"Sure, if you can get away with it. What do I do now?"
"Lower the temperature," Arnold replied confidently. "Smags stabilize at the freezing point."
"Humans freeze at the freezing point," Gregor said. "All right, signing off."
Gregor put on all the extra clothes he could find and turned up the ship's refrigeration system. Within an hour, the Smags had returned to their normal size.
So far, so good. He checked the Queels. The cold seemed to stimulate them. They were livelier than ever and bleated for more food. He fed them.
After eating a ham and wool sandwich, Gregor turned in.
The next day's inspection revealed that there were now fifteen Queels on board. The ten original adults had given birth to five young. All were hungry.
Gregor fed them. He set it down as a normal hazard of transporting mixed groups of livestock. They should have anticipated this and segregated the beasts by sexes as well as species.
When he looked in on the Queels again, their number had increased to thirty-eight.
"Reproduced, did they?" Arnold asked via radio, his voice concerned.
"Yes. And they show no signs of stopping."
"Well, we should have expected it."
"Why?" Gregor demanded baffledly.
"I told you. Queels reproduce feemishly."
"I thought that's what you said. What does it mean?"
"Just what it sounds like," said Arnold, irritated. "How did you ever get through school? It's freezing-point parthenogenesis."
"That does it," Gregor said grimly. "I'm turning this ship around."
"You can't! We'll be wiped out!"
"At the rate those Queels are reproducing, there won't be room for me if I keep going. A Queel will have to pilot this ship."
"Gregor, don't get panicky. There's a perfectly simple answer."
"I'm listening."
"Increase the air pressure and moisture content. That'll stop them."
"Sure. And it'll probably turn the Smags into butterflies."
"There won't be any other effects."
Turning back was no solution, anyhow. The ship was near the halfway mark. Now he could get rid of the beasts just as quickly by delivering them.
Unless he dumped them all into space. It was a tempting though impractical thought.
With increased air pressure and moisture content, the Queels stopped reproducing. They numbered forty-seven now and Gregor had to spend most of his time clearing the ventilators of wool. A slow-motion, surrealistic snowstorm raged in the corridors and engine room, in the water tanks and under his shirt.
Gregor ate tasteless meals of food and wool, with pie and wool for dessert.
He was beginning to feel like a Queel.
But then a bright spot approached on his horizon. The Vermoine sun began glowing on his forward screen. In another day, he would arrive, deliver his cargo and be free to go home to his dusty office, his bills and his solitaire game.
That night, he opened a bottle of wine to celebrate the end of the trip. It helped get the taste of wool out of his mouth and he fell into bed, mildly and pleasantly tipsy.
But he couldn't sleep. The temperature was still dropping. Beads of moisture on the walls of the ship were solidifying into ice.
He had to have heat.
Let's see — if he turned on the heaters, the Smags would shrink. Unless he stopped the gravity. In which case, the forty-seven Queels wouldn't eat.
To hell with the Queels. He was getting too cold to operate the ship.
He brought the vessel out of its spin and turned on the heaters. For an hour, he waited, shivering and stamping his feet. The heaters merrily drained fuel from the engines, but produced no heat.
That was ridiculous. He turned them on full blast.
In another hour, the temperature had sunk below zero. Although Vermoine was now visible, Gregor didn't know if he could even control the ship for a landing.
He had just finished building a small fire on the cabin floor, using the ship's more combustible furnishings as fuel, when the radio spluttered into life.
"I was just thinking," Arnold said. "I hope you haven't been changing gravity and pressure too abruptly."
"What difference does it make?" Gregor asked distractedly.
"You might unstabilize the Firgels. Rapid temperature and pressure changes could take them out of their dormant state. You'd better check."
Gregor hurried off. He opened the door to the Firgel compartment, peered in and shuddered.
The Firgels were awake and croaking. The big lizards were floating around their compartment, covered with frost. A blast of sub-zero air roared into the passageway. Gregor slammed the door and hurried back to the radio.
"Of course they're covered with frost," Arnold said. "Those Firgels are going to Vermoine I. Hot place, Vermoine I right near the sun. The Firgels are cold-fixers — best portable air-conditioners in the Universe."
"Why didn't you tell me this sooner?" Gregor demanded.
"It would have upset you. Besides, they would have stayed dormant if you hadn't started fooling with gravity and pressure."
"The Firgels are going to Vermoine I. What about the Smags?"
"Vermoine II. Tiny planet, not much gravity."
"And the Queels?"
"Vermoine III, of course."
"You idiot!" Gregor shouted. "You give me a cargo like that and expect me to balance it?" If Arnold had been in the ship at that moment, Gregor would have strangled him. "Arnold," he said, very slowly, "no more schemes, no more ideas, promise?"
"Oh, all right," Arnold agreed. "No need to get peevish about it."
Gregor signed off and went to work, trying to warm the ship. He succeeded in boosting it to twenty-seven degrees Fahrenheit before the overworked heaters gave up.
By then, Vermoine II was dead ahead.
Gregor knocked on a piece of wood he hadn't burned and set the tape. He was punching a course for the Main Warehouse, in orbit around Vermoine II, when he heard an ominous grumbling noise. At the same time, half a dozen dials on the control panel flopped over to zero.
Wearily, he floated back to the engine room. His main drive was dead and it didn't take any special mechanical aptitude to figure out why.
Queel wool floated in the engine room's still air. Queel wool was in the bearings and in the lubricating system, clogging the cooling fans.
The metallic wool made an ideal abrasive for highly polished engine parts. It was a wonder the drive had held up this long.
He returned to the control room. He couldn't land the ship without the main drive. Repairs would have to be made in space, eating into their profits. Fortunately, the ship steered by rocket side jets. With no mechanical system to break down, he could still maneuver.
It would be close, but he could still make contact with the artificial satellite that served as the Vermoine warehouse.
"This is AAA Ace," he announced as he squeezed the ship into an orbit around the satellite. "Request permission to land."
There was a crackle of static. "Satellite speaking," a voice answered. "Identify yourself, please."
"This is the AAA Ace ship, bound to Vermoine II from Trigale Central Warehouse," Gregor elaborated. "My papers are in order." He repeated the routine request for landing privilege and leaned back in his chair.
It had been a struggle, but all his animals were alive, intact, healthy, happy, etcetera, etcetera. AAA Ace had made a nice little profit. But all he wanted now was to get out of this ship and into a hot bath. He wanted to spend the rest of his life as far from Queels, Smags, and Firgels as possible. He wanted....
"Landing permission refused."
"What?"
"Sorry, but we're full up at present. If you want to hold your present orbit, I believe we can accommodate you in about three months."