Cargo Cult Read Online Free PDF Page A

about.”
    -oOo-
    It was almost noon by the time the
Vinggans set out on foot through the bush, naked except for the
various tools and instruments that hung from them. Drukk took the
lead, navigating a straight line course towards the distant city.
Although the hot Queensland sun was directly overhead and the
relative humidity was over ninety per cent, they kept up a fast and
steady pace. Despite their outward appearance, the stuff of their
bodies and their metabolism were still largely Vinggan and
conditions like these were nothing to a race which regularly won
the Most Advanced Boiling Swamp Species award at the bi-annual
Comparative Xenobiology Big Night Out ceremony on Bathregar 4.
    In fact, "It's a bit chilly out
here," Joss had complained.
    "It's fine in here," her bud had
chirruped.
    "Perhaps these 'clothes' we seek
will be welcome," said one of the Loosies.
    "The Great Spirit always guides us
towards improvement," Braxx intoned. "Let us go a little
faster."
    As they marched, they soon cleared
the blasted and burnt area around the crippled spaceship and
entered the leafy forest. The going became tough. The ground was
uneven and, in places densely overgrown with hard, dry vegetation.
Above them, in the canopy, brightly-coloured rosellas and huge,
white cockatoos flew, screaming, among the grey branches of the
rustling gum trees. Cicadas shrilled all around them in a non-stop,
ear-splitting screech. Once, they stopped to watch anxiously as a
small group of emus passed through a distant clearing. Everything
was strange and scary and, as night fell with sub-tropical
swiftness, their journey became harder still. They brought out
their photon projectors to light their way and kept going as fast
as they could, unnerved by the big, hard, flying insects that
battered against them in the dark.
    After two hours of walking like
this, their route crossed a narrow dirt track and Drukk called a
halt. He examined the map and checked the direction finder. Complex
graphics depicting intersecting spheres slowly rotated in its
projection space. Drukk cursed it silently. Why did everything have
to be so complicated? He tried to recall CorpsSchool basic
training, but he had slept and partied his way through most of it
and now it all seemed a bit hazy. He turned a knob marked "Azimuth'
and the graphic twirled and settled into a new cryptic
configuration. He was just deciding whether he should admit to
Braxx that he didn't have a clue, or whether to bluff it out and
hope for the best, when one of the Vinggans shouted, "Look!"
    Bouncing towards them out of the
dark was a pair of lights.
    "What are they?" Braxx asked in a
nervous whisper.
    "How in the Commune would I know?"
Drukk snapped, also whispering. They could hear now a growling,
clanking noise coming from the same direction.
    "Machines?" asked Braxx.
    "Just one," Drukk said, noticing
how the lights bounced in perfect unison. "Coming along the
ground."
    "Killer robots!" someone squealed
in alarm. "They've sent killer robots after us!"
    "No, no!" Drukk shouted over the
rising clamour of panic. "The humans don't have that level of
technology… I think." He tried to smile reassuringly at his
ship-mates, not realising how hideous his human features made the
expression seem. "Don't forget, we look like them now. They won't
suspect us if we just act naturally." Mulling over what he had just
said, Drukk thought maybe hanging about nonchalantly, while a
potential killer robot approached them, might not be the very best
strategy after all. "Hmm," he said. "Why don't we all draw our
weapons, just in case."
    Dave Horrocks was glad to be on his
way home. He’d been over at Jimbo’s place with a couple of other
blokes playing cards and he’d just about lost his shirt. It was
downright queer the way those blokes seemed to know just when to
bet and when to fold. He shouldn’t have lost his rag like that but
the more he lost, the more he thought about what he was going to
tell Angie. Jimbo should