The Rakehells of Heaven. John Boyd

between them as each stood on one leg, the other leg moving like a pendulum, with the ball sounding thud-thud between them, moving in a flattening trajectory.

      As lightly as go-devils wheeling from dust, they capered before us, keeping the ball between them with a drumming that rose to a whirring as the ball grew blurred to our sight. Yet they continued to look at us, gauging the ball’s flight with their peripheral vision as they consumed more energy than long-distance sprinters. Finally the boy faltered. He struck the ball at an angle that drove it too high for the girl to return. She caught it in the crook of her knee, cushioned its recoil and swung it back to him in an easy arc.

      He caught it with his instep, balanced it for a second atop his toes and tossed it gently upward and toward Red, saying plainly, “Here, Red. Catch!”

      Then they turned and were running toward the soccer field at a speed I could not have matched.

      Red held the ball and said, “They have vocal chords. These people are people.”

      “Not at all,” I said. “They practice public nudity.”

      “Because they don’t wish to hamper their hip movements,” he argued. “They’re not merely ambidextrous, they’re ambipedal.”

      “Exactly,” I said, “which makes them upright quadrupeds rather than bipeds.”

      “Don’t take the book too literally,” Red said. “We, too, are upright quadrupeds, and a fig leaf could qualify them for the human family.”

      “Regulations are regulations.”

      “But we make the scouting reports,” he argued, “and we can bend the report a little to fit regulations. . . . Look, the woods are full of them!”

      Another cluster of the beings had emerged from the wood at the same spot as the first, moving with the same purposefulness toward the playing field, and none looked up at us.

      “Jack, they’re all coming from the same direction.”

      “Probably entire villages migrate as a group,” I said.

      “I intend to follow that stream of traffic back and see if I can discover where it’s coming from, if you’ll mind the store.”

      Using the ordinary prudence rule of spacemen, Red and I should have stayed together; but ordinary common sense told me these beings were more interested in the soccer game than in an ambush. Besides, I was curious, so I decided not to pull regulations on Red. I had set the tone I wanted, our “store” was about as popular as a kosher delicatessen at Mecca, and I, too, was curious. “Permission granted,” I said.

      Red removed his boots and stood up to slip out of his trousers. His shirt was longer than the aliens’ tunics, but his green polka-dot drawers flashed beneath.

      “You’re out of uniform,” I said.

      “My silver breeks might frighten the bairns.”

      Looking at his gnarled legs covered by the pink fuzz of hair, I let my sense of truth overrule my official manner. “I would take my chances with the trousers,” I said. “If they frighten the bairns, your legs will give them nightmares.”

      But Red was gone, moving toward the point of woods where the walkers had emerged. No sooner was he out of sight than I turned off the Grave Images.

      It was pleasant to sit in the sunlight and watch the procession pass. Though the inhabitants were indifferent, the planet was friendly. Balmy air drifted down the hillside pungent with the odor of greenery and a few clouds moved across the sky. On the slope of the hill beyond the valley, a steady but sparse flow of beings were moving toward the amphitheater to sit in rows on the slopes surrounding the field. Except for the absence of sailboats on the distant bay, I could have been in Oregon.

      The game began and the procession from the woods dwindled and began to move faster. Watching through my glasses, it was difficult to follow the contest. A player would drive toward a goal and, when his shot was blocked, he would turn and block someone else’s shot toward the same goal. No bodychecks were thrown and there was less contact because of the agility of the players than there would have been in basketball on Earth. There was no scoreboard and no referee.

      My mind grew vaguely troubled as I watched the scene. Give or take a few degrees of tilt, these beings were humanids. With facile toes and hands, they might well be trained to work a double-level production line, and the facility with which they handled their bodies in yonder game portended well for safety programs. On the basis of what I could report already, Earth would have a grade-A colony on this planet. Transistor-radio factories would rise among these woodlands. Earth’s Bureau of Home Appliances would set these beings to producing low-cost kitchen ranges. Their soccer games would be company-sponsored. But here, on a planet filled with insurable risks, my first chore would be to violate the Church-State Clause in the Alien Code.

      And I would need Red O’Hara’s compliance.

      My attention was distracted from the game by a female coming out of the woods. Heretofore they had come in groups, but she walked alone, and she moved so sedately in comparison with the animalistic swing of the others that she reminded me of a ballet dancer projecting the image of a queen. I focused my glasses on her, a handsome female with hair so black it had a bluish cast. When I lowered my glasses slightly, I saw that her stride was restricted because her hips were hampered.

      Concupiscence and carnality!

      Plainly visible beneath her tunic, skintight against her broader thighs, she was wearing the green polka-dot drawers of Red O’Hara.