Free Anywhen by James Blish Page B

specific-pathogen-free, by virtue of having been born along with the rest of his litter by radical hysterectomy and raised on the bottle. And there was not a man aboard the Chisholm, or anywhere else in space today, who had not been from his mother's womb untimely ripp'd into a totally germ-free environment—which he still carried inside his body, and which still carried him in his ship.
    On the other hand, maybe I was expecting too much of a private of Marines on his first crash-rescue mission ( or, for all I knew, his first mission of any kind). As I've noted, the astrogator is traditionally one of the two officers on a crash-rescue ship who are assigned to provide intellectual companionship to the U.N.R.R.A. civilian in charge, the other being the ship's surgeon. The assumption behind the tradition seems to be that any other Giant Brains who might be aboard would be too busy. Well, there was some justice in that, for while an astrogator is very busy indeed when he's busy at all, it's in the nature of the job to be concentrated at the opposite ends of a trip, leaving a long dead space in between. I get a lot of reading done that way: poetry, mostly. And doctoring, of course, is a notoriously off-again on-again proposition, especially with a population as small as a ship's crew to look after, and nary a germ anywhere aboard (ideally, at least).
    Hence though I had never heard Roche's speech before, I had heard many like it. Up to this point I could have given it myself, and probably played a fair game of chess at the same time. Now, however, he was getting to the part that only he could testify to: the nature of the specific situation beneath us on this mission.
    "The first explorers who landed here called the planet Savannah, though maybe 'Tundra' or 'Veldt' would have been more suitable," he was saying. "It's a dense, high-gravity world about seven thousand miles in diameter. It consists mostly of broad, grassy plains, broken here and there by volcanic ranges and some rather small oceans.
    "However, they didn't explore it thoroughly, for reasons I'll get to in a moment. They made contact with the natives very early, and described them as savages but friendly. No xenologist would agree that they're savages, not from the descriptions we have. They are hunters primarily, but they also herd, and raise crops. They weave, and build boats, and navigate by the stars. They are also metalworkers, technically very ingenious, but limited by the fact that they lack the energy sources to do really large-scale, high-temperature smelting and forging, thus far.
    "They have a family system, and a system of small nations or family tribes, and a certain amount of internecine warfare in bad years. Both of these facts contributed to the downfall of the first expedition to Savannah. The Earthmen inadvertently infected these initially friendly people with a very common Earthly disease which turned out to be virulently deadly to the males of the native population. The females are not immune, but are naturally far more resistant.
    "This plague played hob with the native families, and this in turn began to threaten old alliances and balances of power between the tribes, as well as the division of labor within the tribes themselves. The natives were quick to associate it with their strange visitors, and one night, without the slightest warning, they attacked the landing camp. Very few of the landing party got away alive—and there were no wounded among them."
    "Poisoned darts?" Sergeant Lea said interestedly. "No," Dr. Roche returned grimly. "Quarrels."
    Lea looked puzzled.
    "Those are crossbow bolts," Roche explained. "In this case, heavy metal ones, launched with such high velocity that they can kill a man no matter where they hit him, through shock alone. I bring this up so you'll know in advance that full battle dress is going to be of dubious value at best. We are going to have to plan in such a way that nobody gets hit—and without killing or