The men's canteen was still functioning. With sure instinct, the two explorers marched in to find the members of the Exploration Corps who had been involved in the events of the night before. The canteen was of pre-formed reinplast and served the synthetic foods so popular on Earth. At one table sat a stocky young American with a fresh face, a red neck, and a razor-sharp crewcut. His name was Hank Quilter, and the more perceptive of his friends had him marked down as a man who would go far. He sat over a synthwine (made from nothing so vulgar as a grape grown from the coarse soil and ripened by the un-refined elements) and argued, his surly-cheerful face animated as he scorned the viewpoint of Ginger Duffield, the ship's weedy messdeck lawyer.
Ainson broke up the conversation without ceremony. Quilter had led the patrol of the previous night.
Draining his glass, Quilter resignedly fetched a thin youth named Walthamstone who had also been on the patrol, and the four of them walked over to the motor pool - being demolished amid shouting preparatory to take-off - to collect an overlander.
Ainson signed for the vehicle, and they drove off with Walthamstone at the wheel and Phipps distributing weapons. The latter said, "Bargerone hasn't given us much time, Bruce. What do you hope to find?”
"I want to examine the site where the creatures were captured. Of course I would like to find something that would make Bargerone eat humble pie." He caught Phipps' warning glance at the men and said sharply, "Quilter, you were in charge last night. Your trigger-finger was a bit itchy, wasn't it? Did you think you were in the Wild West?”
Quilter turned round to give his superior a look.
"Captain complimented me this morning," was all he said.
Dropping that line of approach, Ainson said, "These beasts may not look intelligent, but if one is sensitive one can feel a certain something about them. They show no panic, nor fear of any kind.”
"Could be as much a sign of stupidity as intelligence." Phipps said.
"Mm, possible, I suppose. All the same. ... Another thing, Gussie, that seems worth pursuing.
Whatever the standing of these creatures may be. they don't fit with the larger animals we've discovered on other planets so far. Oh, I know we've only found a couple of dozen planets harboring any sort of life - dash it, star travel isn't thirty years old yet. But it does seem as if light gravity planets breed light spindly beings and heavy planets breed bulky compact beings. And these critters are exceptions to the rule.”
"I see what you mean. This world has not much more mass than Mars, yet our bag are built like rhinoceroses.”
"They were all wallowing in the mud like rhinos when we found them," Quilter offered. "How could they have any intelligence?”
"You shouldn't have shot them down like that They must be rare, or we'd have spotted some elsewhere on 12B before this.”
"You don't stop to think when you're on the receiving end of a rhino charge," Quilter sulked.
"So I see.”
They rumbled over an unkempt plain in silence. Ainson tried to recapture the happiness he had experienced on first walking across this untrod planet. New planets always renewed his pleasure in life; but such pleasures had been spoiled this voyage - spoiled as usual by other people. He had been mistaken to ship on a Company boat; life on Space Corps boats was more rigid and simple; unfortunately, the Anglo-Brazilian war engaged all Corps ships, keeping them too busy with solar system maneuvers for such peaceful enterprises as exploration. Nevertheless, he did not deserve a captain like Edgar Bargerone.
Pity Bargerone did not blast-off and leave him here by himself, Ainson thought. Away from people, communing -he recollected his father's phrase - communing with nature!
The people would come to 12B. Soon enough it would have, like Earth, its over-population problems.
That was why it was explored: with a view to colonization. Sites for the first communities had been marked out on the other side of the world. In a couple of years, the poor wretches forced by economic necessity to leave all they held dear on Earth would be trans-shipped to 12B (but they would have a pretty and tempting colonial name for it by then: Clementine, or something equally obnoxiously innocuous).
Yes, they'd tackle this unkempt plain with all the pluck of their species, turning it into a heaven of dirt-farming and semi-detacheds. Fertility was the curse of the human race, Ainson thought Too much procreation went on; Earth's teeming loins had to ejaculate once again, ejaculate its unwanted progeny on to the virgin planets that lay awaiting - well, awaiting what else?
Christ, what else? There must be something else, or we should all have stayed in the nice green harmless Pleistocene.
Ainson's rancid thoughts were broken by Waltham-stone's saying, "There's the river. Just round the corner, and then we're there.”
They rounded low banks of gravel from which thorn trees grew. Overhead, a mauve sun gleamed damply through haze at them. It raised a shimmer of reflection from the leaves of a million million thistles, growing silently all the way to the river and on the other side of it as far as the eye wanted to see. Only one landmark: a big blunt odd-shaped thing straight ahead.
"It - " said Phipps and Ainson together. They stared at each other. " - looks like one of the creatures.”
"The mudhole where we caught them is just the other side," Walthamstone said. He bumped the overlander across the thistle bed, braking in the shadow of the looming object, forlorn and strange as a chunk of Liberian carving lying on an Aberdeen mantelshelf.
Toting their rifles, they jumped out and moved forward.
They stood on the edge of the mudhole and surveyed it One side of the circle was sucked by the grey lips of the river. The mud itself was brown and pasty green, streaked liberally with red where five big carcasses took their last wallow in the carefree postures of death. The sixth body gave a heave and turned a head in their direction.
A cloud of flies rose in anger at this disturbance. Quilter brought up his rifle, turning a grim face to Ainson when the latter caught his arm.
"Don't kill it," Ainson said. "It's wounded. It can't harm us.”
"We can't assume that. Let me finish it off.”
"I said not. Quilter. We'll get it into the back of the overlander and take it to the ship; we'd better collect the dead ones too. Then they can be cut up and their anatomy studied. They'd never forgive us on Earth if we lost such an opportunity. You and Walthamstone get the nets out of the lockers and haul the bodies up.”
Quilter looked challengingly at his watch and at Ainson.
"Get moving," Ainson ordered.
Reluctantly. Walthamstone slouched forward to do as he was told; unlike Quilter, he was not of the stuff from which rebels are made. Quilter curled his lip and followed. They hauled the nets out and went to stand on the edge of the mud pool, gazing across it at the half-submerged evidence of last night's activities before they got down to work. The sight of the carnage mollified Quilter.
"We sure stopped them!" he said. He was a muscular young man. with his fair hair neatly cropped and a dear old white-haired mother back home in Miami who pulled in an annual fortune in alimony. "Yeah. They'd have got us otherwise." Walthamstone said. "Two of them I shot myself. Must have been those two nearest to us.”
"I killed two of them, too." Quilter said. "They were all wallowing in the mud like rhinos. Boy, did they come at us!”
"Dirty things when you come to look at them. Ugly. Worse than anything we've got on Earth. Aren't half glad we plugged them, aren't you, Quil?”
"It was us or them. We didn't have any choice.”