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were more like a lot of schoolboys whose teacher is taking them on a surprise
outing.
"Bet this'll be the biggest day in their lives," Travis said. 'Oh, sure.
This'll be a grandfatherstory ten generations from now."
"I can't get over the way they made up their minds, down there," Edith Shaw
was saying. "Why, they just went and talked for a few minutes and came back
with a decision."
They hadn't any organization, or any place to maintain on an organizational
pecking-order. Nobody was obliged to attack anybody else's proposition in
order to keep up his own status. He thought of the
Colonial Government taking ten years not to build those storm-shelters.
Foxx Travis was commenting on the ship, now: 'I never saw that ship before;
didn't know there was anything like that on the planet. Why, you could lift a
whole regiment, with supplies and equipment "
She's been laid up for the last five years, since the heat and the native
troubles stopped the tourist business here. She's the old Hesperus. Excursion
craft. This sun-chasing trip we're going to make used to be a must for
tourists here."
I thought she was something like that, with all the glassed observation deck
forward. Who's the owner?"
"Kwannon Air Transport, Ltd. I told them what I needed her for, and they made
her available and furnished officers and crew and provisions for the trip.
They were working to put her in commission while we were fitting up the fourth
and fifth floors, downstairs."
"You just asked for that ship, and they just let you have it?" Edith Shaw was
incredulous and shocked.
They wouldn't have done that for the Government.
"They want to see these native troubles stopped, too. Bad for business. You
know; selfish profit-move.
That's another social force it's a good idea to work with instead of against."
The shoonoon were getting aboard, now, shepherded by the K.N.I. officer and a
couple of his men and some of the ship's crew. A couple of sepoys were lugging
the big globe that had been brought up from below after them. Everybody
assembled on the forward top observation deck, and Miles called for attention
and, finally, got it. He pointed out the three viewscreens mounted below the
bridge, amidships.
One on the left, was tuned to a pickup on the top of the Air Terminal tower,
where the Terran city, the military reservation and the spaceport met. It
showed the view to the west, with Alpha on the horizon.
The one on the right, from the same point, gave a view in the opposite
direction, to the east. The middle screen presented a magnified view of the
navigational globe on the bridge.
Viewscreens were no novelty to the shoonoon. They were a very familiar type of
oomphel. He didn't even need to do more than tell them that the little spot of
light on the globe would show the position of the ship. When he was sure that
they understood that they could see what was happening in Bluelake while they
were away, he called the bridge and ordered Up Ship, telling the officer on
duty to hold her at five thousand feet.
The ship rose slowly, turning toward the setting M-giant. Somebody called
attention that the views in the screens weren't changing. Somebody else said:
"Of course not. What we see for real changes because the ship is moving. What
we see in the screens is what the oomphel on the big building sees, and it
does not move. That is for real as the oomphel sees it."
"Nice going," Edith said. "Your class has just discovered relativity." Travis
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was looking at the eastward view-screen. He stepped over beside Miles and
lowered his voice.
"Trouble over there to the east of town. Big swarm of combat contragravity
working on something on the ground. And something's on fire, too."
"I see it."
"That's where those evacuees are camped. Why in blazes they had to bring them
here to Bluelake "
That had been EETA, too. When the solar tides had gotten high enough to flood
the coastal area, the natives who had been evacuated from the district had
been brought here because the Native Education people wanted them exposed to
urban influences. About half of the shoonoon who had been rounded up locally
had come in from the tide-inundated area.
"Parked right in the middle of the Terran-type food production area," Travis
was continuing.
That was worrying him. Maybe he wasn't used to planets where the biochemistry
wasn't Terra-type and a Terran would be poisoned or, at best, starve to death,
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