The Native Soil
Page 5
with waders only half strapped on as the line of lowbuildings began shaking and sinking into the morass. From the directionof Number Six dredge another crew was heading for the Tower. But theTower was rapidly growing shorter as the buoys that sustained it brokeloose with ear-shattering crashes.
Kielland caught Sparks by the shoulder, shouting to be heard above theracket. "The transport--did you get it?"
"I--I think so."
"They're sending us a ferry?"
"It should be on its way."
Simpson sloshed up, his face heavy with dismay. "The dredges! They'vecut loose the dredges."
"Bother the dredges. Get your men collected and into the shelters. We'llhave a ship here any minute."
"But what's happening?"
"We're leaving--if we can make it before these carefree, happy-go-luckykids here sink us in the mud, dredges, Control Tower and all."
Out of the gloom above there was a roar and a streak of murky yellow asthe landing craft eased down through the haze. Only the top of ControlTower was out of the mud now. The Administration shack gave a lurch,sagging, as a dozen indistinct gray forms pulled and tugged at thesupporting structure beneath it. Already a circle of natives wasconverging on the Earthmen as they gathered near the landing platformshelters.
"They're cutting loose the landing platform!" somebody wailed. One ofthe lines broke with a resounding snap, and the platform lurched. Then adozen men dived through the mud to pull away the slippery, writhingnatives as they worked to cut through the remaining guys. Moments laterthe landing craft was directly overhead and men and natives alikescattered as she sank down.
The platform splintered and jolted under her weight, began skidding,then held firm to the two guy ropes remaining. A horde of gray creatureshurled themselves on those lines as a hatchway opened above and a ladderdropped down. The men scurried up the ropes just as the plastic dome ofthe Control Tower sank with a gurgle.
Kielland and Simpson paused at the bottom of the ladder, blinking at thescene of devastation around them.
"Stupid, you say," said Kielland heavily. "Better get up there, or we'llgo where Control Tower went."
"But--everything--gone!"
"Wrong again. Everything saved." Kielland urged the administrator up theladder and sighed with relief as the hatch clanged shut. The jetsbloomed and sprayed boiling mud far and wide as the landing craft liftedsoggily out of the mire and roared for the clouds above.
Kielland wiped sweat from his forehead and sank back on his cot with ashudder. "_We_ should be so stupid," he said.
"I must admit," he said later to a weary and mystified Simpson, "that Ididn't expect them to move so fast. But when you've decided in your mindthat somebody's really pretty stupid, it's hard to adjust to the ideathat maybe he _isn't_, all of a sudden. We should have been much moresuspicious of Dr. Tarnier's tests. It's true they weren't designed forVenusians, but they were designed to assess intelligence, andintelligence isn't a quality that's influenced by environment orspecies. It's either there or it isn't, and the good Doctor told usunequivocally that it was there."
"But their behavior."
"Even that should have tipped us off. There is a very fine line dividingincredible stupidity and incredible _stubbornness_. It's often a toughdifferential to make. I didn't spot it until I found them wolfing downthe tetracycline capsules in my samples case. Then I began to see theimplications. Those Mud-pups were stubbornly and tenaciously determinedto drive the Piper Venusian Installation off Venus permanently, by fairmeans or foul. They didn't care how it got off--they just wanted itoff."
"But why? We weren't hurting them. There's plenty of mud on Venus."
"Ah--but not so much of the blue-gray stuff we were after, perhaps.Suppose a space ship settled down in a wheatfield in Kansas along aboutharvest time and started loading wheat into the hold? I suppose thefarmer wouldn't mind too much. After all, there's plenty of vegetationon Earth--"
"They're _growing_ the stuff?"
"For all they're worth," said Kielland. "Lord knows what sort ofmetabolism uses tetracycline for food--but they are growing mud thatyields an incredibly rich concentration of antibiotic ... their nativefood. They grow it, harvest it, live on it. Even the way they shakewhenever they come out of the mud is a giveaway--what better way toseed their crop far and wide? We were mining away their staff of life,my friend. You really couldn't blame them for objecting."
"Well, if they think they can drive us off that way, they're going tohave to get that brilliant intelligence of theirs into action," Simpsonsaid ominously. "We'll bring enough equipment down there to mine themout of house and home."
"Why?" said Kielland. "After all, they're mining it themselves a lotmore efficiently than we could ever do it. And with Piper warehousesback on Earth full of old, useless antibiotics that they can't sell forpeanuts? No, I don't think we'll mine anything when a simple tradearrangement will do just as well." He sank back in his cot, staringdreamily through the port as the huge orbital transport loomed largeahead of them. He found his throat spray and dosed himself liberally inpreparation for his return to civilization. "Of course, the natives aregoing to be wondering what kind of idiots they're dealing with to sellthem pure refined extract of Venusian beefsteak in return for raw chunksof unrefined native soil. But I think we can afford to just let themwonder for a while."
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from "Tiger by the Tail and Other Science Fiction Stories by Alan E. Nourse" and was first published in _Fantastic Universe_ July 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.