But what of her inhabitants? I’m past feeling anything for them, he thought, past feeling for any of the life-scum that creeps across the surface of a world, any world. We’ll go down quickly, and take what we need quickly, and leave quickly. We’ll try not to infect them, but they’ve already got it in them, the dormant disease, and any infection will be only a recurrence.
Nevertheless, he summoned a priest to his quarters. And, before going to the command deck, he bathed sacramentally as if in preparation for battle.
“Your hawk’s blude was never sae red,
—Anonymous
Edward, Edward;
Your hawk’s blude was never sae red,
My dear son, I tell thee, O.”
“O I hae kill’d my red-roan steed,
Mither, mither;
O I hae kill’d my red roan steed,
That erst was sae fair and free, O.”
False dawn was in the east when the slivers of light appeared once again out of the eclipse shadow to rake majestically across the heavens, and again the children of Earth crowded in teeming numbers from the quiet gardens to chatter their excitement at the wonder in the sky. But this time, a message came. The men of the tech clans who tended the newly activated mechanisms heard it, and the mechanisms memorized it, and played it again and again for the people, while the linguists puzzled over the unidentified language used in the transmission.
Propauth Earth from Commstrafefleet Three, Space, Klaeden Comm, presents greetings!
If you have records, our use of ancient Anglo-Germanic should make our identity clear. Have you fueling facilities for 720 ships of Thor-Nine class? If not, we shall develop facilities from local resources, with, we trust, your peaceful cooperation. This cadre not reimmigrating, but en route to Ursan stars. Request landing suggestions, in view of our fueling needs.
Request intelligence concerning present level of terrestrial culture. Our oribital observations indicate a static agrarian-technical complex, but details not available. We come in arms, but without enmity. Please reply, if possible.
So it came, repeated continuously for an hour, followed by an hour of silence, and then by another hour of repetition. The linguists were unable to discern meanings. Thousands of memorizers were consulted, but none knew the words of the harsh voice from the ships. At last, the sages consulted the books and memnoscripts in the ancient vaults, pouring over tomes that had been buried for countless centuries. After hours of hurried study. …
“It is found, it is found, a tongue of the ancients!” a joyous cry in the glades and the garden pathways.
Happily, the sages recorded the linguistic structure of the forgotten tongue on memnoscript, and gave it to a servo translator. Outmoded mechanisms were being brought out of wraps and prepared for use. The servos supplied a translation of the message, and the sages studied it.
“It is badly understood,” was the curious mutter along the garden pathways.
“Many words have no words to match them, nor any thoughts that are similar,” was the only explanation the sages could give.
In translation the message seemed meaningless, or unfathomable. Only one thing was clear. The sons of Man meant to descend again upon the world of their ancestors. There was a restless unease in the gardens, and groups of elders gathered in the conference glades to mutter and glance at the sky. “Invite our brothers to land,” was the impetuous cry of the young, but there were dissenters.
In the Glade of Sopho, a few thoughtful clansmen of Pedaga had gathered to muse and speak quietly among themselves, although it was not ordinarily the business of tutors to consider problems that confronted society as a whole, particularly problems arising outside society itself. The Pedaga were teachers of the very young, and deliberately kept themselves childlike in outlook in order to make fuller contact with the children in their charge.
“I think we should tell them to go away,” said Letha, and looked around at the others for a response.
She got nothing in reply but a flickering glance from Marrita, who sat morosely on a cool rock by the spring, her chin on her bare knees. Evon gave her a brief polite smile, to acknowledge the sound of her voice, but he returned almost at once to absently tearing twigs and glancing up at the bits of sky that showed through the foliage of the overhanging trees. Iak and Karrn were whispering together at the far end of the glade, and had not heard her.
Letha shrugged and leaned back against the tree trunk again, sitting spraddle-legged this time in the hope of catching Evon’s eye. She was a graceful girl, and while gracefulness is sometimes feline, Letha’s was more nearly kittenish. She was full-bodied and soft, but well-shaped in spite of a trace of plumpness. Thick masses of black hair fell over baby-skin shoulders in a pleasing contrast, and while her face was a bit too round, it radiated a gentle, winning grin, and the sympathetic gaze of gray-blue eyes. Now she seemed ready to pout. Evon remained self-absorbed.
“I think we should tell them to go away,” she repeated a little sharply. “They’ll all be big and swashbuckling and handsome, and the children will become unmanageable as soon as they see them. All the little girls will swoon, and all the little boys will want to go with them.”
Evon glanced at her briefly. “It’s up to the elders of the Geoark,” he muttered without interest, and prepared to return to his own meditations.
“And all the big girls will run away with them,” she purred with a tight smile, and stretched a languorous leg out in front of her to waggle her foot.
Evon shot her a quick glance, held it for a moment, then looked skyward again. She pursed her lips in irritation and glared at him. Gradually, she forgave him. Evon was distraught. He must be—because she hadn’t seen
