One Step From Earth

"Then we'll hold here until it gets light. Keep the detector going and keep everyone alert. When we can drive without lights we'll move out in the direction those blips took."

It was a short wait. Dawn came with surprising suddenness — they must be near the equator — and the first rays of reddish sunlight threw long shadows across the landscape.

"Move out," Toledano ordered. "Single column, guide on me. Scouts out on both flanks and point. I want some prisoners. Use gas, I don't want any casual ties."

Jan Dacosta relayed the message evenly, though he felt certain internal misgivings. He was a doctor, a physician, and the role he was playing now felt more than a little strange. The operation seemed more military than medical so far. He shrugged aside his doubts. Toledano knew what he was doing. The best thing that he could do was watch and learn.

The convoy moved out. Within a few minutes the scout tank on point reported habitation ahead and halted until the others caught up. Jan joined Toledano in the open turret when they stopped on the ridge above the valley, next to the scout tank.

"It's like something out of a history book," Jan said.

"Very rare. The cultural anthropologists and technological historians will have a field day here once we open the planet up."

Morning mist still lay in the valley below, drifting up from the river that snaked by in a slow curve. Plowed fields surrounded a village, a small town really, that huddled on the riverbank. Roofs could be seen, jammed closely together, with the thin ribbons of smoke rising up from the morning fires. The houses were pressed close together because the entire settlement was surrounded by a high stone wall, complete with towers, arrow slits, a sealed gate — and all encompassed by a water-filled moat. Not a soul was in sight and if it had not been for the streamers of smoke it could have been a city of the dead.

"Locked up and sealed," Jan said. "They must have heard us coming."

"It would have taken a deaf man not to."

The radio beeped and Jan answered it. "One of the flankers, Doctor. They have a prisoner.

"Fine. Get him here."

The tank rumbled up brief minutes later and the prisoner was handed down, strapped to an evacuation stretcher. The circle of waiting doctors looked on with unconcealed interest as the stretcher was placed on the ground before them.

The man appeared to be in his middle fifties, gray-bearded and lank-haired. He lay with his mouth open, snoring deeply, rendered instantly unconscious by the sleepgas capsules. The few teeth visible were blackened stumps. His clothing consisted of a heavy, sleeveless leather poncho, worn over roughspun woolen breeks and shirt. The thick leather, knee-high boots had wooden soles fastened to them. Neither clothing nor boots were very clean and there was ingrained dirt in the creases of his limp hands.

"Obtain your specimens before we waken him," Toledano ordered, and the technicians carried over the equipment.

The doctors were efficient and quick. Blood samples were taken, at least a half litre, as well as skin scrapings, hair and nail cuttings, sputum samples, and, after a great deal of working at the thick clothing, a spinal tap. More specimens for biopsy would be obtained later, but this would be a good beginning. Dr. Bucuros exclaimed happily as she routed out and captured some body lice.

"Excellent," Toledano said as the scientists hurried off to their laboratories. "Now wake him up and get the language technician to work. We can't do a thing until we can communicate with these people."

Burly soldiers stood by as the prisoner was awakened. Seconds after the injection his eyes fluttered and opened; he looked about in stark terror.

"Easy, easy," the language specialist said, holding out his microphone and adjusting the phone in his ear. Trailing cables led from these, and from the control box on his waist, to the computer trailer. He smiled and squatted down next to the prisoner, who was now sitting up and searching wildly in all directions for some avenue of escape.

"Talk, speak, parla, taller, mluviti, beszelni—"

"Jaungoiko!" the man shouted, starting to rise. One of the soldiers pressed him back to the stretcher. "Diabru," he moaned, covering his eyes with his hands and rocking back and forth.

"Very good," the specialist said. "I have a tentative identification already. All languages fit into different linguistic families, and every word of every language and dialect is in the computer's memory banks. It needs just a few words to identify cognates and group, then it narrows down even more by supplying key words. Here comes one now." He mouthed the sounds to himself, then spoke aloud.

"Nor?"

"Zer?" The prisoner answered, uncovering his eyes.

"Nor… zu… itz egin."