[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

completely, and there was a great deal less available here than a blueprint or even working model.
"They used those machines to transport the podars," he said, "and possibly to transport the people.
And if that is true, it must be the people went voluntarily - we'd have known if there was force involved.
Abe, can you tell me: Why would-the people go?" "I wouldn't know," said Abraham. "All I have now is
a physicist transmog. Give me one on sociology and I'll wrestle with the problem."
There was a shout outside the barn and they whirled toward the door. Ebenezer was coming up the
ramp and in his arms he carried a tiny, dangling form.
"It's one of them," gasped Gideon. "It's a native, sure enough!"
Ebenezer knelt and placed the little native tenderly on the floor. "I found him in the field. He was
lying in a ditch. I'm afraid he's done for."
Sheridan stepped forward and bent above the native. It was an old man - any one of the thousands of
old men he'd seen in the villages. The same leathery old face with the wind and weather wrinkles in it,
the same shaggy brows shielding deep-sunk eyes, the same scraggly crop of whiskers, the same sense of
forgotten shiftlessness and driven stubbornness.
"Left behind," said Ebenezer. "Left behind when all the others went. He must have fallen sick out in
the field..."
"Get my canteen," Sheridan said. "It's hanging by the door."
The oldster opened his eyes and glanced around the circle of faces that stared down at him. He rubbed
a hand across his face, leaving streaks of dirt.
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"I fell," he mumbled. "I remember falling. I fell into a ditch."
"Here's the water, Steve," said Abraham.
Sheridan took it, lifted the old man and held him half upright against his chest. He tilted the canteen to
the native's lips. The oldster drank unneatly, gulping at the water.
Some of it spilled, splashing down his whiskers to drip onto his belly.
Sheridan took the canteen away.
"Thank you," the native said and, Sheridan reflected, that was the first civil word to come their way
from any of the natives.
The native rubbed his face again with a dirty claw. "The people all are gone?"
"All gone," said Sheridan.
"Too late," the old man said. "I would have made it if I hadn't fallen down. Perhaps they hunted for
me..." His voice trailed off into nothingness.
"If you don't mind, sir," suggested Hezekiah, "I'll get a medic transmog."
"Perhaps you should," said Sheridan. "Although I doubt it'll do much good. He should have died days
ago out there in the field."
"Steve," said Gideon, speaking softly, "a human doctor isn't too much use treating alien people. In
time, if we had the time, we could find out about this fellow - something about his body chemistry and
his metabolism. Then we could doctor him."
"That's right, Steve," Abraham said.
Sheridan shrugged. "All right then, Hezekiah. Forget about the transmog."
He laid the old man back on the floor again and got up off his knees. He sat on his heels and rocked
slowly back and forth.
"Perhaps," he said to the native, "you'll answer one question. Where did all your people go?"
"In there," the native said, raising a feeble arm to point at the machine. "In there, and then they went
away just as the harvest we gathered did."
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Sheridan stayed squatting on the floor beside the stricken native.
Reuben brought in an armload of grass and wadded it beneath the native's head as a sort of pillow.
So the Garsonians had really gone away, Sheridan told himself, had up and left the planet. Had left it,
using the machines that had been used to make delivery of the podars. And if Galactic Enterprises had
machines like that, then they (whoever, wherever they might be) had a tremendous edge on Central
Trading. For Central Trading's lumbering cargo sleds, snaking their laborious way across the light-years,
could offer only feeble competition to machines like those.
He had thought, be remembered, the first day they had landed, that a little competition was exactly
what Central Trading needed. And here was that competition - a competition that had not a hint of
ethics. A competition that sneaked in behind Central Trading's back and grabbed the market that Central
Trading needed - the market that Central could have cinched if it had not fooled around, if it had not
been so sly and cynical about adapting the podar crop to Earth. Just where and how, he wondered, had
Galactic Enterprises found out about the podars and the importance of the drug? Under what
circumstances had they learned the exact time limit during which they could operate in the podar market
without Central interference? And had they, perhaps, been slightly optimistic in regard to that time limit
and gotten caught in a situation where they had been forced to destroy all those beautiful machines? [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]