Read Online The Ship Who Won by Anne McCaffrey, Jody Lynn Nye - Free Book Online Page A

but as usual, Carialles artistic eye had pinned
    down and identified the similarity. It was the manelike ruff
    of hair around the faces of the mature males that had
    thrown off his guess. "A suggestion of dog, perhaps, but no
    more than that last group looked like pigs. I think we've
    found the grail, Cari."
    A gust of cold wind blew through the brush, fluttering
    the folds of loose cloth at the back of Keffs suit. His
    ears, nose, and fingers were chilly and growing stiff, but
    he ignored the discomfort in his delight with the objects
    of his study On RNJ-599-B-V they had struck gold.
    Though it would be a long time before the people he
    was watching would ever meet them on their own terms
    in space.
    Coming in toward the planet, Carialle had unleashed
    the usual exploratory devices to give them some idea of
    geography and terrain.
    The main continent was in the northern hemisphere of
    the planet. Except for the polar ice cap, it was divided
    roughly into four regions by a high, vast mountain range
    not unlike the European Alps of old Earth. Like the four
    smaller mountain ranges in each of the quadrants, it had
    been volcanic at one time, but none of the cones showed
    any signs of activity.
    The team had been on planet for several days already,
    viewing this and other groups of the natives from different
    vantage points. Carialle was parked in a gully in the eastern
    quadrant, four kilometers from Keffs current location,
    invisible to anyone on foot. It was a reasonable hiding
    place, she had said, because they hadn't seen any evidence
    during their approach of technology such as radar or track-ing devices. Occasional power fluctuations pinged the
    .needles on Carialle s gauges, but since they seemed to
    occur at random, they might just be natural surges in the
    planets magnetic field. But Carialle was skeptical, since
    the surges were more powerful than one should expect
    from a magnetic field, and were diffuse and of brief duration, which made it difficult for her to pin the
    phenomenon down to a location smaller than five degrees
    of planetary arc. Her professional curiosity was determined
    to find a logical answer.
    Keffwas more involved with what he could see with his
    own eyes-his wonderful aliens. He studied the tool with
    which the nearest male was chipping at the ground. The
    heavy metal head, made of a slagged iron/copper alloy, was
    laboriously holed through in two places, where dowels or
    nails secured it to the flat meter-and-a-half long handle.
    Sinew or twine wound around and around making doubly
    sure that the worker wouldn't lose die hoe face on the back
    swing. By squeezing his eyelids, Keff activated the telephoto function in his contact lenses and took a closer look.
    The tools were crude in manufacture but shrewdly
    designed for most effective use. And yet no technology
    must exist for repair: the perimeter of the field was littered
    with pieces of discarded, broken implements. These people might have discovered smelting, but welding was still
    beyond them. Still, they'd moved from hunter/gatherer to
    farming and animal husbandry. Small but weU-tended
    small flower and herb gardens bordered the field and the
    front of a man-high cave mouth.
    'They seem to be at the late Bronze or early Iron Age
    stage of development," Keff murmured. "Speaking anthro-pologically, -this would be the perfect species for a
    long-term surveillance to see if this society will parallel human development." He parted the undergrowth, keeping
    well back from the opening in the leaves. "Except for having only three fingers and a thumb on each hand, they've
    got the right kind of manipulative limbs to attain a high
    technological level."
    "Close enough for government work," Carialle said,
    reasonably. "I can't see that the lack of one digit would
    interfere with their ability to make more complex tools,
    since clearly they're using some already."
    "No," Keff said. "I'd be more disappointed if they didn't
    have thumbs. A new species