at home, did
difference of physical structure and emotion make him feel that the
rest of us were enemies, forever too different for friendly contact?
My hide began to pucker.

* * * * *

High in the sky, some kind of aircraft glistened. On the distant
turnpike there were the shining specks of vehicles that vanished from
sight behind a ridge shaggy with vegetation.

Miller had a tight, nervous smile. "Remember, men," he said.
"Passivity. Three men can't afford to get into a fight with a whole
planet."

We put on spacesuits, which we'd need if someone damaged our rocket.
It had been known for years that Martian air was too thin and far too
poor in oxygen for human lungs. Even Etl, in his cage, had an oxygen
mask that Klein had made for him. We had provided him with this
because the Martian atmosphere, drifting away through the ages, might
be even leaner than the mixture we'd given Etl on Earth. That had been
based on spectroscopic analyses at 40 to 60 million miles' distance,
which isn't close enough for any certainty.

Now all we could do was wait and see what would happen. I know that
some jerks, trying to make contact with the inhabitants of an unknown
world, would just barge in and take over. Maybe they'd wave a few
times and grin. If instead of being met like brothers, they were shot
at, they'd be inclined to start shooting. If they got out alive, their
hatred would be everlasting. We had more sense.

Yet _passivity_ was a word that I didn't entirely like. It sounded
spineless. The art of balancing naive trust exactly against hard
cynicism, to try to produce something that makes a little sense, isn't
always easy. Though we knew something of Martians, we didn't know
nearly enough. Our plan might be wrong; we might turn out to be dead
idiots in a short time. Still, it was the best thing that we could
think of.

The afternoon wore on. With the dropping temperature, a cold pearly
haze began to form around the horizon. The landscape around us was too
quiet. And there was plenty of vegetation at hand to provide cover.
Maybe it had been a mistake to land here. But we couldn't see that an
arid place would be any good either. We had needed to come to a region
that was probably inhabited.

We saw a Martian only once--scampering across an open glade, holding
himself high on his stiffened tentacles. Here, where the gravity was
only thirty-eight percent of the terrestrial, that was possib