Our telefocals were among the very few surviving instruments. They were strong enough to give us a damned good idea of life in the city. We spent days of observation up there. Once Bast came along but it bored her. After that she would squat in the ship and peer after us through almost-shut eyes, regarding us somewhat as an idol might look upon a crowd of worshippers, who are necessary for existence, but whose departure leaves him in more peaceful possession of the temple.
One thing was for sure: The Giants were civilized, even highly so. Their architecture was (Mavra said) of exquisite if alien proportion. Their public statuary was good enough, by Earth standards, to hide away in a museum and not leave out, like the Hon. Rufus Fogstump in bronze, for the pigeons and the people. Their public life seemed peaceful and orderly, and largely centered around an enormous natural amphitheater, featuring what we interpreted to be plays and concerts and games. The games—Olympic-type contests of individuals rather than massed groups—gave us a chance to see the Giants practically naked in all their absolute hairlessness, and learn why a perfectly flat-chested girl could inspire passion. They were marsupials. I wondered if I would ever become a connoisseur of pouches.
We couldn’t hear the music from the amphitheater, but once a group of picnickers made music of their own in our meadow. The instruments looked strange, though you could figure out familiar principles, but they listened good. There was one number especially that Laus described as “a magnificently improvised true passacaglia” and I (being something of a historical scholar myself in this field) called “jamming a real zorch boogie.” Mavra said we were both right, and Bast implied we were both wrong but kept quiet about it.
A high civilization . . . but apparently not a mechanical one. Nothing visible beyond quadruped-power and simple applications of water wheels and windmills.
Help in repairing the ship began to look like an impossible dream. And supplies were running low. Water ran near us, but food . . .
“With civilization of this level,” Laus pronounced confidently, “contact will be no problem.” Bast shifted in his lap and indicated that she’d like a little more attention higher up the spine. “We’ve seen no evidence of armies or weapons, and the first Giants were friendly toward Bast even though she was, presumably, more alien to them than we shall seem.”
I think Laus was set for a good half hour’s discourse on why contact presented no problems, when Mavra pointed out the now always open airlock. “There’s a Giant,” she said. “I think it’s the one Bast met first, and he’s alone. How about now?”
If hand-holding and breath-holding had marked our watching of Bast’s encounter with this Giant, it was nothing to our tenseness now. We knew what Laus was doing. God knows he’d told us all about it often enough, and especially why Mathematics was the all-important M in the BLAM courses.
He was proving to a civilized alien that he too was a civilized being, more than an animal. He was demonstrating by diagram that he knew that this was the second planet (with two moons yet) in a system of seven. He was teaching his system of numbers and doing simple arithmetical exercises. He was proving that the square on the hypotenuse of a right-angle triangle equals the sum of the squares on the other two sides. He was using prepared pieces of string to show that the circumference of a circle is three and (for simplicity) one-seventh times as long as its diameter.
That was what he was doing, in theory. What we saw was this:
The Giant looked first astonished, then amused. A man runs into the damnedest things in this meadow! He reached out a hand to stroke Laus’s hair. Laus withdrew on his human dignity and began making marks on his pad. As he pointed from his drawing up to the sun, down to the planet itself, the Giant grinned, imitated the gestures, and then ran his large hand down Laus’s back. He looked puzzled. Feels more like cloth than fur. Laus picked up a handful of pebbles to go into his counting routine. The Giant picked up a stone and threw it away, then looked a little resentful when Laus failed to chase it. Laus held up two pebbles and made a mark on his pad. The Giant rubbed his odd-feeling back again, then reassured himself by rubbing his hair. Laus shook his head indignantly and held up three pebbles. The Giant reached for them and tossed them in the air. He watched them, then looked back with some astonishment to see Laus still unmoved. He rubbed Laus’s hair again, then jumped back at something he saw in Laus’s eyes.
I don’t know whether I heard Mavra say “Oh dear God . . . !” or felt it coming through our palms.
Laus had dropped the pebbles and got out his strings. As Laus spread the long one on the grass to make the circle, the Giant approached hesitantly. I didn’t get the other game, but this looks simple. He lifted the string and held it at arm’s length, above even his head and far out of Laus’s grasp. He dangled it tantalizingly as Laus tried desperately to snatch it. The Giant began to smile. Fine; this is what it likes. He began backing away, Laus jumping and snatching after him. Then sharply Laus stopped and reached over for more pebbles.
Back to that routine, I thought; but Mavra was ahead of me. Her hand wasn’t in mine, and when I turned
