“Sir,” said Wilforce, “in my opinion, it’s a terrific nuisance, and a headache of the first magnitude. I don’t think it should be anything worse.”
The chief of colonization looked surprised, and picked up a sheet of paper. “I have here an analysis that ends up as follows: ‘ . . . Thus small furtive Bemus creatures must already have left the planet on supply ships. They have infested an unknown number of other ships, supply centers, and almost certainly, planets. It is impossible to alter the traffic flow to prevent further infection, because we don’t know where they are already. Any one of these creatures may grow larger, suffer successive ‘deaths,’ and by an unprecedented type of reproduction come to populate any planet where it is introduced. The small creatures are furtive and hard to find. The large herbivores eat immense quantities of food. The large carnivores are deadly.'”
The chief of colonization scowled. “I am no pessimist. And I don’t believe in being hypnotized by difficulties. Still—are the facts I’ve just mentioned correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But you think it’s just a headache?”
Wilforce nodded. “It seems to me to be part of the price we pay for colonizing new star systems. If we break a trail through the jungle, some fine day, a tiger will lie in wait beside it. That doesn’t mean the trail is no good. It only means that now we have to figure out how to dispose of the tiger. It’s been like this since back before history began. The caveman discovers fire; that’s fine—but now he gets burnt. He wants light at night, and invents the lamp; it gives light, and it also flickers and smokes up the cave. He stores food for the winter; rats get in it. A problem solved leads to one unsolved. Now we find ourselves with a big trail—and a big tiger beside it.”
“But how do we dispose of this one?”
“Well, most big problems break down into a number of smaller problems. Here, we have three of these smaller problems. First—the source of the trouble—the animals on Bemus III. Second, their ability to stow away and travel on our spaceships. Third, any new colonies of the animals on other planets.
“To start with,” said Wilforce, “we can ring Bemus III with sub-nuclear triggers, set up a warning network to keep ships away, and, if necessary, destroy the planet.
“As for travel by spaceship, it’s the small, furtive animals that do this. We might not be able to ferret them out ourselves, but we can find animals to do it for us—the cat, for instance. As a check, we can put in devices to spot that high-pitched squeal the animal gives when it’s caught.”
The chief of colonization nodded. “Good so far. But what do we do if it gets onto a planet?”
“That’s harder. Evaluation has just tried poisons, for instance. The carnivores don’t touch it, and herbivores ‘die’ and reconstitute themselves as carnivores. All we’ve seen so far shows it’s not much use just to kill them. The colonists put up special barbecue pits. Evidently they killed the animals for a feast to celebrate their tenth anniversary on the planet. The captain of the crash-landed destroyer told me his men had plenty of fresh meat, so apparently they were killing them. The Forty-second had to hunt part of its food in the forest. In each case, we got misery and disaster as a result. Chance accidents, such as lightning, drowning, the fall of limbs in windstorms, were evidently enough to create an occasional monster carnivore, and keep the colonists constantly on edge when they didn’t kill the things themselves. So I don’t think we want to kill them.”
“If we don’t kill them, what do we do?”
“Feed them. Every time there’s been an attack on the herbivores, hosts of carnivores have appeared, only to vanish by the time anyone got here to investigate. The carnivores will eat the herbivores if there’s nothing else handy. They’ll eat chunks of dead carnivores. They very quickly become herbivores, and they will eat all kinds of things. So if we have emergency food stocks ready, we can dump them in chosen areas on any infested planet, and let the creatures gorge themselves. Since they eat all kinds of things, the food stocks needn’t be expensive.”
“You’re thinking—instead of carnivores and little scattered furtive creatures, we’ll end up with placid herbivores?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then what?”
“If nothing else, we can prod them into a cargo carrier, and sling the whole works into the nearest sun. It’s crude, but it ought to work.”
The chief of colonization nodded absently, “Don’t let the crudity of it bother you, as long as it works.” He frowned. “What about those cylinders?”
“What we’ve seen so far indicates they’re ancient. Evidently some other race ran into this problem long ago, arrived at roughly the same solution we’ve thought of, and has since died out, or somehow moved on. The Bemus creatures remain locked in a sort of fluid status quo.”
The colonization chief was staring off at something out of the range of vision. Suddenly he snapped his fingers. “I think I see what to do. Of course, the Interstellar S.P.C.A. may let out a howl such as was never heard in all recorded history. Still—”
* * *
Some months later, the two men were on Donak IV, a frontier planet that had reported an outbreak of Bemus creatures. Moving barriers of charged wires prodded herds of the monster herbivores across a causeway to a cluster of cylindrical metal towers in the middle of a lake. There appeared to be some sort of grim production line in progress.
From where Wilforce stood, he could see the animals go around a corner, get shot by men with fusion guns, then picked up by mechanical loaders, and dumped onto a conveyer belt which promptly carried them down out of sight.
There came a sound of rushing water, and an electrified barrier switched the flow of Bemus creatures to another tower.
Near the tower were several buildings, one bearing the sign: “TANNERY.”
The chief of colonization nodded approvingly. “Very satisfactory arrangement. We stuff a load of monsters in that tower, fill it up with water, and let them evolve through whatever grisly changes they want to. It doesn’t matter whether they turn into super-tigers, medium-sized carnivores, or little carnivores—they don’t live without air. And that situation keeps them too busy to eat up their furs after they finish a change.”
A grav-carrier lifted a load of hides from one of the towers toward the building marked “Tannery.” A small hole in the side of a tower opened and spat into the lake several dozen limp mouse- and shrew-like animals, which were promptly snapped up by lean, sharp-toothed fish swimming around.
The chief of colonization glanced at Wilforce and smiled. “Well,” he said, “that problem seems to be solved—but who knows what may happen next?”
“That’s right” said Wilforce. “Man’s special skill is solving problems. But the one he can’t solve—is the problem of having problems.”
REVOLT!
Colonel Matthew Crandall was in process of grinding the conceit off a new lieutenant when the message came in. The ping of the communications bell could barely be heard through the drone of the lieutenant’s voice:
” . . . And, sir, a Space Force Second Lieutenant outranks a Planetary Development Technician 3rd by two grades. So I ordered him to stand aside. But this Third tried to act as if he hadn’t heard me. He tried to precede me on board Vengeance.” The lieutenant’s chest expanded and his head tilted back. “And so, sir, I enforced my order!”
Crandall eyed the lieutenant with the look of a farmer who has his ax raised, but does not yet have the chicken’s neck in the right spot on the block. Then the ping of the communications bell caught his attention. Crandall got up, stripped a piece of message paper from the transceiver and read:
Planetary Development H.Q. Cygnes VI m 4 to Space Force H.Q., Cygnes III
Personal: To CoL. Matthew Crandall.
Matt: Have just heard from Purcell. Three hundred latest model delGrange mechanical suits en route from Purth, due today 01-23-2212. Three hundred sixty operators en route from Szalesh, due 01-24-2212, fully trained in Model C trainers. I intend give them brief practice in new suits, then get them down on surface of VI. Every indication VI is loaded with crude ore. I need your formal signature for first contact, pursuant Section 67b. Am sending courier with forms.
Thanks, Dave.
David L. Paley, Chief, Planetary
Development Authority, Cygnes.
Crandall read the message over, frowned and pulled a chair around to the transceiver. He rapped the date-time key, tapped out the heading, paused for a moment, thought, then went on:
Dave: Would like to do as you say, but Section 67b is plain that when I sign, I share the responsibility. You say new suits due here today, 01-23-2212, and the operators tomorrow, 01-24-2212; you propose give operators “brief practice” then send them down. My experience is, all new equipment has flaws. Gravity on VI is such that if flaws become apparent down there, we may have mess of big proportions to clean up. Let’s go a little slow at first.