for the floor of the forest was slippery with wet leaves, and the mud underneath was growing soft again, remembering the time it had been part of the water of the river, remembering that the river had left it there only a year ago. The ghosts with him made sputtering words in ghost talk, sometimes tripped and floundered and fell, helped each other up and urged him on.

The forest smelled of the good sweet odors of damp earth and growing green leaves. The water and mud were cooling against his hurting feet, and Spet unaccountably wanted to linger in the forest, and sit, and perhaps sleep.

The floods were coming, and the ghosts had no boats with them.

“Come on, Spet. We go to big boat. Come on, Spet.”

Why did they stumble and flounder through the forest without a boat? And why were they afraid? Could ghosts drown? These ghosts, with their perpetually wet appearance—if they had drowned once, would they be forced to relive the drowning, and be caught in the floods every year? A bad thing that happened once, had to happen again and again in dreams. And your spirit self in the dream lived it each time as something new. There is no memory in the dream country. These ghosts were dream people, even though they chose to be in the awake world. They were probably bound by the laws of the dream world.

They would have to re-enact their drowning. Their boat was far away, and they were running towards the water course where the worst wave of the flood would come.

Spet understood suddenly that they wanted him to drown. He could not become a ghost, like these friendly brown ghosts, and live in their world, without first dying.

He remembered his first thought of them, that they carried the illusion of water over them because they had once drowned. They wanted him to be like them. They were trying to lure him through waters where he would stumble and drown as they had.

Naturally as they urged him on their gestures were nervous and guilty. It is not easy to urge a friend onwards to his death. But to be shaped like a young one, merry, brown, and covered with water, obviously he had to be drowned as they were drowned, young and merry, before the hanging had made a sad adult of him.

He would not let them know that he had guessed their intention. Running with them towards the place where the flood would be worst, he tried to remember at what verse he had stopped singing his death song, and began again from that verse, singing to stop the fear-thoughts. The rain beat coolly against his face and chest as he ran.

Each man in his own panic, they burst from the forest into the clearing. The engineers saw with a wave of relief that the spaceship was still there, a pale shaft upright in the midst of water. Where the meadow had been was a long narrow lake, reflecting the faint light of the sky, freckled with drifting spatters of rain.

“How do we get to it?” Charlie turned to them.

“How high is the water? Is the ramp covered?” Henderson asked practically, squinting through the rain.

“Ramp looks the same. I see grass sticking up in the water. It’s not deep.”

Charlie took a careful step and then another out into the silvery surface. Spongy grass met his feet under the surface, and the water lapped above his ankles, but no higher.

“It’s shallow.”

They started out towards the ship. It took courage to put their feet down into a surface that suggested unseen depth.

The shallow current of water tugged at their ankles, and grew deeper and stronger.

“Henderson, wait!”

The three stopped and turned at the call. The path to the village was close, curving away from the forest towards the distant river bank, a silvery road of water among dark bushes. A dark figure came stumbling along the path, surrounded by the silvery shine of the rising water. Ripples spread from his ankles as he ran.

He came to the edge where the bushes stopped and the meadow began, saw the lake-appearance of it, and stopped. The others were already thirty feet away.

“Henderson! Charlie!”

“Walk, it’s not deep yet. Hurry up.” Charlie gestured urgently for him to follow them. They were still thirty feet out, standing in the smooth silver of the rising water. It was almost to their knees.

Winton did not move. He looked across the shining shallow expanse of water, and his voice rose shrilly. “It’s a lake, we need boats.”

“It’s shallow,” Charlie called. The rain beat down on the water, specking it in small vanishing pockmarks. The two engineers hesitated, looking back at Winton, sensing something wrong.

Winton’s voice was low, but the harshness of desperation made it clear as if he had screamed.

“Please. I can’t swim—”

“Go get him,” Henderson told Charlie. “He’s got a phobia. I’ll herd Spet to the ship, and then head back to help you.”

Charlie was already splashing in long strides back to the immobile figure of the preacher. He started to shout when he got within earshot.

“Why didn’t you say so, man? We almost left you behind!” He crouched down before the motionless fear-dazed figure. “Get on, man. You’re getting taxi service.”

“What?” asked Winton in a small distant voice. The water lapped higher.

“Get on my back,” Charlie snapped impatiently. “You’re getting transportation.”

“The houses dissolved, and they went off in boats and left me alone. They said that I was an evil spirit. I think they did the hangings anyway, even though I told them it was wrong.” Winton’s voice was vague, but he climbed on Charlie’s back. “The houses dissolved.”

“Speak up, stop mumbling,” muttered Charlie.

The spaceship stood upright ahead in the center of the shallow silver lake that had been a meadow. Its doors were open, and the bottom of the ramp was covered by water. Water tugged against Charlie’s lower legs as he ran, and the rain beat against their faces and shoulders in a cool drumming.

It would have been pleasant, except that the fear of drowning was growing even in Charlie, and the silver of the shallow new lake seemed to threaten an unseen depth ahead.

“There seems to be a current,” Winton said with an attempt at casual remarks. “Funny, this water looks natural here, as if the place were a river, and those trees look like the banks.”

Charlie said nothing. Winton was right, but it would not be wise to tell a man with phobia about drowning that they were trying to walk across the bed of a river while the water returned to its channel.

“Why are you running?” asked the man he carried. “To catch up with Henderson.”

Once they were inside the spaceship with the door shut they could ignore the water level outside. Once inside, they would not have to tell Winton anything about how it was outside. A spaceship made a good submarine.

The water level was almost to Charlie’s knees and he ran now in a difficult lurching fashion. Winton pulled up his feet nervously to keep them from touching the water. The plastic which they wore was semi-permeable to water and both of them were soaked.

“Who is that up ahead with Henderson?”

“Spet, the native boy.”

“How did you persuade him to stay away from the ceremony?”

“We found him hanging and cut him down.”

“Oh,” Winton was silent a moment trying to absorb the fact that the engineers had succeeded in rescuing someone. “It’s a different approach. I talked, but they wouldn’t listen.” He spoke apologetically, hanging on to Charlie’s shoulders, his voice jolting and stopping as Charlie tripped over a concealed tuft of grass or small bush under the water. “They didn’t even answer—or look at me. When the water got deep they went off in little boats and didn’t leave a boat for me.” Charlie tripped again and staggered to one knee. They both briefly floundered waist deep in the water, and then Charlie was up again, still with a grip on his passenger’s legs, so that Winton was firmly on his back.

When he spoke again Winton’s tone was casual, but his voice was hysterically high in pitch. “I asked them for a boat, but they wouldn’t look at me.”

Charlie did not answer. He respected Winton’s attempt to conceal his terror. The touch of water can be a horrifying thing to a man with a phobia of drowning. He could think of nothing to distract Winton’s attention from his danger, but he hoped desperately that the man would not notice that the water had deepened. It is not possible to run in water over knee height. There was no way to hurry now. The rain had closed in in veiling curtains, but he thought he saw the small figures of Henderson and the native in the distance reach the ramp which led to the spaceship.

If the flood hit them all now, Henderson and Spet could get inside, but how would he himself get this man with a phobia against water off his back and into the water to swim? He could visualize the bony arms tightening around his throat in an hysterical stranglehold. If a drowning man gets a clutch on you, you are supposed to knock him out and tow him. But how could he get this non-swimming type off his back and out where he could be hit?

If Winton could not brace himself to walk in water up to his ankles, he was not going to let go and try to swim in water up to his neck. He’d flip, for sure! Charlie found no logical escape from the picture. The pressure of the strong bony arms around his throat and shoulders and the quick irregular breathing of the man he was carrying made him feel trapped.

The water rose another inch or so, and the drag of it against his legs became heavier. The current was pulling sidewise.

“You’re going slowly.” Winton’s voice had the harsh rasp of fear.

“No hurry.” With difficulty, Charlie found breath to speak in a normal tone. “Almost there.”

The curtain of rain lifted for a moment and he saw the spaceship, dark against the sky, and the ramp leading to its open door. The ramp was very shrunken, half covered by the rising water. It seemed a long way ahead.

As he watched, a light came on.

In the archway of the spaceship, Henderson flipped a switch and the lights went on.

Spet was startled. Sunlight suddenly came from the interior of the hut and shone against the falling rain in a great beam. Rain glittered through the beam in falling drops like sparks of white fire. It was very unlike anything real, but in dreams sunlight could be in one place and rain another at the same time, and no one in the dream country was surprised. And these were people who usually lived in the dream country, so apparently they had the power to do it in the real world also.

Nevertheless, Spet was afraid, for the sunlight did not look right as it was, coming out in a great widening beam across the rippling rain-pocked water. Sunlight did not mix well with rain.

“Sunlight,” Spet said apologetically to his relative-ghost. The brown ghost nodded and led him down the slope of the ramp through the strange sparkling sunlight, with the ramp strange and hard underfoot.

“Don’t go inside until I return,” the ghost said, mouthing the words with difficulty. The ghost placed his hands around the railing of the ramp. “You hang on here and wait for me,” said the brown ghost of someone in his family, and waded down into the water.

Spet followed him down into the comfortable water until his sore feet were off the end of the ramp and in the cooling soft mud, and then he gripped the rail obediently and waited. The water lapped at his waist like an embrace, and the wind sang a death song for him.

The bright glare of the strange sunlight on dancing water was beautiful, but it began to hurt his eyes. He closed them, and then heard a sound other than the wind. Two sounds.

One sound he recognized as the first flood crest crashing through the trees to the north, approaching them, and he knew he must hurry and drown before it arrived, because it was rough and hurtful.

The other sound was the strange voice of the black spirit which usually gibbered on top of the Box That Talks. Spet opened his eyes, and saw that the gibbering spirit was riding on the shoulders of the brown ghost, as he and his friend, the other brown ghost, moved through the waist-deep water towards Spet and the ramp.

The black spirit gibbered at him as they passed, and Spet felt a dim anger, wondering if it would bring bad luck to him with its chants, for its intentions could not be the same as the friendly ghosts.

“Spet, come up the ramp with us. It’s dry inside. Don’t look like that, there’s nothing to be afraid of now, we’ll go inside and shut the door, it will keep the water away, it won’t get in … Come along, Spet.”

The black spirit suddenly leaped down on the ramp with a strange scream. “Aaaaiiii … He’s turning into a seaweed. Quick, get him out of the water! Help!”

The spirit with the black skin and white face possibly wanted him for his own dark spirit world. He was coming down the ramp at Spet, screaming. He was too late though, Spet knew that he was safe for the dim land of the drowned with the friendly ghosts who had come for him. He felt his feet sending roots down into the mud, moving and rooting downward, and a wild joy came over him, and he knew that this was the right thing for him, much more right and natural than it would have been to become a tall sad adult.

He had been feeling a need for air, panting and drawing the cold air into his lungs. Just as the clawed hands of the dark spirit caught hold of his neck, Spet had enough air, and he leaned over into the dark and friendly water, away from the painful beauty of the bright lights and moving forms. The water closed around him, and the sound of voices was lost.

He could still feel the grip of the spirit’s bony arms around his neck, pulling upwards, but he had seen the brown ghosts running towards them, and they would stop it from doing him any harm … so he dismissed the fear from his mind, and bent deeper into the dark, and plunged his hands with spread fingers deep into the mud, and gripped his ankles, as if he had always known just how to do this thing. His hands locked and became unable to unfold. They would never unfold again.

He felt the soft surge that was the first flood wave arriving and passing above him, and ignored it, and, with a mixture of terror and the certainty of doing right, he opened his mouth and took a deep breath of cold water.

All thought stopped. As the water rushed into his lungs, the rooted sea creature that was the forgotten adult stage of Spet’s species began its thoughtless pseudo-plant existence, forgetting everything that had ever happened to it. Its shape changed.

The first wave of the flood did not quite reach up to the edge of the ship’s entrance. It caught the two engineers as they dragged a screaming third human up the ramp towards the entrance, but it did not quite reach into the ship, and when it passed the three humans were still there. One of them struck the screaming one, and they carried him in.

Winton was hysterical for some time, but Henderson seemed quite normal. He worked well and rationally in compiling a good short survey report to carry to the planetary survey agency, and when the waters dried around the spaceship he directed the clearing of mud from the jets and the overhaul of the firing chambers without a sign of warp in his logic.

He did not want to speak to any native, and went into the ship when they appeared.

Winton was still slightly delirious when they took off from the planet, but, once in space, he calmed down and made a good recovery. He just did not talk about it. Henderson still seemed quite normal, and Charlie carefully did not tell Winton that Henderson kept a large bush in a glass enclosure in the engine room.

Ever since that time Henderson has been considered a little peculiar. He is a good enough risk for the big liners, for they have other engineers on board to take over if he ever cracks.

He has no trouble getting jobs, but wherever he goes he brings with him an oversized potted plant and puts it in the engine room and babies it with water and fertilizer. His fellow officers never kid him about it, for it is not a safe subject.

When Henderson is alone, or thinks he is alone, he talks to the potted bush. His tone is coaxing. But the bush never answers.

Charlie runs into him occasionally when their ships happen to dock at the same space port around the same planet. They share a drink and enjoy a few jokes together, but Charlie takes care not to get signed on to the same ship as Henderson. The sight of Henderson and his potted bush together make him nervous.

It’s the wrong bush, but he’ll never tell Henderson that.

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