Blish,James – And all the Stars a Stage

particular danger to us. Some of them, like the iron insects, look

difficult indeed to cope with. Some of them are outright impossible: there

are highly organized animals on this planet with skeletons like ours, of

which the natives are the immediately available example, and natural

enemies for them which are as deadly to us as the thorn is to the tiger.

One of these, in fact, is a plague quite capable of turning our bones to a

watery jelly in about thirtysix hours. We are only lucky that we haven’t

encountered it yet, especially since it never occurred to me to look for

such a thing while I was making my bacteriological tests of this world.

“In short, it turns out that the native religion of complete resignation to

an implacable Fate accurately reflects things as they are on this planet.

The place is gay, colorful, fertile, inviting-and wholly uncolonizable.”

And all the Stars a Stage 129

“The natives seem to get along,” Jorn protested.

“ne natives,” Dr. Chase-Huebner said with a sad and glacial calm, “are the

last tatters of their species. They will probably be extinct before ten

more generations have passed. Like most intelligent anthropoid creatures,

they’re unspecialized in the biological sense, and under these conditions

their intelligence is of no use to them. They won’t have time to develop a

technology sufficient to protect them. We found them, here only because we

arrived while their planet is still young.”

“But we have the technology—-” Kamblin started to protest.

I assure you, Dr. Karnblin, that we do not. We will be unable even to