“True,” said Conway. “But here we have the willing cooperation of the natives and we should make all possible use of it. I shall ask permission, I think, to follow one of our far-traveling doughnuts next time it sets off on a trip. It may be like having a third party along on a honeymoon and I may be told politely where to go with my request, but it is obvious that there are no doctors in the towns or settled areas and it is only the travelers who have a chance of meeting one. Meanwhile,” he ended, “let’s try to find that other intelligent species.”
Two days later Conway made contact with a non-relative of Surreshun who worked in the nearby power station, a nuclear reactor in which he felt almost at home because it had four solid walls and a roof. The roller was planning a trip along an unsettled stretch of coast at the end of its current work period which, Conway estimated, would last two or three days. The being’s name was Camsaug and it did not mind Conway coming along provided he did not stay too close if certain circumstances arose. It described the circumstances in detail and without apparent shame.
Camsaug had heard about the “protectors,” but only at second or third hand. They did not cut people and sew them up again as Conway’s doctors did-it did not know what they did exactly, only that they often killed the people they were supposed to protect. They were stupid, slow moving beings who for some odd reason stayed close to the most active and dangerous stretches of shore.
“Not a slaughterhouse, Major, a battlefield,” said Conway smugly. “You expect to find doctors on a battlefield. .
But they could not wait for Camsaug to start its vacation-Thornnastor’s reports, the samples brought in by the scout ships and their own unaided eyes left no doubt about the urgency of the situation.
Meatball was a very sick planet. Surreshun’s people had been much too free in the use of their newly discovered atomic energy. Their reason for this was that they were an expanding culture which could not afford to be hampered by the constant threat of the massive land beasts. By detonating a series of nuclear devices a few miles inland, taking good care that the wind would not blow the fallout onto their own living area, of course, they had killed large areas of the land beast. They were now able to establish bases on the dead land to further their scientific investigation in many fields.
They did not care that they spread blight and cancer over vast areas far inland-the great carpets were their natural enemy. Hundreds of their people were stopped and eaten by the land beasts every year and now they were simply getting their own back.
“Are these carpets alive and intelligent?” asked Conway angrily as their scout ship made a low-level run over an area which seemed to be afflicted with advanced gangrene. “Or are there small, intelligent organisms living in or under it? No matter which, Surreshun’s people will have to stop chucking their filthy bombs about!”
“I agree,” said Edwards. “But we’ll have to tell them tactfully. We are their guests, you know.”
“You shouldn’t have to tell a man tactfully to stop killing himself!”
“You must have had unusually intelligent patients, Doctor,” said Edwards dryly. He went on, “If the carpets are intelligent and not just stomachs with the attachments for keeping them filled they should have eyes, ears and some kind of nervous system capable of reacting to outside stimuli-”
“When Descartes landed first there was quite a reaction,” said Harrison from the pilot’s position. “The beastie tried to swallow us! We’ll be passing close to the original landing site in a few minutes. Do you want to look at it?”
“Yes, please,” said Conway. Thoughtfully, he added, “Opening a mouth could be an instinctive reaction from a hungry and unintelligent beast. But intelligence of some kind was present because those thought controlled tools came aboard.”
They cleared the diseased area and began to chase their shadow across large patches of vivid green vegetation. Unlike the types which recycled air and wastes these were tiny plants which served no apparent purpose. The specimens which Conway had examined in Descartes’ lab had had very long, thin roots and four wide leaves which rolled up tight to display their yellow undersides when they were shaded from the light. Their scout ship trailed a line of rolled-up leaves in the wake of its shadow as if the surface was a bright green oscilloscope screen and the ship’s shadow a high-persistency spot.