The Queels, in the forward starboard compartment, looked like immense snowballs. Gregor knew that they were prized for their wool, which commanded a top price everywhere.
Apparently they hadn't gotten used to free-fall, for their food was untouched. He left them banking clumsily off walls and ceiling and bleating plaintively for solid ground.
The Firgels were no problem at all. They were big, leathery lizards, whose purpose on a farm Gregor couldn't guess. At present, they were dormant and would remain so throughout the trip.
Aft, the five Smags barked merrily when they saw him. They were friendly, herbivorous mammals and they seemed to enjoy free-fall very much.
Satisfied, Gregor floated back to the control room. It was a good beginning. Trigale hadn't bothered him and his animals were doing all right in space.
This trip might be just a milk run, he decided.
After testing his radio and control switches, Gregor set the alarm and turned in.
He awoke, eight hours later, un-refreshed and with a splitting headache. His coffee tasted like slag and he could barely focus on the instrument panel.
The effects of canned air, he decided, and radioed Arnold that all was well. But halfway through the conversation, he found he could hardly keep his eyes open.
"Signing off," he said, yawning deeply. "Stuffy in here. Going to take a nap."
"Stuffy?" Arnold asked, his voice very distant over the radio. "It shouldn't be. The air circulators—"
Gregor found that the controls were swaying drunkenly and beginning to go out of focus. He leaned against the panel and closed his eyes.
"Gregor!"
"Hmm?"
"Gregor! Check your oxygen content!"
Gregor propped one eye open long enough to read the dial. He found, to his amusement, that the carbon dioxide concentration had reached a level he had never seen before.
"No oxygen," he told Arnold. "I'll fix it after nap."
"Sabotage!" Arnold shouted. "Wake up, Gregor!"
With a gigantic effort, Gregor reached forward and turned on the emergency air tank. The blast of air sobered him. He stood up, swaying uncertainly, and splashed some water on his face.
"The animals!" Arnold was screaming. "See about the animals!"
Gregor turned on the auxiliary air supply for all three compartments and hurried down the corridor.
The Firgels were still alive and dormant. The Smags apparently hadn't even noticed the difference. Two of the Queels had passed out, but they were reviving. And, in their compartment, Gregor found out what had happened.
There was no sabotage. The ventilators in wall and ceiling, through which the ship's air circulated, were jammed shut with Queel wool. Tufts of fleece floated in the still air, looking like a slow-motion snowfall.
"Of course, of course," Arnold said, when Gregor reported by radio. "Didn't I warn you that Queels have to be sheared twice a week? No, I guess I forgot to. Here's what the book says: 'The Queel — Queelis Tropicalis — is a small, wool-bearing mammal, distantly related to the Terran Sheep. Queels are natives of Tensis V, but have been successfully introduced on other heavy-gravity planets. Garments woven of Queel wool are fireproof, insectproof, rotproof, and will last almost indefinitely, due to the metallic content in the wool. Queels should be sheared twice a week. They reproduce feemishly.'"
"No sabotage," Gregor commented.
"No sabotage, but you'd better start shearing those Queels," Arnold said.
Gregor signed off, found a pair of tin snips in his tool kit and went to work on the Queels. But the metallic wool simply blunted the cutting edges. It seemed that Queels had to be sheared with special hard-alloy tools.
He gathered as much of the floating wool as he could find and cleared the ventilators again. After a last inspection, he went to have his supper.
His beef stew was filled with oily, metallic Queel wool.
Disgusted, he turned in.
When he awoke, he found that the creaking old ship was still holding a true course. Her main drive was operating efficiently and the outlook seemed much brighter, especially after he found that the Firgels were still dormant and the Smags were doing nicely.
But when Gregor inspected the Queels, he found that they hadn't touched a morsel of food since coming on board. It was serious now. He called Arnold for advice.
"Very simple," Arnold told him, after searching through several reference books. "Queels haven't any throat muscles. They rely on gravity to get food down. But in free-fall, there isn't any gravity, so they can't get the food down."
It was simple, Gregor knew, one of those little things you would never consider on Earth. But space, with its artificial environment, aggravated even the simplest problems.
"You'll have to spin ship to give them some gravity," Arnold said.
Gregor did some quick mental multiplication. "That'll use up a lot of power."
"Then the book says you can push the food down their throats by hand. You roll it up in a moist ball and reach in as far as the elbow and —"
Gregor signed off and activated the side jets. His feet settled to the floor and he waited anxiously.
The Queels began to feed with an abandon that would have done a Queel-farmer's heart good.
He would have to refuel at the Vermoine II space warehouse and that would bring up their operating expenses, for fuel was expensive in newly colonized systems. Still, there would be a good margin of profit left over.
He returned to normal ship's duties. The spaceship crawled through the immensity of space.
Feeding time came again. Gregor fed the Queels and went on to the Smag compartment. He opened the door and called out, "Come and get it!"
Nothing came.
The compartment was empty.
Gregor felt a curious sensation in his stomach. It was impossible. The Smags couldn't be gone. They were playing a joke on him, hiding somewhere.
But there was no place in the compartment for five large Smags to hide.
The trembling sensation was turning into a full-grown quiver. Gregor remembered the forfeiture clauses in event of loss, damage, etcetera, etcetera.
"Here, Smag! Here Smag!" he shouted. There was no answer.
He inspected the walls, ceiling, door, and ventilators, on the chance that the Smags had somehow bored through.
There were no marks.
Then he heard a faint noise near his feet. Looking down, he saw something scuttle past him.
It was one of his Smags, shrunken to about two inches in length. He found the others hiding in a corner, all just as small.
What had the Trigale official said? "When you travel with Smags, don't forget your magnifying glass."
There was no time for a good, satisfying shock reaction. Gregor closed the door carefully and sprinted to the radio.
"Very odd," Arnold said, after radio contact had been made. "Shrunken, you say? I'm looking it up right now. Hmm...You didn't produce artificial gravity, did you?"
"Of course. To let the Queels feed."
"Shouldn't have done that," Arnold said. "Smags are light-gravity creatures."
"How was I supposed to know?"
"When they're subjected to an unusual for them gravity, they shrink down to microscopic size, lose consciousness and die."
"But you told me to produce artificial gravity."
"Oh, no! I simply mentioned, in passing, that that was one way of making Queels feed. I suggested hand-feeding."
Gregor resisted an almost overpowering urge to rip the radio out of the wall. He said, "Arnold, the Smags are light-gravity animals. Right?"
"Right."
"And the Queels are heavy-gravity. Did you know that when you signed the contract?"
Arnold gulped for a moment, then cleared his throat. "Well, that did seem to make it a bit more difficult. But it pays very well."