Blish,James – And all the Stars a Stage

relatives or taxonomical status, no past nor any role in the drama of

evolution. It was generally agreed that they were sexually differentiated;

but there were not and had

And all the Stars a Stage 41

never been any males of the “species’~-they repro.* duced

parthenogenetically, and even that only under highly special, highly

artificial conditions. Though they looked like a sort of animal and were

popularly supposed to be such, even that question had not entirely been

settled: their lack of digestive organs and their extremely simple

nutritional needs were almost mold-like in character, so that many experts

maintained that they ought to be thought of as sapro. phytes, rather than

true parasites. On the other hand, their defensive teeth, their mobility and

their obvious, -if limited-self-consciousness and awareness of the!JZ

environment were not plant-like at all.

Even the popularity of the creatures had come about through a long series

of flukes. Their parasitisrij was a necessary condition of their existence;

the biochemists had not yet been able to turn out an inde. pendent entity

of that degree of complexity, and many of them, sensitive to the

possibility of a charge of manufacturing vermin, were not in any hurry to

try. The fact that the first successful experiment had been performed by a

man had made all the succeeding generations dependent upon traces of

testosterone an(I other androgens in their “diet”; and this nutritional

prejudice, plus the advantages that the creatures took up no living space