Unearthly Neighbors by Chad Oliver Read Free Book Online Page B

in the invisible sky. Great gray sheets of wind-driven rain pelted the trees and overflowed into silver waterfalls that drenched the forest floor.
    Monte put his head down and kept going. He heard Charlie swearing steadily behind him.
    The rain was cool and oddly refreshing on his damp back, and the storm seemed to clear the air in a way that was surprisingly welcome. In spite of the nerve-jangling bedlam of sound, he felt better than he had before. His nose stopped itching and even his sandpapered throat lost some of its rawness.
    He kept a sharp lookout, but it was hard to see anything except the rivers of rain and the dripping bushes and the water-blackened trunks of the trees. The crashing thunder was so continuous that it was impossible to talk. Far above him, the branches of the trees swayed and moaned in the wind.
    He was soaked to the skin, but it didn’t matter. He shoved his streaming hair out of his eyes and kept on walking. He concentrated just on putting one foot before the other, feeling his feet squishing inside his boots, and he kept looking, looking…
    There was still light, but it was a gray and cheerless light that was almost as heavy as the rain. It was a ghost light, fugitive from a hidden sun, and it had the feel of imminent darkness in it…
    There.
    A tremendous tree to the right of the trail, a tree that looked curiously like a California redwood, a tree that had a black opening in it like a cave…
    And a frightened copper face staring out of the hollowness within; two dark eyes peering into the rain.
    Monte held up his hand. “There he is!” he hollered.
    Charlie came up beside him, his pudgy features almost obscured by countless trickles and rivulets of rain. “Let’s grab him and run for it. We can make friends later where it’s dry.”
    Monte smiled and shook his head. It might come to that eventually, but it would be a singularly poor beginning. He stood there with the storm howling around him and desperately tried to come up with something—anything—that would get across the idea that he meant no harm.
    He had never before felt quite so keenly the absolute necessity for language. He was hardly closer to the man in the tree than if he had stayed on Earth.
    Oh, Charlie had worked out a few phrases in one of the native languages and he thought he knew approximately what they meant. But none of the phrases—even assuming that they were correct—went with the situation. It wasn’t the fault of the first expedition; they had planted their mikes and cameras well. It was simply the fact that you just don’t say the right things in casual everyday conversations. A man can go through a lot of days without ever saying, “I am a friend.” He can go through several lifetimes very nicely without ever saying something as useful as: “I am a man from another planet, and I only want to talk to you.”
    The closest thing they had was a sentence that Charlie thought meant something like, “I see that you are awake, and now it is time to eat.”
    That didn’t seem too wildly promising.
    “Why doesn’t he ask us in?” Charlie hollered. “He’s looking right at us.”
    “I don’t need any engraved invitation. Let’s barge on in and see what happens.”
    Monte stepped toward the tree.
    The old man looked out at him with dark, staring eyes. Those eyes, Monte thought, reflected a lifetime of experiences, and all of those experiences were alien to a man from Earth. The man seemed somehow to be of another time as well as another world; a creature of the forests, shy and afraid, ready to panic…
    “Charlie! Give it a try!”
    Charlie Jenike cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed a strange series of sounds; it sounded a bit like singing, although his voice was distinctly unmusical. “I see that you are awake,” he hoped he said in the native tongue, “and now it is time to eat!”
    The old man shrank back into the hollow of the tree, his mouth falling open in astonishment.
    Monte took