ese poor
native slaves.

He beckoned to one of the nearer natives to come to his side, then waved
the rest back to their work. They looked at him questioningly for a
moment, but he smiled reassuringly at them and they, having learned that
he never used that dread shock-rod on them, all went back to their
labors, leaving the one native standing there.

Hanlon looked earnestly at the Greenie, pointed a finger directly at
himself and spoke into the microphone of his transformer. "Hanlon," he
said slowly and distinctly, and repeated it a number of times, tapping
himself on the chest each time he said it.

A smile of comprehension broke over the native's little face and he
tapped himself the same way and said a word that came out of the speaker
sounding like "Geck."

Hanlon reached out and touched the native and said "Geck." The Greenie
in turn tapped Hanlon and said "An-yon," and they had made the first
beginnings of understanding each other.

From then on this one native was released from all other work while
Hanlon's crew was on duty, and the two devoted all their efforts to
learning how to talk to each other.

Hanlon was pleased, but not especially surprised, to note that the rest
of the crew--now almost entirely without his supervision--worked harder
than ever, and that their daily output of ore grew progressively greater
each shift, and all clean ore.

Hanlon's first exultant thought had been to run to Philander and tell
him of what he had learned concerning the native's speech ability, and
how he had made it possible for humans to talk to them.

But more sober reflections during that long work-shift brought caution.
He decided this was a bit of knowledge he had better keep to himself as
long as possible. He hoped he could keep it until he had learned how to
talk with these people and learned much about them, their situation, and
how it could best be ameliorated.

The other men, he knew, considered the natives simply beasts, and would
probably take away his transformer, instead of using it to learn about
the Greenies as he planned to do.

By the end of a month he and Geck were chatting away like brothers. Each
had learned enough of the other's language so that by using a mixture of
the two they could exchange almost any thought concept desired. Hanlon's
ability to read the native's surface thoughts helped a lot, especially
as he began to understand their alien ways of thinking. Even so, he was
surprised at