II: FOURDAY MORNING
Although I had previously been spacesick, airsick, carsick, seasick, and sledsick, the descent to Planet Maggie was the first time I believed that Doreen, Laurinda, and Celestine would never again see me alive. How Ypsilanti, occasionally glancing at the few antiquated instruments, found Joetropolis, even in the blundering hours he took, remained mysterious. At last, I saw a clutter of buildings surrounded by a wall. The buildings expanded with dizzy speed, until the shuttle hovered less than one hundred meters above the ground. I gulped weakly at three figures pushing a long metal tube with wheels into a shed constructed in an angle of the wall.
The shuttle bounced to a tail-first stop. Ypsilanti dropped a door, unreeled a chain ladder, and climbed out.
"Didn't you forget me?" I gasped. I scrambled to the first deck and almost pitched from the ship. Coarse grass with red undertones covered the field except for patches blackened by exhausts. At one border was a crude shed and a wrecked jetcopter. Cultivated areas, interspersed with patches of brush, separated the spaceport and the walls of Joetropolis. Ypsilanti ran wildly down a rutted lane toward the town.
I located a hoist and lowered my four cases. I eased down the chain ladder to the hot, damp soil of Planet Maggie. Joe's Sun, red and bloated, cleared a clump of trees and half blinded me. Small purple birds jeered from the huge leaves of squat weeds along the edge of the field. Four striped, short-tailed, buck-toothed rodents scurried beneath a stump. Another sat on a discarded can and squeaked threateningly.
Even in the .92 Maggiese gravity, my luggage weighed about sixty kilograms. I yanked the braided leather line from the hoist and was attempting to lash the two smaller cases into a pack, when a distant explosion agitated the still air. Two rodents ran out of the grass and vanished down a hole. As the exploding sounds climbed in pitch, I realized they were mighty grunts.
I unpacked, assembled, and activated the hisser. A soft voice said, "No!"
A woman peeped from behind the shuttle's ruddevator. She bore a faint resemblance to Ypsilanti, but her nose was less prominent. She, too, had brown hair, blue eyes, and tanned skin. She said, "Ordinance 53: Aliens shall approach the city unarmed."
"Low," I said. "I'm Ube Kinlock, the hunter GG sent about the Hog. Are you a port officer?"
"Am a hunter also, slightly. Ordinance 33 forbids introductions of alien males to Maggiese females, but am Betty Toal."
She stepped from behind the ruddevator. I inhaled sharply. I had encountered colonies not accepting Galactic standards of decency, but was still shocked by extreme exposure. Toal wore a loose, white sack with head and arm holes. Her elbows, knees, and ankles were nude.
Toal stood about one meter from me and said, "Ordinance 31 forbids alien males to be within ten feet of a female. Ypsilanti should have helped you, but is afraid of the Hog. Is little danger now. The Hog avoids the sun."
"That grunting was the Hog?" I deciphered the inscription on the brooch at her throat as, "Minimum."
Toal said, "Yes. The Hog goes to the swamp. Will help with your luggage."
"It's too heavy for you."
"Am thin but strong by Maggiese standards," Toal said.
I managed to carry three cases and the hisser. Toal retrieved a mesh bag, filled with fruit or vegetables, and picked up the fourth case. She asked, as we walked toward the town, "Is true, in the Explored Galaxy, people do not care how children look?"
"What? Children? Yes, generally. Some believe little boys' ears shouldn't stick out too far, and some consider little girls with golden curls and dimples the most charming, but there isn't much prejudice."
"Is also true," Toal said, "no one must marry someone he dislikes?"
"Sometimes an exchange of x-tops and coupons is involved, but it's usually a free choice."
Toal asked no more questions, but followed along pointing out the ripening crunchies and the blooming goodies. She warned me of toothie tunnels across the path. The striped rodents, she explained, menaced stored food, crops, livestock, and buildings. They were checked, to some extent, by traps, poison, and disease cultures.
A wooden bridge, crushed and splintered in the middle, spanned a ditch. The bridge was actually made of sawed boards and beams, not liquid wood castings. The prints of cloven hoofs and dewclaws spotted the soft ground.
"The Hog!" Toal said. "Passed between me and the wall!"
I dropped the cases and clutched the hisser with both hands.
Toal said, "If carry that for the Hog, he has been shot with those. Did not hurt much. Of course, were older models."
Wiping at the perspiration splashing down my face, I knelt and examined the hoofprints, which were roughly thirty-five centimeters long and spaced, from front hoofs to back, almost five meters apart. "How big is the Hog?" I asked.
"Some sows were nine feet high, fifteen feet long."
We slowly crossed the broken bridge. I said, "What's this about dimensions in feet?"
Toal spoke as if quoting a lesson. "In an old book, Joe Nordo found forgotten English measurements. These matched the Maggiese body. Joe Nordo's feet were one foot long. Center of chest to finger tips, with arm stretched, one yard. First joint of little finger, one inch. Was two yards tall."
Toal suddenly smiled as if unaccustomed to smiling. "Silly," she said. "Learn such things in school." She threw out a hand in a sweeping gesture. "Many things here silly. Is true, in the Explored Galaxy, people do not care if you are blue, black, white? How long your nose is?"
"Yes, officially at least, there's no discrimination between humans and intelligent beings because of physical appearance."
Toal sighed. "Must be wonderful. Wish could leave Maggie."
"Why not?"
"Ordinance 3."
The wall around Joetropolis was made of genuine tree trunks treated with preservative and sharpened at the top. Heavy, pointed, irregularly spaced stakes, thrust at angles into the ground, fringed the wall. The effect of these crude fortifications was barbaric, even primitive. Bare electrical wires, strung on insulators fastened to the stakes, only accentuated the prehistoric picture.
"Follow the marked path," Toal said.
The zigzagging path was not more than a meter wide. I avoided touching the wires and reached open ground. A small gate in the wall swung inward, and a man wearing a white sack stalked out. He looked like an older brother of Ypsilanti. The two men behind him looked like younger brothers. Their knees and elbows were indecently exposed.
"Are arrested!" they chorused. One carried a hisser so ancient that it could have been the original model. The others had hand weapons.
"I apologize if I've broken your laws," I said, "but I don't know—"
"Ignorance of law is no excuse!" exclaimed the older man, who had "Dominant" on his brooch. He ordered, "Stop Betty Toal!" One of the guards chased the fleeing Toal along the wall.
"I'm Ube Kinlock," I said. "Galactic Government sent me in answer to—"
"Silence, criminal alien! Ordinance 55: Criminal aliens shall never speak, unless so ordered."