radition
at least.

"We'll have a lot to find out: you can't understand a people until
you understand their background and their social organization."

"Humph. Let me have a look at their artifacts: that will tell
what kind of people they are," Altamont said, swinging the
glasses back and forth over the enclosure. "Water-power mill,
water-power sawmill--building on the left side of the water
wheel, see the pile of fresh lumber beside it. Blacksmith shop,
and from that chimney, I'd say a small foundry, too.

"Wonder what that little building out on the tip of the island
is, it has a water wheel too. Undershot wheel, and it looks like
it could be raised or lowered. Now, I wonder...."

"Monty, I think we ought to land right in the middle of the
enclosure, on that open plaza thing, in front of the building
that looks like a reconditioned church. That's probably the Royal
Palace, or the Pentagon, or the Kremlin, or whatever."

Altamont started to object, paused, and then nodded. "I think
you're right, Jim. From the way they scattered, and got their
livestock into the woods, they probably expect us to bomb them.
We have to get inside and that's the quickest way to do it." He
thought for a moment. "We'd better be armed, when we go out.
Pistols, auto-carbines, and a few of those concussion-grenades in
case we have to break up a concerted attack. I'll get them."

The plaza, the houses and the cabins around it, the
two-hundred-year-old church, all were silent and apparently
lifeless as they set the helicopter down. Once Loudons caught a
movement inside the door of a house, and saw a metallic glint.

"There's a gun up there," he said. "Looks like a four-pounder.
Brass. I knew that smith-shop was also a foundry. See that little
curl of smoke? That's the gunner's slow-match.

"I'd thought maybe that thing on the island was a powder mill.
That would be where they'd put it. Probably extract their niter
from the dung of their horses and cows. Sulfur probably from
coal-mine drainage.

"Jim, this is really something!"

"I hope they don't cut loose with that thing," Loudons said,
looking apprehensively at the brass-rimmed black muzzle that was
covering them from the belfry. "I wonder if we ought to--Oh-oh,
here they come!"

Three or four young men stepped out of the wide door of the old
church. They wore fringed buckskin trousers and buckskin shirts
and odd caps of deerskin with visors to shade the eyes and
similar beaks