The Anglers of Arz
By Roger Dee
Illustrated by BOB MARTIN
[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from IF Worlds of ScienceFiction January 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidencethat the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There were two pinkish, bipedal fishermen on the tinyislet.
The third night of the Marco Four's landfall on the moonless Altarianplanet was a repetition of the two before it, a nine-hour intermissionof drowsy, pastoral peace. Navigator Arthur Farrell—it was his turn tostand watch—was sitting at an open-side port with a magnoscanner ready;but in spite of his vigilance he had not exposed a film when theinevitable pre-dawn rainbow began to shimmer over the eastern ocean.
Sunrise brought him alert with a jerk, frowning at sight of two pinkish,bipedal Arzian fishermen posted on the tiny coral islet a quarter-mileoffshore, their blank triangular faces turned stolidly toward the beach.
"They're at it again," Farrell called, and dropped to the mossy turfoutside. "Roll out on the double! I'm going to magnofilm this!"
Stryker and Gibson came out of their sleeping cubicles reluctantly,belting on the loose shorts which all three wore in the balmy Arzianclimate. Stryker blinked and yawned as he let himself through the port,his fringe of white hair tousled and his naked paunch sweating. Helooked, Farrell thought for the thousandth time, more like a retiredcook than like the veteran commander of a Terran Colonies expedition.
Gibson followed, stretching his powerfully-muscled body like a wrestlerto throw off the effects of sleep. Gibson was linguist-ethnologist ofthe crew, a blocky man in his early thirties with thick black hair andheavy brows that shaded a square, humorless face.
"Any sign of the squids yet?" he asked.
"They won't show up until the dragons come," Farrell said. He adjustedthe light filter of the magnoscanner and scowled at Stryker. "Lee, Iwish you'd let me break up the show this time with a dis-beam. Thisbutchery gets on my nerves."
Stryker shielded his eyes with his hands against the glare of sun onwater. "You know I can't do that, Arthur. These Arzians may turn out tobe Fifth Order beings or higher, and under Terran Regulations ourtampering with what may be a basic culture-pattern would amount to armedinvasion. We'll have to crack that cackle-and-grunt language of theirsand learn something of their mores before we can interfere."
Farrell turned an irritable stare on the incurious group of Arziansgathering, nets and fishing spears in hand, at the edge of thesheltering bramble forest.
"What stumps me is their motivation," he said. "Why do the fools go outto that islet every night, when they must know damned well what willhappen next morning?"
Gibson answered him with an older problem, his square face puzzled. "Forthat matter, what became of the city I saw when we came in through thestratosphere? It must be a tremendous thing, yet we've searched theentire globe in the scouter and found nothing but water and a scatteringof little islands like this one, all covered with bramble. It wasn't acity these pink fishers could have built, either. The architecture wasbeyond them by