Holdreth laughed again and picked up his faceted-eyed dog. “Say, know where I can find another of these, Gus?”
“Right over there.” I said, pointing. “By that tree. With its tongue hanging out. It’s just waiting to be carried away.”
Holdreth looked and smiled. “What do you know about that!” He snared his specimen and carried both of them inside.
I walked away to survey the grounds. The planet was too flatly incredible for me to accept on face value, without at least a look-see, despite the blithe way my two companions were snapping up specimens.
For one thing, animals just don’t exist this way—in big miscellaneous quantities, living all together happily. I hadn’t noticed more than a few of each kind, and there must have been five hundred different species, each one stranger-looking than the next. Nature doesn’t work that way.
For another, they all seemed to be on friendly terms with one another, though they acknowledged the unofficial leadership of the giraffe-like creature. Nature doesn’t work that way, either. I hadn’t seen one quarrel between the animals yet. That argued that they were all herbivores, which didn’t make sense ecologically.
I shrugged my shoulders and walked on.
Half an hour later, I knew a little more about the geography of our bonanza. We were on either an immense island or a peninsula of some sort, because I could see a huge body of water bordering the land some ten miles off. Our vicinity was fairly flat, except for a good-sized hill from which I could see the terrain.
There was a thick, heavily-wooded jungle not too far from the ship. The forest spread out all the way towards the water in one direction, but ended abruptly in the other. We had brought the ship down right at the edge of the clearing. Apparently most of the animals we saw lived in the jungle.
On the other side of our clearing was a low, broad plain that seemed to trail away into a desert in the distance; I could see an uninviting stretch of barren sand that contrasted strangely with the fertile jungle to my left. There was a small lake to the side. It was, I saw, the sort of country likely to attract a varied fauna, since there seemed to be every sort of habitat within a small area.
And the fauna! Although I’m a zoologist only by osmosis, picking up both my interest and my knowledge second-hand from Holdreth and Davison, I couldn’t help but be astonished by the wealth of strange animals. They came in all different shapes and sizes, colors and odors, and the only thing they all had in common was their friendliness. During the course of my afternoon’s wanderings a hundred animals must have come marching boldly right up to me, given me the once-over, and walked away. This included half a dozen kinds that I hadn’t seen before, plus one of the eye-stalked, intelligent-looking giraffes and a furless dog. Again, I had the feeling that the giraffe seemed to be trying to communicate.
I didn’t like it, I didn’t like it at all.
I returned to our clearing, and saw Holdreth and Davison still buzzing madly around, trying to cram as many animals as they could into our hold.
“How’s it going?” I asked.
“Hold’s all full,” Davison said. “We’re busy making our alternate selections now.” I saw him carrying out Holdreth’s two furless dogs and picking up instead a pair of eight-legged penguinish things that uncomplainingly allowed themselves to be carried in. Holdreth was frowning unhappily.
“What do you want those for, Lee? Those dog-like ones seem much more interesting, don’t you think?”
“No,” Davison said. “I’d rather bring along these two. They’re curious beasts, aren’t they? Look at the muscular network that connects the—”
“Hold it, fellows,” I said. I peered at the animal in Davison’s hands and glanced up. “This is a curious beast,” I said. “It’s got eight legs.”
“You becoming a zoologist?” Holdreth asked, amused.
“No—but I am getting puzzled. Why should this one have eight legs, some of the others here six, and some of the others only four?”
They looked at me blankly, with the scorn of professionals.
“I mean, there ought to be some sort of logic to evolution here, shouldn’t there? On Earth we’ve developed a four-legged pattern of animal life; on Venus, they usually run to six legs. But have you ever seen an evolutionary hodgepodge like this place before?”
“There are stranger setups,” Holdreth said. “The symbiotes on Sirius Three, the burrowers of Mizar—but you’re right, Gus. This is a peculiar evolutionary dispersal. I think we ought to stay and investigate it fully.”
Instantly I knew from the bright expression on Davison’s face that I had blundered, had made things worse than ever. I decided to take a new tack.
“I don’t agree,” I said. “I think we ought to leave with what we’ve got, and come back with a larger expedition later.”
Davison chuckled. “Come on, Gus, don’t be silly! This is a chance of a lifetime for us—why should we call in the whole zoological department on it?”
I didn’t want to tell them I was afraid of staying longer. I crossed my arms. “Lee, I’m the pilot of this ship, and you’ll have to listen to me. The schedule calls for a brief stopover here, and we have to leave. Don’t tell me I’m being silly.”
“But you are, man! You’re standing blindly in the path of scientific investigation, of—”
“Listen to me, Lee. Our food is calculated on a pretty narrow margin, to allow you fellows more room for storage. And this is strictly a collecting team. There’s no provision for extended stays on any one planet. Unless you want to wind up eating your own specimens, I suggest you allow us to get out of here.”
They were silent for a moment. Then Holdreth said, “I guess we can’t argue with that, Lee. Let’s listen to Gus and go back now. There’s plenty of time to investigate this place later when we can take longer.”
“But—oh, all right,” Davison said reluctantly. He picked up the eight-legged penguins. “Let me stash these things in the hold, and we can leave.” He looked strangely at me, as if I had done something criminal.
As he started into the ship, I called to him.
“What is it, Gus?”
“Look here, Lee. I don’t want to pull you away from here. It’s simply a matter of food,” I lied, masking my nebulous suspicions.
“I know how it is, Gus.” He turned and entered the ship.
I stood there thinking about nothing at all for a moment, then went inside myself to begin setting up the blastoff orbit.
I got as far as calculating the fuel expenditure when I noticed something. Feedwires were dangling crazily down from the control cabinet. Somebody had wrecked our drive mechanism, but thoroughly.
For a long moment, I stared stiffly at the sabotaged drive. Then I turned and headed into the storage hold.
“Davison?”
“What is it, Gus?”
“Come out here a second, will you?”
I waited, and a few minutes later he appeared, frowning impatiently. “What do you want, Gus? I’m busy and I—” His mouth dropped open. “Look at the drive!”
“You look at it,” I snapped. “I’m sick. Go get Holdreth, on the double.”
While he was gone I tinkered with the shattered mechanism. Once I had the cabinet panel off and could see the inside, I felt a little better; the drive wasn’t damaged beyond repair, though it had been pretty well scrambled. Three or four days of hard work with a screwdriver and solderbeam might get the ship back into functioning order.
But that didn’t make me any less angry. I heard Holdreth and Davison entering behind me, and I whirled to face them.
“All right, you idiots. Which one of you did this?”