 What was the mission of Eckert and Templin?
THE FIRE and THE SWORD By FRANK M. ROBINSON [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction August 1951. Templin tightened his safety belt and lay back on the acceleration bunk. The lights in the cabin dimmed to a dull, red glow that meant the time for takeoff was nearing. Weltschmerz, perhaps. He turned his head slightly so he could just see Eckert in the bank facing him. It was Eckert who had come into his office several days ago and told him that Don Pendleton had killed himself. Eckert was just a dull, formless blur opposite him. Eckert had come into his office without saying a word and had watched his scenery-window. Eckert had fiddled with the controls and changed it to sunshine, then to a weird mixture of hail amid the brassy, golden sunlight. The Service had stumbled across it recently and decided the system was worth diplomatic recognition of some kind, so Pendleton had been sent there. And then an unscheduled freighter had put in for repairs, one of the very few ships that ever came by Tunpesh. It was almost black inside the cabin now; only a thin red line around the ceiling told how close they were to takeoff. Eckert and he had been chosen to go to Tunpesh and investigate. The thin red line was practically microscopic now and Templin could feel his lashes lying gently on his cheeks. They knew that it had no trading concessions or armed forces and that nobody from neighboring systems seemed to know much about it or even visited it. But a staff anthropologist must have been routinely assigned to Tunpesh to furnish data and reports. Warm breezes rustled through Eckert's graying hair and tugged gently at his tunic. A few hundred yards away, a forest towered straight and slim and coolly inviting, and brilliantly colored birds whirled and fluttered in the foliage. He looked at the slim, dwindling shape that was the rocket, and was suddenly, acutely aware that he and Templin would be stranded for six months on a foreign and very possibly dangerous planet. The rocketport was in a small valley, surrounded by low, wooded hills. The village started where the port left off and crawled and wound over the wooded ridges. They finally came out on the field and clustered around him and Templin. The other part of the square was given over to the native bazaar where pots and bolts of cloth were for sale, and where numerous stalls were loaded with dried fruits and vegetables and the cleaned and plucked carcasses of the local variety of fowl.
 To find out what happened to Pendleton
 To locate Pendleton  To find out what happened to Pendleton  To get to know the primitive way of life.  To try to cover up what happened to Pendleton