THE HUMANOIDS
Chapter ONE
THE GRANITE-FACED sergeant of the gate detail found her standing outside the tall steel fence, looking up at him with timid, imploring eyes.
She was a grimy little waif, in a cheap yellow dress. Her bare brown feet were shuffling uncomfortably on the hot asphalt, and he first thought she had come to beg for something to eat.
"Please, mister, is this the Starmont Observatory?" She seemed breathless and afraid.
"May I please see the director?
Dr. Clay Forester?"
Her wet eyes shone. "Please, mister! It's awful important." The sergeant scowled at her doubtfully, wondering how she had got here.
She was about nine, he thought, her head too large and deeply hollowed, as if from the pinch of long famine.
Her straight black hair was clipped short and primly combed.
He shook his head disapprovingly, because she was far too young to be here alone.
He could feel her trembling urgency, but stray urchins didn't see Dr. Forester.
"Not without a pass." She flinched from the hash rasp of his voice, and the sergeant tried to smile. "Starmont's a military reservation, see?"
Seeing the trouble in her dark uplifted eyes, he tried to warm his tone.
"But what's your name, sister?"
"Jane."
She lifted her thin voice, stoutly. "And I've just got to see him."
"Jane?
Haven't you any other name?"
"People used to call me other things, because I didn't know my really name." Her eyes fell briefly. "They called me Squeak and Insect and Little Pip, and others not so nice.
But Mr. White says my really name is Jane Carter - and he sent me to see Dr. Forester."
"How'd you get here?"
The sergeant squinted past her at the narrow road beyond the fence that twisted down the flank of the solitary mountain and lay straight and black on the tawny desert below.
Salt City was thirty miles away, much too far for her to have walked.
But he could see no vehicle.
"Mr. White sent me," she repeated firmly. "To see -"
"Who," the sergeant broke in, "is Mr. White?"
An utter devotion illuminated her brimming eyes.
"He's a philosopher." She stumbled on the word.
"He has a red, bushy beard, and he came from other places.
He took me out of a bad place where people beat me, and he's awful good to me.
He's teaching me tele-" She gulped.
"He sent me with a paper for Dr. Forester."
"What sort of paper?"
"This." Her skinny hand came halfway out of the pocket of her dress, and the sergeant glimpsed a gray card clutched in her thin grubby fingers.
"It's a message - and awful important, mister!"
"You might send it in."
"Thank you."
Her thin blue face smiled politely.
"But Mr. White said I mustn't let anybody see it, except Dr. Forester."
"I told you, sister -" The sergeant saw her flinch, and tried to soften his refusal. "Dr. Forester is a big man, see?
He's too busy to see anybody - unless you happen to be an inspecting general, with papers from the Defense Authority.
And you don't, see?
Sorry, but I can't let you in."
She nodded forlornly.
"Then let me - think."
For a moment she stood still, forgetting even to move her feet on the hot pavement.
Her bony head tilted and her eyes half closed, as if she listened to something beyond him.
She nodded, and whispered something, and turned hopefully back to the sergeant.
"Please - may I see Mr. Ironsmith?"