Collecting Team
by Robert Silverberg
From fifty thousand miles up, the situation looked promising. It was a middle-sized, brown-and-green, inviting-looking planet, with no sign of cities or any other such complications. Just a pleasant sort of place, the very sort we were looking for to redeem what had been a pretty futile expedition.
I turned to Clyde Holdreth, who was staring reflectively at the thermocouple.
“Well? What do you think?”
“Looks fine to me. Temperature’s about seventy down there—nice and warm, and plenty of air. I think it’s worth a try.”
Lee Davison came strolling out from the storage hold, smelling of animals, as usual. He was holding one of the blue monkeys we picked up on Alpheraz, and the little beast was crawling up his arm. “Have we found something, gentlemen?”
“We’ve found a planet,” I said. “How’s the storage space in the hold?”
“Don’t worry about that. We’ve got room for a whole zoo-full more, before we get filled up. It hasn’t been a very fruitful trip.”
“No,” I agreed. “It hasn’t. Well? Shall we go down and see what’s to be seen?”
“Might as well,” Holdreth said. “We can’t go back to Earth with just a couple of blue monkeys and some anteaters, you know.”
“I’m in favor of a landing too,” said Davison. “You?”
I nodded. “I’ll set up the charts, and you get your animals comfortable for deceleration.”
Davison disappeared back into the storage hold, while Holdreth scribbled furiously in the logbook, writing down the coordinates of the planet below, its general description, and so forth. Aside from being a collecting team for the zoological department of the Bureau of Interstellar Affairs, we also double as a survey ship, and the planet down below was listed as unexplored on our charts.
I glanced out at the mottled brown-and-green ball spinning slowly in the viewport, and felt the warning twinge of gloom that came to me every time we made a landing on a new and strange world. Repressing it, I started to figure out a landing orbit. From behind me came the furious chatter of the blue monkeys as Davison strapped them into their acceleration cradles, and under that the deep, unmusical honking of the Rigelian anteaters noisily bleating their displeasure.
The planet was inhabited, all right. We hadn’t had the ship on the ground more than a minute before the local fauna began to congregate. We stood at the viewport and looked out in wonder.
“This is one of those things you dream about,” Davison said, stroking his little beard nervously. “Look at them! There must be a thousand different species out there.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Holdreth.
I computed how much storage space we had left and how many of the thronging creatures outside we would be able to bring back with us. “How are we going to decide what to take and what to leave behind?”
“Does it matter?” Holdreth said gaily. “This is what you call an embarrassment of riches, I guess. We just grab the dozen most bizarre creatures and blast-off—and save the rest for another trip. It’s too bad we wasted all that time wandering around near Rigel.”
“We did get the anteaters,” Davison pointed out. They were his finds, and he was proud of them.
I smiled sourly. “Yeah. We got the anteaters there.” The anteaters honked at that moment, loud and clear. “You know, that’s one set of beasts I think I could do without.”
“Bad attitude,” Holdreth said. “Unprofessional.”
“Whoever said I was a zoologist, anyway? I’m just a spaceship pilot, remember. And if I don’t like the way those anteaters talk—and smell—I see no reason why I—”
“Say, look at that one,” Davison said suddenly.
I glanced out the viewport and saw a new beast emerging from the thick-packed vegetation in the background. I’ve seen some fairly strange creatures since I was assigned to the zoological department, but this one took the grand prize.
It was about the size of a giraffe, moving on long, wobbly legs and with a tiny head up at the end of a preposterous neck. Only it had six legs and a bunch of writhing snakelike tentacles as well, and its eyes, great violet globes, stood out nakedly on the ends of two thick stalks. It must have been twenty feet high. It moved with exaggerated grace through the swarm of beasts surrounding our ship, pushed its way smoothly towards the vessel, and peered gravely in at the viewport. One purple eye stared directly at me, the other at Davison. Oddly, it seemed to me as if it were trying to tell us something.
“Big one, isn’t it?” Davison said finally.
“I’ll bet you’d like to bring one back, too.”
“Maybe we can fit a young one aboard,” Davison said. “If we can find a young one.” He turned to Holdreth. “How’s that air analysis coming? I’d like to get out there and start collecting. God, that’s a crazy-looking beast!”
The animal outside had apparently finished its inspection of us, for it pulled its head away and, gathering its legs under itself, squatted near the ship. A small doglike creature with stiff spines running along its back began to bark at the big creature, which took no notice. The other animals, which came in all shapes and sizes, continued to mill around the ship, evidently very curious about the newcomer to their world. I could see Davison’s eyes thirsty with the desire to take the whole kit and caboodle back to Earth with him. I knew what was running through his mind. He was dreaming of the umpteen thousand species of extraterrestrial wildlife roaming around out there, and to each one he was attaching a neat little tag: Something-or-other davisoni.
“The air’s fine,” Holdreth announced abruptly, looking up from his test-tubes. “Get your butterfly nets and let’s see what we can catch.”
There was something I didn’t like about the place. It was just too good to be true, and I learned long ago that nothing ever is. There’s always a catch someplace.
Only this seemed to be on the level. The planet was a bonanza for zoologists, and Davison and Holdreth were having the time of their lives, hipdeep in obliging specimens.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Davison said for at least the fiftieth time, as he scooped up a small purplish squirrel-like creature and examined it curiously. The squirrel stared back, examining Davison just as curiously.
“Let’s take some of these,” Davison said. “I like them.”
“Carry ’em on in, then,” I said, shrugging. I didn’t care which specimens they chose, so long as they filled up the storage hold quickly and let me blast off on schedule. I watched as Davison grabbed a pair of the squirrels and brought them into the ship.
Holdreth came over to me. He was carrying a sort of a dog with insect-faceted eyes and gleaming furless skin. “How’s this one, Gus?”
“Fine,” I said bleakly. “Wonderful.”
He put the animal down—it didn’t scamper away, just sat there smiling at us—and looked at me. He ran a hand through his fast-vanishing hair. “Listen, Gus, you’ve been gloomy all day. What’s eating you?”
“I don’t like this place,” I said.
“Why? Just on general principles?”
“It’s too easy, Clyde. Much too easy. These animals just flock around here waiting to be picked up.”
Holdreth chuckled. “And you’re used to a struggle, aren’t you? You’re just angry at us because we have it so simple here!”
“When I think of the trouble we went through just to get a pair of miserable vile-smelling anteaters, and—”
“Come off it, Gus. We’ll load up in a hurry, if you like. But this place is a zoological gold mine!”
I shook my head. “I don’t like it, Clyde. Not at all.”