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diff --git a/32344-h/32344-h.htm b/32344-h/32344-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..098afaa --- /dev/null +++ b/32344-h/32344-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,1437 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<!-- $Id: header.txt 236 2009-12-07 18:57:00Z vlsimpson $ --> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of Pet Farm, by Roger Dee. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; +} + +p { + margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; +} + +hr { + width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; +} + +table { + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; +} + +.pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; +} /* page numbers */ + +.linenum { + position: absolute; + top: auto; + left: 4%; +} /* poetry number */ + +.blockquot { + margin-left: 5%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +.sidenote { + width: 20%; + padding-bottom: .5em; + padding-top: .5em; + padding-left: .5em; + padding-right: .5em; + margin-left: 1em; + float: right; + clear: right; + margin-top: 1em; + font-size: smaller; + color: black; + background: #eeeeee; + border: dashed 1px; +} + +.bb {border-bottom: solid 2px;} + +.bl {border-left: solid 2px;} + +.bt {border-top: solid 2px;} + +.br {border-right: solid 2px;} + +.bbox {border: solid 2px;} + +.center {text-align: center;} + +.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + +.u {text-decoration: underline;} + +.caption {font-weight: bold;} + +/* Images */ +.figcenter { + margin: auto; + text-align: center; +} + +.figleft { + float: left; + clear: left; + margin-left: 0; + margin-bottom: 1em; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-right: 1em; + padding: 0; + text-align: center; +} + +.figright { + float: right; + clear: right; + margin-left: 1em; + margin-bottom: + 1em; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-right: 0; + padding: 0; + text-align: center; +} + +/* Footnotes */ +.footnotes {border: dashed 1px;} + +.footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + +.footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + +.fnanchor { + vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: + none; +} + +/* Poetry */ +.poem { + margin-left:10%; + margin-right:10%; + text-align: left; +} + +.poem br {display: none;} + +.poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + +.poem span.i0 { + display: block; + margin-left: 0em; + padding-left: 3em; + text-indent: -3em; +} + +.poem span.i2 { + display: block; + margin-left: 2em; + padding-left: 3em; + text-indent: -3em; +} + +.poem span.i4 { + display: block; + margin-left: 4em; + padding-left: 3em; + text-indent: -3em; +} + + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pet Farm, by Roger Dee + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Pet Farm + +Author: Roger Dee + +Illustrator: Dick Francis + +Release Date: May 12, 2010 [EBook #32344] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PET FARM *** + + + + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" alt=""/> +</div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + + +<h1>Pet Farm</h1> + +<h2>By ROGER DEE</h2> + +<h3>Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS</h3> + +<p>[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction +February 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the +U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div class="sidenote"><i>The next worst thing to hell is being shanghaied into the +Paradise of an alien planet!</i></div> + + +<p>They had fled almost to the sheer ambient face of the crater wall when +the Falakian girl touched Farrell's arm and pointed back through the +scented, pearly mists.</p> + +<p>"Someone," she said. Her voice stumbled over the almost forgotten Terran +word, but its sound was music.</p> + +<p>"No matter," Farrell answered. "They're too late now."</p> + +<p>He pushed on, happily certain in his warm euphoric glow of mounting +expectancy that what he had done to the ship made him—and his new-found +paradise with him—secure.</p> + +<p>He had almost forgotten who <i>they</i> were; the pale half-memories that +drifted through his mind touched his consciousness lightly and without +urgency, arousing neither alarm nor interest.</p> + +<p>The dusk grew steadily deeper, but the dimming of vision did not matter.</p> + +<p>Nothing mattered but the fulfillment to come.</p> + +<p>Far above him, the lacy network of bridging, at one time so baffling, +arched and vanished in airy grace into the colored mists. To right and +left, other arms of the aerial maze reached out, throwing vague +traceries from cliff to cliff across the valley floor. Behind him on the +plain he could hear the eternally young people playing about their +little blue lake, flitting like gay shadows through the tamarisks and +calling to each other in clear elfin voices while they frolicked after +the fluttering swarms of great, bright-hued moths.</p> + +<p>The crater wall halted him and he stood with the Falakian girl beside +him, looking back through the mists and savoring the sweet, quiet +mystery of the valley. Motion stirred there; the pair of them laughed +like anticipant children when two wide-winged moths swam into sight and +floated toward them, eyes glowing like veiled emeralds.</p> + +<p>Footsteps followed, disembodied in the dusk.</p> + +<p>"It is only Xavier," a voice said. Its mellow uninflection evoked a +briefly disturbing memory of a slight gray figure, jointed yet curiously +flexible, and a featureless oval of face.</p> + +<p>It came out of the mists and halted a dozen yards away, and he saw that +it spoke into a metallic box slung over one shoulder.</p> + +<p>"He is unharmed," it said. "Directions?"</p> + +<p>Xavier? Directions? From whom?</p> + +<p>Another voice answered from the shoulder-box, bringing a second mental +picture of a face—square and brown, black-browed and taciturnly +humorless—that he had known and forgotten.</p> + +<p>Whose, and where?</p> + +<p>"Hold him there, Xav," it said. "Stryker and I are going to try to reach +the ship now."</p> + +<p>The moths floated nearer, humming gently.</p> + +<p>"You're too late," Farrell called. "Go away. Let me wait in peace."</p> + +<p>"If you knew what you're waiting for," a third voice said, "you'd go +screaming mad." It was familiar, recalling vaguely a fat, good-natured +face and ponderous, laughter-shaken paunch. "If you could see the place +as you saw it when we first landed...."</p> + +<p>The disturbing implications of the words forced him reluctantly to +remember a little of that first sight of Falak.</p> + +<p>... The memory was sacrilege, soiling and cheapening the ecstasy of his +anticipation.</p> + +<p>But it <i>had</i> been different.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>His first day on Falak had left Farrell sick with disgust.</p> + +<p>He had known from the beginning that the planet was small and arid, +non-rotating, with a period of revolution about its primary roughly +equal to ten Earth years. The <i>Marco Four</i>'s initial sweep of +reconnaissance, spiraling from pole to pole, had supplied further +information without preparing him at all for what the three-man +Reclamations team was to find later.</p> + +<p>The weed-choked fields and crumbled desolation of Terran slave barracks +had been depressing enough. The inevitable scattering of empty domes +abandoned a hundred years before by the Hymenop conquerors had completed +a familiar and unpromising pattern, a workaday blueprint that differed +from previous experience only in one significant detail: There was no +shaggy, disoriented remnant of descendants from the original colonists.</p> + +<p>The valley, a mile-wide crater sunk between thousand-foot cliffs, +floored with straggling bramble thickets and grass flats pocked with +stagnant pools and quaking slime-bogs, had been infinitely worse. The +cryptic three-dimensional maze of bridges spanning the pit had made +landing there a ticklish undertaking. Stryker and Farrell and Gibson, +after a conference, had risked the descent only because the valley +offered a last possible refuge for survivors.</p> + +<p>Their first real hint of what lay ahead of them came when Xavier, the +ship's mechanical, opened the personnel port against the heat and humid +stink of the place.</p> + +<p>"Another damned tropical pesthole," Farrell said, shucking off his +comfortable shorts and donning booted coveralls for the preliminary +survey. "The sooner we count heads—assuming there are any left to +count—and get out of here, the better. The long-term Reorientation boys +can have this one and welcome."</p> + +<p>Stryker, characteristically, had laughed at his navigator's prompt +disgust. Gibson, equally predictable in his way, had gathered his gear +with precise efficiency, saying nothing.</p> + +<p>"It's a routine soon finished," Stryker said. "There can't be more than +a handful of survivors here, and in any case we're not required to do +more than gather data from full-scale recolonization. Our main job is to +prepare Reorientation if we can for whatever sort of slave-conditioning +deviltry the Hymenops practiced on this particular world."</p> + +<p>Farrell grunted sourly. "You love these repulsive little puzzles, don't +you?"</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Stryker grinned at him with good-natured malice. "Why not, Arthur? You +can play the accordion and sketch for entertainment, and Gib has his +star-maps and his chess sessions with Xavier. But for a fat old man, +rejuvenated four times and nearing his fifth and final, what else is +left except curiosity?"</p> + +<p>He clipped a heat-gun and audicom pack to the belt of his bulging +coveralls and clumped to the port to look outside. Roiling gray fog +hovered there, diffusing the hot magenta point of Falak's sun to a +liverish glare half-eclipsed by the crater's southern rim. Against the +light, the spidery metal maze of foot-bridging stood out dimly, tracing +a random criss-cross pattern that dwindled to invisibility in the mists.</p> + +<p>"That network is a Hymenop experiment of some sort," Stryker said, +peering. "It's not only a sample of alien engineering—and a thundering +big one at that—but an object lesson on the weird workings of alien +logic. If we could figure out what possessed the Bees to build such a +maze here—"</p> + +<p>"Then we'd be the first to solve the problem of alien psychology," +Farrell finished acidly, aping the older man's ponderous enthusiasm. +"Lee, you know we'd have to follow those hive-building fiends all the +way to 70 Ophiuchi to find out what makes them tick. And twenty thousand +light-years is a hell of a way to go out of curiosity, not to mention a +dangerous one."</p> + +<p>"But we'll go there some day," Stryker said positively. "We'll have to +go because we can't ever be sure they won't try to repeat their invasion +of two hundred years ago."</p> + +<p>He tugged at the owlish tufts of hair over his ears, wrinkling his bald +brow up at the enigmatic maze.</p> + +<p>"We'll never feel safe again until the Bees are wiped out. I wonder if +they know that. They never understood us, you know, just as we never +understood them—they always seemed more interested in experimenting +with slave ecology than in conquest for itself, and they never killed +off their captive cultures when they pulled out for home. I wonder if +their system of logic can postulate the idea of a society like ours, +which must rule or die."</p> + +<p>"We'd better get on with our survey," Gibson put in mildly, "unless we +mean to finish by floodlight. We've only about forty-eight hours left +before dark."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>He moved past Stryker through the port, leaving Farrell to stare blankly +after him.</p> + +<p>"This is a non-rotating world," Farrell said. "How the devil <i>can</i> it +get dark, Lee?"</p> + +<p>Stryker chuckled. "I wondered if you'd see that. It can't, except when +the planet's axial tilt rolls this latitude into its winter season and +sends the sun south of the crater rim. It probably gets dark as pitch +here in the valley, since the fog would trap even diffused light." To +the patiently waiting mechanical, he said, "The ship is yours, Xav. Call +us if anything turns up."</p> + +<p>Farrell followed him reluctantly outside into a miasmic desolation more +depressing than he could have imagined.</p> + +<p>A stunted jungle of thorny brambles and tough, waist-high grasses +hampered their passage at first, ripping at coveralls and tangling the +feet until they had beaten their way through it to lower ground. There +they found a dreary expanse of bogland where scummy pools of stagnant +water and festering slime heaved sluggishly with oily bubbles of marsh +gas that burst audibly in the hanging silence. The liverish blaze of +Falakian sun bore down mercilessly from the crater's rim.</p> + +<p>They moved on to skirt a small lead-colored lake in the center of the +valley, a stagnant seepage-basin half obscured by floating scum. Its +steaming mudflats were littered with rotting yellowed bones and +supported the first life they had seen, an unpleasant scurrying of small +multipedal crustaceans and water-lizards.</p> + +<p>"There can't be any survivors <i>here</i>," Farrell said, appalled by the +thought of his kind perpetuating itself in a place like this. "God, +think what the mortality rate would be! They'd die like flies."</p> + +<p>"There are bound to be a few," Stryker stated, "even after a hundred +years of slavery and another hundred of abandonment. The human animal, +Arthur, is the most fantastically adaptable—"</p> + +<p>He broke off short when they rounded a clump of reeds and stumbled upon +their first Falakian proof of that fantastic adaptability.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>The young woman squatting on the mudflat at their feet stared back at +them with vacuous light eyes half hidden behind a wild tangle of matted +blonde hair. She was gaunt and filthy, plastered with slime from head to +foot, and in her hands she held the half-eaten body of a larger +crustacean that obviously had died of natural causes and not too +recently, at that.</p> + +<p>Farrell turned away, swallowing his disgust. Gibson, unmoved, said with +an aptness bordering—for him—on irony: "Too damned adaptable, Lee. +Sometimes our kind survives when it really shouldn't."</p> + +<p>A male child of perhaps four came out of the reeds and stared at them. +He was as gaunt and filthy as the woman, but less vapid of face. +Farrell, watching the slow spark of curiosity bloom in his eyes, +wondered sickly how many years—or how few—must pass before the boy was +reduced to the same stupid bovinity as the mother.</p> + +<p>Gibson was right, he thought. The compulsion to survive at any cost +could be a curse instead of an asset. The degeneracy of these poor +devils was a perpetual affront to the race that had put them there.</p> + +<p>He was about to say as much when the woman rose and plodded away through +the mud, the child at her heels. It startled him momentarily, when he +followed their course with his eyes, to see that perhaps a hundred +others had gathered to wait incuriously for them in the near distance. +All were as filthy as the first two, but with a grotesque uniformity of +appearance that left him frowning in uneasy speculation until he found +words to identify that similarity.</p> + +<p>"They're all <i>young</i>," he said. "The oldest can't be more than +twenty—twenty-five at most!"</p> + +<p>Stryker scowled, puzzled without sharing Farrell's unease. "You're +right. Where are the older ones?"</p> + +<p>"Another of your precious little puzzles," Farrell said sourly. "I hope +you enjoy unraveling it."</p> + +<p>"Oh, we'll get to the bottom of it," Stryker said with assurance. "We'll +have to, before we can leave them here."</p> + +<p>They made a slow circuit of the lake, and the closer inspection offered +a possible solution to the problem Stryker had posed. Chipped and +weathered as the bones littering the mudflats were, their grisly +shapings were unmistakable.</p> + +<p>"I'd say that these are the bones of the older people," Stryker +hazarded, "and that they represent the end result of another of these +religio-economic control compulsions the Hymenops like to condition into +their slaves. Men will go to any lengths to observe a tradition, +especially when its origin is forgotten. If these people were once +conditioned to look on old age as intolerable—"</p> + +<p>"If you're trying to say that they kill each other off at maturity," +Farrell interrupted, "the inference is ridiculous. In a hundred years +they'd have outgrown a custom so hard to enforce. The balance of power +would have rested with the adults, not with the children, and adults are +generally fond of living.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Stryker looked to Gibson for support, received none, and found himself +saddled with his own contention. "Economic necessity, then, since the +valley can support only a limited number. Some of the old North American +Indians followed a similar custom, the oldest son throttling the father +when he grew too old to hunt."</p> + +<p>"But even there infanticide was more popular than patricide," Farrell +pointed out. "No group would practice decimation from the top down. It's +too difficult to enforce."</p> + +<p>Stryker answered him with a quotation from the Colonial Reclamations +Handbook, maliciously taking the pontifical classmaster's tone best +calculated to irritate Farrell.</p> + +<p>"Chapter Four, Subsection One, Paragraph Nineteen: <i>Any custom, fixation +or compulsion accepted as the norm by one group of human beings can be +understood and evaluated by any other group not influenced by the same +ideology, since the basic perceptive abilities of both are necessarily +the same through identical heredity. Evaluation of alien motivations, +conversely—</i>"</p> + +<p>"Oh, hell," Farrell cut in wearily. "Let's get back to the ship, shall +we? We'll all feel more like—"</p> + +<p>His right foot gave way beneath him without warning, crushing through +the soft ground and throwing him heavily. He sat up at once, and swore +in incredulous anger when he found the ankle swelling rapidly inside his +boot.</p> + +<p>"Sprained! Damn it all!"</p> + +<p>Gibson and Stryker, on their knees beside the broken crust of soil, +ignored him. Gibson took up a broken length of stick and prodded +intently in the cavity, prying out after a moment a glistening two-foot +ellipsoid that struggled feebly on the ground.</p> + +<p>"A chrysalid," Stryker said, bending to gauge the damage Farrell's heavy +boot had done. "In a very close pre-eclosion stage. Look, the protective +sheathing has begun to split already."</p> + +<p>The thing lay twitching aimlessly, prisoned legs pushing against its +shining transparent integument in an instinctive attempt at premature +freedom. The movement was purely reflexive; its head, huge-eyed and as +large as a man's clenched fist, had been thoroughly crushed under +Farrell's heel.</p> + +<p>Oddly, its injury touched Farrell even through the pain of his injured +foot.</p> + +<p>"It's the first passably handsome thing we've seen in this pesthole," he +said, "and I've maimed it. Finish it off, will you?"</p> + +<p>Stryker grunted, feeling the texture of the imprisoning sheath with +curious fingers. "What would it have been <i>in imago</i>, Gib? A giant +butterfly?"</p> + +<p>"A moth," Gibson said tersely. "<i>Lepidoptera</i>, anyway."</p> + +<p>He stood up and ended the chrysalid's strugglings with a bolt from his +heat-gun before extending a hand to help Farrell up. "I'd like to +examine it closer, but there'll be others. Let's get Arthur out of +here."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>They went back to the ship by slow stages, pausing now and then while +Gibson gathered a small packet of bone fragments from the mudflats and +underbrush.</p> + +<p>"Some of these are older than others," he explained when Stryker +remarked on his selection. "But none are recent. It should help to know +their exact age."</p> + +<p>An hour later, they were bathed and dressed, sealed off comfortably in +the ship against the humid heat and stink of the swamp. Farrell lay on a +chart room acceleration couch, resting, while Stryker taped his swollen +ankle. Gibson and Xavier, the one disdaining rest and the other needing +none, used the time to run a test analysis on the bones brought in from +the lakeside.</p> + +<p>The results of that analysis were more astonishing than illuminating.</p> + +<p>A majority of the fragments had been exposed to climatic action for some +ten years. A smaller lot averaged twenty years; and a few odd chips, +preserved by long burial under alluvial silt, thirty.</p> + +<p>"The older natives died at ten-year intervals, then," Stryker said. "And +in considerable numbers; the tribe must have been cut to half strength +each time. But why?" He frowned unhappily, fishing for opinion. "Gib, +can it really be a perversion of religious custom dreamed up by the +Hymenops to keep their slaves under control? A sort of festival of +sacrifice every decade, climaxing in tribal decimation?"</p> + +<p>"Maybe they combine godliness with gluttony," Farrell put in, unasked. +"Maybe their orgy runs more to long pig than to piety."</p> + +<p>He stood up, wincing at the pain, and was hobbling toward his sleeping +cubicle when Gibson's answer to Stryker's question stopped him with a +cold prickle along his spine.</p> + +<p>"We'll know within twenty-four hours," Gibson said. "Since both the +decimations and the winter darkness periods seem to follow the same +cycle, I'd say there's a definite relationship."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>For once Farrell's cubicle, soundproofed and comfortable, brought him +only a fitful imitation of sleep, an intermittent dozing that wavered +endlessly between nightmare and wakefulness. When he crawled out again, +hours later, he found Xavier waiting for him alone with a thermo-bulb of +hot coffee. Stryker and Gibson, the mechanical said blandly, had seen no +need of waking him, and had gone out alone on a more extensive tour of +investigation.</p> + +<p>The hours dragged interminably. Farrell uncased his beloved accordion, +but could not bear the sound of it; he tried his sketch-book, and could +summon to mind no better subjects than drab miasmic bogs and steaming +mudflats. He discarded the idea of chess with Xavier without even +weighing it—he would not have lasted past the fourth move, and both he +and the mechanical knew it.</p> + +<p>He was reduced finally to limping about the ship on his bandaged foot, +searching for some routine task left undone and finding nothing. He even +went so far as to make a below-decks check on the ship's +matter-synthesizer, an indispensable unit designed for the conversion of +waste to any chemical compound, and gave it up in annoyance when he +found that all such operational details were filed with infallible +exactness in Xavier's plastoid head.</p> + +<p>The return of Stryker and Gibson only aggravated his impatience. He had +expected them to discover concealed approaches to the maze of bridging +overhead, tunnelings in the cliff-face to hidden caverns complete with +bloodstained altars and caches of sacrificial weapons, or at least some +ominous sign of preparation among the natives. But there was nothing.</p> + +<p>"No more than yesterday," Stryker said. Failure had cost him a share of +his congenital good-humor, leaving him restless and uneasy. "There's +nothing to find, Arthur. We've seen it all."</p> + +<p>Surprisingly, Gibson disagreed.</p> + +<p>"We'll know what we're after when darkness falls," he said. "But that's +a good twelve hours away. In the meantime, there's a possibility that +our missing key is <i>outside</i> the crater, rather than here inside it."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>They turned on him together, both baffled and apprehensive.</p> + +<p>"What do you mean, outside?" Farrell demanded. "There's nothing there +but grassland. We made sure of that at planetfall."</p> + +<p>"We mapped four Hymenop domes on reconnaissance," Gibson reminded him. +"But we only examined three to satisfy ourselves that they were empty. +The fourth one—"</p> + +<p>Farrell interrupted derisively. "That ancient bogey again? Gib, the +domes are <i>always</i> empty. The Bees pulled out a hundred years ago."</p> + +<p>Gibson said nothing, but his black-browed regard made Farrell flush +uncomfortably.</p> + +<p>"Gib is right," Stryker intervened. "You're too young in Colonial +Reclamations to appreciate the difficulty of recognizing an alien logic, +Arthur, let alone the impossibility of outguessing it. I've knocked +about these ecological madhouses for the better part of a century, and +the more I see of Hymenop work, the more convinced I am that we'll never +equate human and Hymenop ideologies. It's like trying to add quantities +of dissimilar objects and expressing the result in a single symbol; it +can't be done, because there's no possible common denominator for +reducing the disparate elements to similarity."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>When Farrell kept silent, he went on, "Our own reactions, and +consequently our motivations, are based on broad attributes of love, +hate, fear, greed and curiosity. We might empathize with another species +that reacts as we do to those same stimuli—but what if that other +species recognizes only one or two of them, or none at all? What if +their motivations stem from a set of responses entirely different from +any we know?"</p> + +<p>"There aren't any," Farrell said promptly. "What do you think they would +be?"</p> + +<p>"There you have it," Stryker said triumphantly. He chuckled, his +good-nature restored. "We can't imagine what those emotions would be +like because we aren't equipped to understand. Could a race depending +entirely on extra-sensory perception appreciate a Mozart quintet or a +Botticelli altar piece or a performance of <i>Hamlet</i>? You know it +couldn't—the esthetic nuances that make those works great would escape +it completely, because the motives that inspired their creation are +based on a set of values entirely foreign to its comprehension.</p> + +<p>"There's a digger wasp on Earth whose female singles out a particular +species of tarantula to feed her larvae—and the spider stands patiently +by, held by some compulsion whose nature we can't even guess, while the +wasp digs a grave, paralyzes the spider and shoves it into the hole with +an egg attached. The spider could kill the wasp, and will kill one of +any other species, but it submits to that particular kind without a +flicker of protest. And if we can't understand the mechanics of such a +relationship between reflexive species, then what chance have we of +understanding the logic of an <i>intelligent</i> race of aliens? The results +of its activities can be assessed, but not the motivations behind those +activities."</p> + +<p>"All right," Farrell conceded. "You and Gib are right, as usual, and I'm +wrong. We'll check that fourth dome."</p> + +<p>"You'll stay here with Xav," Stryker said firmly, "while Gib and I +check. You'd only punish yourself, using that foot."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>After another eight-hour period of waiting, Farrell was nearing the end +of his patience. He tried to rationalize his uneasiness and came finally +to the conclusion that his failing hinged on a matter of conditioning. +He was too accustomed to the stable unity of their team to feel +comfortable without Gibson and Stryker. Isolated from their perpetual +bickering and the pleasant unspoken warmth of their regard, he was +lonesome and tense.</p> + +<p>It would have been different, he knew, if either of the others had been +left behind. Stryker had his beloved Reclamations texts and his +microfilm albums of problems solved on other worlds; Gibson had his +complicated galactic charts and his interminable chess bouts with +Xavier....</p> + +<p>Farrell gave it up and limped outside, to stand scowling unhappily at +the dreary expanse of swampland. Far down under the reasoning levels of +his consciousness a primal uneasiness nagged at him, whispering in +wordless warning that there was more to his mounting restlessness than +simple impatience. Something inside him was changing, burgeoning in +strange and disturbing growth.</p> + +<p>A pale suggestion of movement, wavering and uncertain in the eddying +fog, caught his eye. A moment of puzzled watching told him that it was +the bedraggled young woman they had seen earlier by the lake, and that +she was approaching the ship timorously and under cover.</p> + +<p>"But why?" he wondered aloud, recalling her bovine lack of curiosity. +"What the devil can she want here?"</p> + +<p>A shadow fell across the valley. Farrell, startled, looked up sharply to +see the last of the Falakian sun's magenta glare vanishing below the +crater's southern rim. A dusky forerunner of darkness settled like a +tangible cloud, softening the drab outlines of bramble thickets and +slime pools. The change that followed was not seen but felt, a swelling +rush of glad arousal like the joy of a child opening its eyes from +sleep.</p> + +<p>To Farrell, the valley seemed to stir, waking in sympathy to his own +restlessness and banishing his unease.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>The girl ran to him through the dusk on quick, light feet, timidity +forgotten, and he saw with a pleasant shock of astonishment that she was +no longer the filthy creature he had first seen by the lakeside. She was +pretty and nubile, eyes and soft mouth smiling together in a childlike +eagerness that made her at once infinitely desirable and untouchably +innocent.</p> + +<p>"Who are you?" he asked shakily.</p> + +<div class="figleft"> +<img src="images/illus1.jpg" alt=""/> +</div> + +<p>Her hesitant voice was music, rousing in Farrell a warm and expectant +euphoria that glowed like old wine in his veins.</p> + +<p>"Koaele," she said. "Look—"</p> + +<p>Behind her, the valley lay wrapped like a minor paradise in soft pearly +mists and luminous shadows, murmurous with the far sound of running +water and the faint chiming of voices that drifted up from the little +blue lake to whisper back in cadenced echo from the fairy maze of +bridging overhead. Over it all, like a deep, sustained cello note, rose +the muted humming of great flame-winged moths dipping and swaying over +bright tropical flowers.</p> + +<p>"<i>Moths?</i>" he thought. And then, "<i>Of course.</i>"</p> + +<p>The chrysalids under the sod, their eclosion time completed, were coming +into their own—bringing perfection with them. Born in gorgeous +iridescent <i>imago</i>, they were beautiful in a way that hurt with the +yearning pain of perfection, the sorrow that imperfection existed at +all—the joy of finally experiencing flawlessness.</p> + +<p>An imperative buzzing from the ship behind him made a rude intrusion. A +familiar voice, polite but without inflection, called from an open port: +"Captain Stryker in the scoutboat, requesting answer."</p> + +<p>Farrell hesitated. To the girl, who followed him with puzzled, eager +eyes, he begged, "Don't run away, <i>please</i>. I'll be back."</p> + +<p>In the ship, Stryker's moon-face peered wryly at him from the main +control screen.</p> + +<p>"Drew another blank," it said. "You were right after all, Arthur—the +fourth dome was empty. Gib and I are coming in now. We can't risk +staying out longer if we're going to be on hand when the curtain rises +on our little mystery."</p> + +<p>"Mystery?" Farrell echoed blankly. Earlier discussions came back slowly, +posing a forgotten problem so ridiculous that he laughed. "We were wrong +about all that. It's wonderful here."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Stryker's face on the screen went long with astonishment. "Arthur, have +you lost your mind? <i>What's wrong there?</i>"</p> + +<p>"Nothing is wrong," Farrell said. "It's <i>right</i>." Memory prodded him +again, disturbingly. "Wait—I remember now what it was we came here for. +But we're not going through with it."</p> + +<p>He thought of the festival to come, of the young men and girls running +lithe in the dusk, splashing in the lake and calling joyously to each +other across the pale sands. The joyous innocence of their play brought +an appalling realization of what would happen if the fat outsider on the +screen should have his way:</p> + +<p>The quiet paradise would be shattered and refashioned in smoky facsimile +of Earth, the happy people herded together and set to work in dusty +fields and whirring factories, multiplying tensions and frustrations as +they multiplied their numbers.</p> + +<p>For what? For whom?</p> + +<p>"You've got no right to go back and report all this," Farrell said +plaintively. "You'd ruin everything."</p> + +<p>The alternative came to him and with it resolution. "But you won't go +back. I'll see to that."</p> + +<p>He left the screen and turned on the control panel with fingers that +remembered from long habit the settings required. Stryker's voice +bellowed frantically after him, unheeded, while he fed into the ship's +autopilot a command that would send her plunging skyward bare minutes +later.</p> + +<p>Then, ignoring the waiting mechanical's passive stare, he went outside.</p> + +<p>The valley beckoned. The elfin laughter of the people by the lake +touched a fey, responsive chord in him that blurred his eyes with +ecstatic tears and sent him running down the slope, the Falakian girl +keeping pace beside him.</p> + +<p>Before he reached the lake, he had dismissed from his mind the ship and +the men who had brought it there.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>But they would not let him forget. The little gray jointed one followed +him through the dancing and the laughter and cornered him finally +against the sheer cliffside. With the chase over, it held him there, +waiting with metal patience in the growing dusk.</p> + +<p>The audicom box slung over its shoulder boomed out in Gibson's voice, +the sound a noisy desecration of the scented quiet.</p> + +<p>"Don't let him get away, Xav," it said. "We're going to try for the ship +now."</p> + +<p>The light dimmed, the soft shadows deepened. The two great-winged moths +floated nearer, humming gently, their eyes glowing luminous and intent +in the near-darkness. Mist currents from their approach brushed +Farrell's face, and he held out his arms in an ecstasy of anticipation +that was a consummation of all human longing.</p> + +<p>"<i>Now</i>," he whispered.</p> + +<p>The moths dipped nearer.</p> + +<p>The mechanical sent out a searing beam of orange light that tore the +gloom, blinding him briefly. The humming ceased; when he could see +again, the moths lay scorched and blackened at his feet. Their dead eyes +looked up at him dully, charred and empty; their bright gauzy wings +smoked in ruins of ugly, whiplike ribs.</p> + +<p>He flinched when the girl touched his shoulder, pointing. A moth dipped +toward them out of the mists, eyes glowing like round emerald lanterns. +Another followed.</p> + +<p>The mechanical flicked out its orange beam and cut them down.</p> + +<p>A roar like sustained thunder rose across the valley, shaking the ground +underfoot. A column of white-hot fire tore the night.</p> + +<p>"The ship," Farrell said aloud, remembering.</p> + +<p>He had a briefly troubled vision of the sleek metal shell lancing up +toward a black void of space powdered with cold star-points whose names +he had forgotten, marooning them all in Paradise.</p> + +<p>The audicom boomed in Gibson's voice, though oddly shaken and strained. +"Made it. Is he still safe, Xav?"</p> + +<p>"Safe," the mechanical answered tersely. "The natives, too, so far."</p> + +<p>"No thanks to <i>him</i>," Gibson said. "If you hadn't canceled the blastoff +order he fed into the autopilot...." But after a moment of ragged +silence: "No, that's hardly fair. Those damned moths beat down Lee's +resistance in the few minutes it took us to reach the ship, and nearly +got me as well. Arthur was exposed to their influence from the moment +they started coming out."</p> + +<p>Stryker's voice cut in, sounding more shaken than Gibson's. "Stand fast +down there. I'm setting off the first flare now."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>A silent explosion of light, searing and unendurable, blasted the night. +Farrell cried out and shielded his eyes with his hands, his ecstasy of +anticipation draining out of him like heady wine from a broken urn. Full +memory returned numbingly.</p> + +<p>When he opened his eyes again, the Falakian girl had run away. Under the +merciless glare of light, the valley was as he had first seen it—a +nauseous charnel place of bogs and brambles and mudflats littered with +yellowed bones.</p> + +<p>In the near distance, a haggard mob of natives cowered like gaping, +witless caricatures of humanity, faces turned from the descending blaze +of the parachute flare. There was no more music or laughter. The great +moths fluttered in silent frenzy, stunned by the flood of light.</p> + +<p>"<i>So that's it</i>," Farrell thought dully. "<i>They come out with the winter +darkness to breed and lay their eggs, and they hold over men the same +sort of compulsion that Terran wasps hold over their host tarantulas. +But they're nocturnal. They lose their control in the light.</i>"</p> + +<p>Incredulously, he recalled the expectant euphoria that had blinded him, +and he wondered sickly: "<i>Is that what the spider feels while it watches +its grave being dug?</i>"</p> + +<p>A second flare bloomed far up in the fog, outlining the criss-cross +network of bridging in stark, alien clarity. A smooth minnow-shape +dipped past and below it, weaving skilfully through the maze. The +mechanical's voice box spoke again.</p> + +<p>"Give us a guide beam, Xav. We're bringing the <i>Marco</i> down."</p> + +<p>The ship settled a dozen yards away, its port open. Farrell, with Xavier +at his heels, went inside hastily, not looking back.</p> + +<p>Gibson crouched motionless over his control panel, too intent on his +readings to look up. Beside him, Stryker said urgently: "Hang on. We've +got to get up and set another flare, quickly."</p> + +<p>The ship surged upward.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Hours later, they watched the last of the flares glare below in a +steaming geyser of mud and scum. The ship hovered motionless, its only +sound a busy droning from the engine room where her mass-synthesizer +discharged a deadly cloud of insecticide into the crater.</p> + +<p>"There'll be some nasty coughing among the natives for a few days after +this," Gibson said. "But it's better than being food for larvae.... +Reorientation will pull them out of that pesthole in a couple of months, +and another decade will see them raising cattle and wheat again outside. +The young adapt fast."</p> + +<p>"The young, yes," Stryker agreed uncomfortably. "Personally, I'm getting +too old and fat for this business."</p> + +<p>He shuddered, his paunch quaking. Farrell guessed that he was thinking +of what would have happened to them if Gibson had been as susceptible as +they to the overpowering fascination of the moths. A few more chrysalids +to open in the spring, an extra litter of bones to puzzle the next +Reclamations crew....</p> + +<p>"That should do it," Gibson said. He shut off the flow of insecticide +and the mass-converter grew silent in the engine room below. "Exit +another Hymenop experiment in bastard synecology."</p> + +<p>"I can understand how they might find, or breed, a nocturnal moth with +breeding-season control over human beings," Farrell said. "And how +they'd balance the relationship to a time-cycle that kept the host +species alive, yet never let it reach maturity. But what sort of +principle would give an instinctive species compulsive control over an +intelligent one, Gib? And what did the Bees get out of the arrangement +in the first place?"</p> + +<p>Gibson shrugged. "We'll understand the principle when—or if—we learn +how the wasp holds its spider helpless. Until then, we can only guess. +As for identifying the motive that prompted the Hymenops to set up such +a balance, I doubt that we ever will. Could a termite understand why men +build theaters?"</p> + +<p>"There's a possible parallel in that," Stryker suggested. "Maybe this +was the Hymenop idea of entertainment. They might have built the bridge +as balconies, where they could see the show."</p> + +<p>"It could have been a business venture," Farrell suggested. "Maybe they +raised the moth larvae or pupae for the same reason we raise poultry. A +sort of insectile chicken ranch."</p> + +<p>"Or a kennel," Gibson said dryly. "Maybe they bred moths for pets, as we +breed dogs."</p> + +<p>Farrell grimaced sickly, revolted by the thought. "A pet farm? God, what +a diet to feed them!"</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Xavier came up from the galley, carrying a tray with three steaming +coffee-bulbs. Farrell, still pondering the problem of balance between +dominant and dominated species, found himself wondering for the +thousandth time what went on in the alert positronic brain behind the +mechanical's featureless face.</p> + +<p>"What do you think, Xav?" he demanded. "What sort of motive would you +say prompted the Hymenops to set up such a balance?"</p> + +<p>"<i>Evaluation of alien motivations, conversely</i>," the mechanical said, +finishing the Reclamations Handbook quotation which Stryker had begun +much earlier, "<i>is essentially impossible because there can be no common +ground of comprehension</i>."</p> + +<p>It centered the tray neatly on the charting table and stood back in +polite but unmenial deference while they sucked at their coffee-bulbs.</p> + +<p>"A greater mystery to me," Xavier went on, "is the congenital +restlessness that drives men from their own comfortable worlds to such +dangers as you have met with here. How can I understand the motivations +of an alien people? I do not even understand those of the race that +built me."</p> + +<p>The three men looked at each other blankly, disconcerted by the ancient +problem so unexpectedly posed.</p> + +<p>It was Stryker who sheepishly answered it.</p> + +<p>"That's nothing for you to worry about, Xav," he said wryly. "Neither do +we."</p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Pet Farm, by Roger Dee + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PET FARM *** + +***** This file should be named 32344-h.htm or 32344-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/2/3/4/32344/ + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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