The Moralist

by Jack Taylor

  Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

  Transcriber's Note:

  This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction June 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

  The Moralist

  By JACK TAYLOR

  Illustrated by WEISS

  Aye, 'tis a difficult thing to be a lady on a far world--but who needs them there?

  * * * * *

  There are exceptions to almost every rule and Xenon was one of them.The rule in this particular case was the old cataloguers' adage thatcataloguing duty was never pleasant, often dangerous and always hard.Xenon is the fourth planet of one of the stars investigated some sevenor eight years ago by the battleship _Terra_ on her swing around theedge of the Black Hole.

  Unequipped for exploration, the _Terra_ hadn't bothered to land on theplanet, but instead had taken only the usual gravitational andatmosphere readings and then had continued on her long mapping patrol.She had slowed just long enough to send back her report on tight beamto Venus Relay Station and propose the name of Xenon, "the unknown."After all, a planet with point nine Earth gravity and almost twentyper cent oxygen in its atmosphere was well worth a name rather than anumber.

  About a year later, the preliminary exploration ship arrived and spentseveral weeks mapping and testing this, that and the other thing.Then she went home and wrote her report--and what a report it was! Thething read like a Chamber of Commerce bulletin that had been sponsoredby a subdivider. All it needed was a couple of ads offering somechoice business locations for sale and it would have been complete.

  The planet was perfect, the climate was perfect, the soil fertile.There were no natives or hostile life to bother a man. The forestswere wide, the plains were broad and the numerous rivers were not onlyfull of fish but also emptied into blue seas that were just as full offish as the rivers. That report was enough to make a man quit his joband go to Xenon to start a chicken ranch or grow oranges.

  * * * * *

  The bureau of Colonization acted with its usual speed. Three yearslater, a cataloguing group landed from the supply ship _Hunter_. Theduties of the groups are simple enough; they determine which of thefood crops known to Man can best adapt themselves to the conditionsfound on the particular planet under examination. They list the nativeflora and fauna, minerals and resources. They chart the weather andits cycles and, in general, try to determine if Man can exist thereand, if so, if the planet is worth the expense, trouble and danger ofcolonization.

  Most planets are not worth it, but Xenon was.

  And now the group had returned with its final report and itsrecommendations. The report? Xenon was perfect, just perfect. Therecommendations? Immediate colonization, but be careful who is sent sothat place isn't spoiled by a bunch of land-grabbing exploiters whomight not appreciate the place.

  They had been back nearly a week before Lee Spencer had time to cometo my place for the weekend. Due to a combination of my wife's cookingand a sedentary desk job with the Bureau, I was beginning to have abit of difficulty in bending over far enough to zip on my shoes in themornings, but Lee was still as lean and fit as he was the day heblasted off for Xenon nearly four years before.

  He had been given the full returned-hero treatment, complete withpress conferences, testimonial dinner, audience with theCoordinator--everything. He hadn't had a waking moment to himselfsince he landed, so I suppose that might have been one reason that herelaxed so completely in front of the library fire after dinner andtalked more than he perhaps should have. Or the generous slug of theold brandy my grandfather left me may have had something to do withit.

  At any rate, he was in an expansive mood that night after Martha hadfilled him with one of her always excellent dinners and I had nearlyfloated him in Grandfather's brandy.

  We had a lot of "do you remember" man talk to catch up on and afterenduring nearly two hours of conversation about people and happeningsof which she knew nothing, Martha gave up and headed for the stairs.

  "You two can talk all night if you want," she announced over hershoulder, "but I'm going to bed. Breakfast on the patio about nine orso, Lee."

  "I'll be there, Marty. Sleep tight."

  "Not as tight as you will, I'll bet," she grinned. "There's anotherjug in the kitchen if you think you may need it."

  * * * * *

  We heard her bedroom door hiss as it slid closed and sat for a momentlooking into the fire and listening to it whispering secrets toitself.

  "She's a pretty nice wife, Sam," he told me.

  "Thanks. I like her, too."

  "Not at all like Prunella."

  "Prunella?" I said. "I don't think--"

  "Well, that's what the boys at the station began calling her a coupleof days after she landed. Behind her back, of course."

  "I still don't know who--"

  "You know, the niece of that windbag in World Congress that youfeatherheads in the front office sent out to replace Pop Jensen whenhe fell out of that tree and had to be sent back to Earth forhospitalization."

  "Oh, _that_ one. Look, Lee, I didn't have anything to do with herselection. She was appointed by the Old Man himself. Understand therewas some kind of pressure on him from the top."

  "I forgive you, Sam, but I rather doubt if some of the other people ofthe group will for a while."

  "How come she didn't stay?" I asked. "Political pressure or not, Ican't imagine the supervisors sending out an incompetent replacement."

  "Incompetent?" he almost snorted. "Prunella was the most belligerentlycompetent female that it has ever been my misfortune to run across.Prunella was efficiency personified, make no mistake about that. Shewas--or is--a top-flight botanist and had led several expeditions hereon Earth, but she couldn't realize that Xenon wasn't Earth. She triedto live by the book as she had here, but in spite of the generalexcellence of the _Spaceman's Handbook_, her methods didn't work sowell."

  I primed him with another two fingers out of the bottle and sat backto listen.

  "Good brandy," he said. "I made some once on Xenon, but Prunella put ahalt to that in a hurry, just as she did a lot of other things. Thetrouble with her was that she was always insufferably right. Everyblasted time! And she was right again when she pointed out that if wewere to come under attack, the products of the little distillery mightimpair our efforts to defend ourselves. My still went under the ax."

  * * * * *

  He sighed and then went on. "She neglected to say what might attack usor where this enemy might come from, since men are the only animals toachieve space flight thus far and there was nothing on Xenon that washostile to us.

  "But I'm getting ahead of my story," he told his glass. "It probablyall started when she arrived. We had been looking forward to the day,but none of us more than Joe, our cook. Joe was that rare find, a manwho took pride in his work and worked with pride. Joe, I firmlybelieve, could barbecue a spaceman's boot so that it would taste likesteak. He considered Prunella and her arrival a fine opportunity toshow what he could do when he really wanted to.

  "For her first meal with us, Joe had prepared Prunella a feed fromevery edible native fruit, vegetable and meat that he could lay hishands on. It was the same stuff that we had been getting fat on fornearly two years, but did we eat any of his cooking that night? Not abite," he answered himself. "I thought she was going to toss a fitright there and then.

  "'Gentlemen,' she said, 'you know as well as I that consumption of anynativ
e product of a strange planet is expressly forbidden by the_Spaceman's Handbook of Survival_ until these products have beenthoroughly investigated and passed upon by the proper authorities.Therefore, we shall eat the synthetics that have been provided for usuntil these have been examined by the labs on Earth.'

  "She was right, of course," Lee went on. "Many poor devils have diedin agony because they were foolish enough to eat some luscious-lookingfruit before it had been checked. We tried to tell her that our labmonkeys and cats had eaten and liked everything on the table, as hadwe, but we still had to send samples to Earth. That was two yearsago and they still haven't handed back a report."

  He sighed again and this time didn't wait for me to pour for him.

  "So we ate