“This is not a good time to stop and make reports, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla without looking up from the scanner. “Just tell them that…”
“I know what to tell them,” said the other, and went on briskly. “A very delicate first-contact situation is proceeding as we speak. The alien vessel has a crew of two, both physiological classification CHLI; one is seriously injured and the other less so. The medical examination and the contact procedure are being conducted by Dr. Prilicla and are complicated by the fact that the casualties have a rabid fear of all DBDG life-forms regardless of size, apparently because of our close resemblance to a natural enemy on their home planet. All of the proceedings so far have been recorded in case of accidents, but I ask that you wait to avoid taking back an incomplete report that could be updated from hour to hour.”
“Understood, sir,” came the reply. “Over and listening out.”
At first the casualty seemed anxious to talk about the druul, and how much its race hated and feared them, rather than about its world or itself. The proximity of Fletcher was doubtless responsible for that. Prilicla continued to speak and to radiate verbal and emotional reassurance while he plied his scanner and the captain kept its distance. Gradually the subject widened but it always veered back to the hated druul. Keet’s species called themselves the Trolanni, and their world Trolann, and over the past few centuries it had become a savage, frightful place of unending war for its diminishing resources against the druul and the other organic and inorganic pollutants that were fast making the once-populous world uninhabitable for both of its intelligent species, as well as for most other forms of life above the insect level.
Many attempts had been made to check the self-poisoning of their overcrowded world and to impose strict controls on the high degree of industrialization needed to support it if irreversible chemical changes were not to increase the level of toxicity to the point where the planetary biosphere would no longer be able to support life. But preventative and curative measures on that scale required personal sacrifices, self-control, and the cooperation of everyone concerned. A large minority of the Trolanni, and all of the druul, refused to give it.
Possibly there were individuals who thought differently, but as a population the druul decided that the problem would be solved if the Trolanni and their food supply were considered a natural resource and used exclusively for the benefit and continued survival of the druul.
As a species the druul were small, bipedal, vicious, fast-breeding, and utterly implacable where enemies, sapient or otherwise, were concerned. From the dawn of history their rate of scientific and technological achievement had been equal to the Trolanni, so that the wars they had fought had been forced to a stop rather than being won. In spite of many peace overtures by the Trolanni, the two species had lived in a state of unfriendly coexistence until a war that was no longer stoppable was being fought for the diminishing resources of the stinking, polluted, near-corpse that was their planet. For many generations the druul had practiced cannibalism, eating even the sickly young or the elderly or otherwise unproductive people of their own race. They could not be defeated because there were always more of them hungry and ready to fight. Apart from a few pockets of weakening resistance and the latest Trolanni technology which defended them, the planet belonged to the druul.
The only solution was for the Trolanni to find a new, unpolluted and peaceful home.
“You found a new home here,” said Prilicla gently. “What went wrong?”
“A technical failure of some kind,” said Keet, radiating feelings of minor embarrassment and apology. “I’m not the propulsion specialist. After finding an ideal world it seemed as if we couldn’t return home with the news. But we had signaling devices, two of them, untried because none of the searchsuits had used them before then. The first one malfunctioned and seriously damaged the hull. The second one was modified, but it destroyed the doll who released it. Then the ship with the druuls in it arrived.”