Six Blind Men & an Alien by Mike Resnick Read Free Book Online Page A

controls and shook his head. "A war."
        "Are you sure?"
        "That was a nuclear bomb," he said. "And this "-he had the screen pinpoint it-"is the airship that delivered it."
        "What kind of world is this?" she asked.
        "I don’t know," he said. "I truly don’t know."
        "Can we go back?"
        "Not in this vessel," answered Nibolante. "We haven’t the fuel or the air, and even if we did, the engine’s not up to it. For better or worse we’re stuck here."
        "What are we to do then?"
        "We’ll stay in orbit and study them until we can make a decision."
        By the time a second bomb was dropped three days later, they’d monitored enough transmissions to know that the two destroyed cities were called Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but they had no idea what had caused the war, only that it seemed to extend to almost every land mass on the world.
        "We will land where there is the least chance of our encountering the native inhabitants," announced Nibolante after two more days.
        "That would seem to be the southern polar cap," remarked Marbovi.
        He began taking readings, and after another day decided that the southern ice cap was too inhospitable to life: the temperatures-and it was the middle of winter in the southern hemisphere-were too frigid even for his species, and until he knew how their metabolism could handle living on a diet of aquatic life and avians, he didn’t want to chance landing there.
        The northern cap, on the other hand, seem more accommodating. The temperatures would be tolerable, and there was a variety of animal life and vegetation. If they couldn’t find sustenance there, they probably couldn’t find it anywhere.
        His decision made, Nibolante maneuvered the ship to a completely deserted area about ten degrees south of the pole. They landed, decided to use the ship for their home until they were sure they wanted to take up permanent residence at this remote spot, and began exploring their surroundings.
        All went well for three days. They found that they could indeed metabolize the creatures that lived in the sea, and while the temperature was less than they were used to, they were able to tolerate it. The atmosphere presented more of a problem; the oxygen content was too high. The vessel had medications to neutralize the effects, but the supply wasn’t endless.
        On the fourth day Nibolante came face-to-face with a polar bear bent over the remains of a dead fish it had been eating. Clearly it was a carnivore or an omnivore, but Nibolante felt no apprehension, because whatever the bear was genetically programmed to eat, his race had to be excluded since there had never been a member of it on the planet until he had landed four days ago.
        Somehow, that fact didn’t bother the bear in the least, and it began approaching Nibolante, who backed away. The bear kept walking toward him, and Nibolante kept backing up, and finally the bear lost all patience, roared an ear-splitting roar, and charged, Nibolante turned and raced toward the ship, yelling to Marbovi and the children to get inside it and to close and lock the hatch the second he entered.
        He made it by less than two seconds. The bear couldn’t stop in time, and skidded painfully into the hatch, precipitating another roar.
        "What was that ?" asked Marbovi.
        " I know," offered Sallassine. "It is called a bear."
        "What does it eat?" asked Nibolante, gasping for breath.
        "Everything," said Sallassine.
        "How many bears are there?"
        "I don’t know. I only studied polar bears."
        "Polar bears?" asked Nibolante.
        "The white ones. They think there are more than one hundred thousand."
        "All over the world?"
        Sallassine shook his head. "Just in the north."
        Nibolante and Marbovi exchanged looks. After a moment Nibolante activated the ship’s video and