Each swan died and fell in the center of its assigned area. Copernick had decided that the food trees, and thus the population, should be scattered as far as possible, to limit the possibility of riots and plagues and to keep them isolated when they occurred.
But if the scientific community failed to notice the swans, the animal community did not. Over half the fallen swans were eaten by animals or other birds. This possibility had been taken into account. The seeds were hard, small, and indigestible. They sprouted, absorbing the flesh around them. The scavengers died, and provided additional fertilizer.
Less than a hundred swans were eaten by people, and cooking destroyed most of the seeds. In eleven cases the swans were not properly cooked, and the people died.
But people who eat raw carrion do not notify authorities when a death occurs. Nor do they perform autopsies or embalm their dead. The trees grew.
Two hundred and eighteen professional biologists across the world found first-generation larvae and excitedly took them into labs to study. Incredible! An insect with a biochemistry different from anything previously known. They hurriedly prepared preliminary reports, each expecting to be the first to publish.
A first-generation larva had been laid on the wing of a DC-16. Unnoticed in the course of three days, it ate its way into the tubular aluminum wing strut. There it metamorphosed into a mosquito, which was unable to fly out of the two hundred-foot sealed chamber. It laid its thousand eggs along the length of the wing and died.
Two days later a thousand larvae were contentedly munching away. Eleven hundred passengers were aboard the Qantas airliner, with a crew of forty taking them from Los Angeles where it was midsummer to Melbourne in the middle of its whiter. Skirting a hurricane south of Hawaii, the left whig sheared off. There were no survivors.
Another first-generation egg was laid on the side of an aging space shuttle. It was just burrowing its way into the cabin at takeoff, and the small air leak wasn’t noticed until the ship was in orbit. The larva ate its way into the cargo compartment and then into the chassis of a strip-chart recorder. With its cargo unloaded at a station in a low polar orbit, the shuttle returned. Its departure left the wheel-shaped space station with only one small ship capable of landing on Earth. The larva metamorphosed in a biology lab during a sleep period and laid eight hundred eggs before an astronomer swatted it. None of these eggs reached maturity; many of them were blown out into space when they ate through the outer walls. The rest died when the station became airless.
Thanks to automatic alarms, 820 of the station’s 957 people aboard were able to get into intact space suits in time.
By then no spacecraft on Earth was able to take off, primarily due to punctures in their fuel tanks.
Due to their low polar orbit, no other station could help them in time.
The station’s only functional ship was capable of landing a cargo of only twelve thousand pounds. The station commander, a 180-pound man, decided to save the maximum number of people, and so ordered the ship to be filled on the basis of weight. There were no acts of violence, and only minimal objections to the plan. One hundred and nineteen persons, mostly small women, were loaded aboard.
The ship made it safely to Earth. Seven hundred and one people in orbit died with dignity.
They would have received more sympathy if those on Earth hadn’t had troubles of their own.
The metallic larvae ate thin sheet metal along its entire thickness, cutting irregular slashes in car fenders, aircraft wings, and missile hulls.
Fuel tanks were among the first components to be rendered useless. While two percent of the world’s aircraft crashed and one percent of the land vehicles were wrecked due to mechanical failures, the great majority of them sat on their runways and driveways and simply fell to pieces.
The left engine on Lou von Bork’s Cessna 882 Super Conquest died within a second of the right.
“Seat belts, gang!” He shouted over the intercom: “We are going down.”
Senator Beinheimer had been dozing in the copilot’s chair. “What? What’s up, Lou, boy?”
“It looks like we’re out of fuel, Moe.” Von Bork tried to restart the turbo props, then gave up and feathered his propellers.
“Out of fuel? But we just tanked up at Fort Scott!” Beinheimer said.
“I know, but for the last ten minutes the fuel gauges have been moving left like you wouldn’t believe. I was hoping that it was an electrical problem until the motors quit. We must have sprung a leak.”
“Oh. My. God.”
“It’s not that bad, Moe. We’re still at thirty-one thousand feet, so we have ten minutes to find a soft place to land. And in Kanssas, that’s not all that hard to do. At least I think we’re still in Kansas.”
“You think? I thought that Loran gizmo of yours was supposed to tell you where you were within a hundred yards.”
“It does, usually, only it started to act up just after takeoff. It’s trying to tell me that we’re over Kentucky.”
“You gotta believe your instruments, boy. First rule of instrument flight.”
“Moe, we left Fort Scott, Kansas, fifty-five minutes ago. I have been flying into the sunset since then. This plane cruises at three hundred forty knots. Those are wheat fields down there. I’m not going to believe that I’ve flown five hundred forty miles due east.”
“Well, hadn’t you better radio for help?”
“The radio’s quit working, too. Both of them.”
After hearing the news about the attempted bombing of Life Valley, von Bork had spent a day collecting up his two secretaries, Senator Beinheimer, and the staff of the Crystal City installation. He had piled them, along with absolutely no baggage, into his Cessna and topped off his fuel tanks. The senator’s name was sufficient to get them immediate clearance for takeoff at 1545.
Dusk was coming down even more rapidily than the twin engine turbo prop. Very few lights showed in the farming country, and none of those lit up a suitable stretch of highway.
Von Bork continued due west, heading for Life Valley, hoping that a lighted highway or—please God!—an airport would appear.
At a thousand feet, he settled for the planted field up ahead. Lowering his landing gear and flaps (they worked!), he came in to what he thought was a wheat field.
“Dear God… dear God… dear God,” Beinheimer muttered, clutching the armrest with fear-whitened fingers.
“That the only prayer you know, Moe?”
“The only one, by God, but it’s sincere! After this, I’ll learn some more. I swear I will!”
“Hang on, gang!” von Bork shouted into the intercom. “The old barnstormers could do it, and we’re only eighty ahead of them in technology!”
Von Bork was no farm boy, and what with the speed, altitude, and darkness, he was wrong about it being a wheat field; it was corn, tall Kansas corn.
The Cessna’s landing gear had been designed for use on a surface infinitely harder than rich, tilled soil. All three wheels sheared off within twenty yards of touchdown. This was good, because von Bork’s air-speed indicator had been rendered grossly inaccurate by two metal-munching larva. He had come in more than eighty knots too fast.
The Cessna sliced through the mile-wide cornfield, narrowly missing the center pivot irrigation machine. The wings took an amazing beating, each cornstalk sending its own thump through the airframe.
The plane had slowed to sixty before the wing strut gave way almost exactly in the center and both wings tore off together. This too was lucky, for had one gone before the other, the plane would have rolled.