Blish,James – And all the Stars a Stage

inarguable soil of the new world. He had not really realized how unlikely

such a moment had come to seem to him. Nor had he known, ever before in his

life, what it would be like to be in the midst of a wilderness. There had

been none left at home, not even for the rich and powerful; everything

there had been tamed, organized, put to use. Here, everything was new; they

were starting over.

It was appallingly hard work, as Ertak had prophesied, but his training

stood him in good stead. Despite the years of confinement in the ship, he

had kept himself in reasonably good shape. Though his muscles ached

abominably at the end of each day for the first week, he was never actually

incapacitated, and finally his body caught the work-rhythm and fell in with

it. After that there was no trouble.

And there was time, even while wielding spade or sledge-hammer or

winch-handle, to look at the life around him. There were no birds here, but

there were

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plenty of delicate insect-like creatures of many species, none larger than

a hand’s breadth. Often they simply hovered, with improbably slow motions of

their wings; sometimes, on the other hand, they traveled with invisible

speed from one hovering spot to another, slowing down into visibility only

for an unpredictable swerve, and then accelerating beyond vision again. None

of these seemed to have stinging or biting habits; after watching them for

a long time, Dr. Chase-Huebner authorized disembarking small samples of the

ship’s livestock.

On the ground, the commonest form was a mollusc, superficially resembling