Unearthly Neighbors Read Online Free Page B

view of the rather gibbonoid appearance of the natives, Ralph had to go along—and anyhow Monte liked to have him around for company. Ralph—a giant of a man with the build of a gorilla and the most gentle disposition Monte had ever encountered—was an unfathomable poker player and an eminently sane individual. Ralph was also married, to an enigmatic female named Tina, and he always left Tina at home when he traveled. It was hard to say whether this was Ralph’s idea or Tina’s, but at any rate Ralph always seemed tickled to death to get away. In the field, Ralph tended to wear the secretive smile of a kid playing hooky from school.
    If everything worked out according to plan—not that Monte thought that it would—a certain amount of psychological testing would seem to be imperative. Tom Stein’s work in Micronesia had impressed Monte, and when he had met him for the first time at a meeting of the A.A.A. in San Francisco the impression had been strengthened. Tom was a tall, skinny guy, prematurely balding, with pale blue eyes that were almost hidden behind thick glasses. His shyness failed to conceal the fact that he had a razor-keen analytical mind; furthermore, although he was best known for his work in the culture and personality field, he had a genuine feel for social structure. He and his wife were inseparable. Janice Stein was a plain, rather dumpy woman with a radiantly pleasant personality. She was also a corking good cook, which might come in handy.
    Finally, Monte picked Don King. Don was an archeologist, something of a lone-wolf in his ideas, and a pretty sharp cookie. Monte didn’t actual like Don—few people did—but the man was stimulating. He was a valuable irritant because he never accepted anybody’s ideas at face value, and he loved an argument above all other things. Don, who was currently in his chronic state of being between wives, was almost offensively handsome—a tall, well-built sandy-haired man who habitually dressed as though he were about to pose for an ad in a fashion magazine. Mark Heidelman had questioned the inclusion of Don, since the natives of Sirius Nine did not make tools, but Monte was certain that Don would pull his share of the load. For one thing, a good reconnaissance ought to establish whether or not stone tools had been made in the past, and for another, the scanty pictures available were not a reliable guide.
    Five men, then, to breach a world.
    Presumptuous?
    Sure—but (as Monte was fond of remarking) nothing big was ever accomplished by little men who stuck timidly to little rules.
     
    The ship was a great metal fish of the deeps; it lived in space. Like the strange fish that live in the long silences and the eternal shadows, the ship had never known the land. It had been assembled in an orbit around the Earth, and it had never known any other home beyond the silent seas of space and stars.
    Monte and Louise and the others had been ferried up to the U.N. satellite and had boarded the ship there. The ship had flashed out past the Moon on conventional rockets, and had then gone into the overdrive field that permitted it—in one sense—to exceed the speed of light.
    By international agreement, all interstellar ships were named after men of peace. This one, officially, was the Ghandi. However, you just can’t think of a tremendous sphere of hurtling metal as the Ghandi. Since it was the second ship to make the long run to the Sirius system, the crew—with the strained logic that sometimes filters up out of bull sessions—had promptly dubbed it the Son of Sirius. After some three months in space, the happy thought had occurred to someone that Sirius was the Dog Star. From that point on, the evolutionary semantics were inevitable.
    From Admiral York on down, everyone referred to the ship as the S.O.B .—although the polite fiction was maintained between officers and crew that the initials stood for “Sirius or Bust.”
    Monte and Louise had found that packing for a