Export Commodity

Naturally the scientists relied on their data, Henig thought bitterly; but they weren't making the observation—they weren't standing naked and unarmed on an alien world. The miniature recorders sent down by the ship were only machines, after all, without a logical sense of judgment. The Lieutenant had experienced alien worlds before. Facts were all very well, but the unpredictable quality of emotion was something else again. How could a recorder make note of that? How could feeling be measured or tabulated by the computers?

The Lieutenant lay in the brush listening to the talk of the three hairless aliens. It was surprisingly trivial, the sort of thing he might have heard on his home world: the rising price of food in the city; the cost of fuel for their wheeled vehicles; obscure references to politics; an amusing remark about the female of the species. The similarity to what he knew gave Henig confidence.