SOURCE: "Image of the Gods" by Alan E. Nourse (Orbit #4, September-October 1954)

DESCRIPTION: "...They were about half the size of men, and strangely humanoid in appearance, not in the sense that a monkey is humanoid (for they did not resemble monkeys), but in some way the colonists could not quite pin down. It may have been the way they walked around on their long, fragile hid legs, the way they stroked their pointed chins as they sat and watched and listened with their pointed ears lifted alertly, watching with soft gray eyes, or the way they handled objects with their little four-fingered hands. They were so remarkably humanlike in their elfin way that the colonists couldn't help but he drawn to the creatures." ("Image of the Gods" by Alan E. Nourse)

NOTES: The Dusties live on Baron IV, a planet with harsh winters. The winds there are deadly so the Dusties migrate to caves in the hills. The human colonists were saved by the Dusties who took them to the caves and feed them through the winter. These humans tolerate the Dusties as poor cousins more than pets. The Dusties worship humans as gods, making idols of them with their clever hands. When ruthless humans come to Baron IV in a rocket, the Dusties sacrifice themselves by the thousands to destroy the rocket.

HISTORY: Nourse's Dusties may be cuter than H. Beam Piper's Fuzzies or even the Ewoks. The story seems to be about colonial survival but takes a sharp turn at the end, commenting on religion.

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