“Well—” Haraszthy rose to his sheer two meters and stretched till his joints cracked. He was burly to match that height, and his hook-nosed face carried the marks of old battles. Most Traders are tough, pragmatic extroverts; they have to be, just as Federal civils have to be the opposite. It makes for conflict, though. “Let’s hike.”

“Not so fast,” Vaughan said: a thin young man with an intense gaze. “That tribe has never seen or heard of our kind. If they noticed us land, they may be in a panic.”

“So we go jolly them out of it,” Haraszthy shrugged.

“Our whole party? Are you serious?” Commander Baldinger asked. He reflected a bit. “Yes, I suppose you are. But I’m responsible now. Lejeune and Cathcart, stand by here. We others will proceed to the village.”

“Just like that?” Vaughan protested.

“You know a better way?” Haraszthy answered.

“As a matter of fact—” But nobody listened. The government operates on some elaborate theories, and Vaughan was still too new in Survey to understand how often theory has to give way. We were impatient to go outside, and I regretted not being sent along to town. Of course, someone had to stay, ready to pull out our emissaries if serious trouble developed.

We emerged into long “grass” and a breeze that smelled of nothing so much as cinnamon. Trees rustled overhead against a deep blue sky; the reddish sunlight spilled across purple wild flowers and bronze-colored insectoid wings. I drew a savoring breath before going around with Lejeune to make sure our landing gear was properly set. We were all lightly clad; Baldinger carried a blast rifle and Haraszthy a radiocom big enough to contact Dannicar, but both seemed ludicrously inappropriate.

“I envy the Jorillians,” I remarked.

“In a way,” Lejeune said. “Though perhaps their environment is too good. What stimulus have they to advance further?”

“Why should they want to?”

“They don’t, consciously, my old. But every intelligent race is descended from animals that once had a hard struggle to survive, so hard they were forced to evolve brains. There is an instinct for adventure, even in the gentlest herbivorous beings, and sooner or later it must find expression—”

“Holy jumping Judas!”

Haraszthy’s yell brought Lejeune and me bounding back to that side, of the ship. For a moment my reason wobbled. Then I decided the sight wasn’t really so strange…here.

A girl was emerging from the woods. She was about the equivalent of a Terrestrial five-year-old, I estimated. Less than a meter tall (the Jorillians average more short and slender than we), she had the big head of her species to make her look still more elfin. Long blondish hair, round ears, delicate features that were quite humanoid except for the high forehead and huge violet eyes added to the charm. Her brow-skinned body was clad only in a white loincloth. One four-fingered hand waved cheerily at us. The other carried a leash. And at the opposite end of that leash was a grasshopper the size of a hippopotamus.