“And it’d be better if our colonists could winter over in-
side a good, hard shell,” Eunice Wagner added in agreement.
“So sporulation’s the obvious answer. Many other microscopic
creatures have it.”
“Microscopic?” Phil said incredulously.
“Certainly,” Chatvieux said, amused. “We can’t very well
crowd a six-foot man into a two-foot puddle. But that raises
a question. We’ll have tough competition from the rotifers,
and some of them aren’t strictly microscopic; for that matter
even some of the protozoa can be seen with the naked eye,
just barely, with dark-field illumination. I don’t think your
average colonist should run much under 250 microns, Sal-
tonstall. Give them a chance to slug it out.”
“I was thinking of making them twice that big.”
“Then they’d be the biggest animals in their environment,”
Eunice Wagner pointed out, “and won’t ever develop any
skills. Besides, if you make them about rotifer size, it will
give them an incentive for pushing out the castle-building
rotifers, and occupying the castles themselves, as dwellings.”
Chatvieux nodded. “All right, let’s get started. While the
pantropes are being calibrated, the rest of us can put our
heads together on leaving a record for these people. We’ll
micro-engrave the record on a set of corrosion-proof metal
leaves, of a size our colonists can handle conveniently. We can
tell them, very simply, what happened, and plant a few sug-
gestions that there’s more to the universe than what they find
in their puddles. Some day they may puzzle it out.”
“Question,” Eunice Wagner said. “Are we going to tell them