“You’ve just been here a year,” Muller reminded him. “I had two the year before you came. They both came from, the same place—the same place this one came from.”
“Ziggurat Mountain?”
“Yeah,” Muller said. “An enclave shut up in the mountains with no way out and a population of about seven and a half thousand. It used to be six thousand—it’s been going up the last ten years.”
Estanzio thought about that for a while. Idly, he turned the handle of his coffee cup one way, then the other. “Just the sort of place we could expect it,” he said finally.
Muller nodded, smiling. “Now tell me why.”
“Well, it’s a small population in a limited area—isolated —-and they’re under extreme selection pressure. It’s the sort of situation that’s almost sure to show an evolutionary trend.”
“You got that out of Houterman’s book,” Muller said.
Estanzio flushed. “Sure. But he’s right, isn’t he?”
Muller shrugged. “It’s the same basic principle,” he agreed. “But he wasn’t talking about the setup here. He was talking about evolution by genetic drift—where the genes already exist. That’s not what’s happening here.”
“Are you sure?” Estanzio asked hesitantly.
“Yeah,” Muller stated. “We’ve had this station here ever since the planet switched from Alpha to Beta—that’s close to a thousand years. We’ve been testing Floppers all that time. If the genes had been around back then, they’d’ve shown up in the first couple of centuries. They didn’t. The first flopper that showed up even halfway intelligent—don’t scowl like that, I’ve checked the records—was just forty years ago. And guess where he came from.”
“Ziggurat Mountain?” Estanzio guessed.
Muller rapped a fist on the table. “Right,” he said through his teeth. “It’s a mutation. It’s got to be. And it happened right there in the enclave.”
Estanzio was silent a moment. “Why did you kill it?” he asked.
“Same reason I killed the other two,” Muller said. “I want a look at its brain. The first two—I thought they were flukes. Now I don’t think so—and a look at this one’s brain cells will prove it.”
“But wasn’t that against the rules?” Estanzio wondered. “I mean, a flopper showing exceptional characteristics----”
Muller scratched his satanic beard. “So it was against the rules,” he said contemptuously. “I had to find out, and that’s the only way.”
Abruptly, then, he changed the subject—or seemed to. “You go back with the supply ship, don’t you?”
It wasn’t really much of a question. Only a very unusual scientist-candidate stayed more than one year. Estanzio nodded.
Muller smiled, satisfied. “O.K.,” he said. “When you get back, you can talk about this all you want. But while you’re still here... it didn’t happen. None of it. Understand?”
“I... I think so,” Estanzio said slowly. “But... why?”
“Because they’re getting smart,” Muller told him. “If we don’t do something, they’ll all get smart—smarter than we are. And they’re vicious—you’ve seen what the wild ones are like. Well, we can’t let it happen. That’s why we’ve had this station here all these years—to watch ‘em, because someone way back then figured this might happen. So we can stop ‘em if it does. But there’s just enough softheads around here that want it to happen. We don’t want them finding out—or anybody else.”
“Oh,” Estanzio said. He frowned helplessly. “But what can we do? How can we stop them?”
“Don’t ask,” Muller chuckled. “I might tell you.”
“Well, I’d like to know,” Estanzio said.
Muller leaned his weight on the table. He tapped the hard surface confidentially. “You heard who’s coming in the supply ship this time?”
Estanzio paused, trying to remember. “Well, there’s Blackett, and Holman, and...”
Muller waved a hand. “I don’t mean personnel. I mean just for a look around.”
“Hitchcock?” Estanzio wondered incredulously. “But he’s ... He’d be on their side. He always is.”
“He might be,” Muller admitted, “if he knew what he was doing. Most of the time, he just meddles. That’s what he’s going to do here.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. I’m sure,” Muller said, smiling. “I’m going to help him.” He laughed.
* * * *
“I was horrified, gentlemen. Horrified.”
That, Adam Hitchcock decided, was the thing to say about Xi Scorpii when he got back to Earth. That was what he would tell his Society for Humane Practices, to signal the beginning of a new crusade.
The Xi Scorpii Foundation would protest, of course. They would say he was misrepresenting the facts. But that didn’t worry him. Men always said that when he exposed their iniquities, and it never made the slightest difference. The public always recognized the truth.
Hitchcock made his decision as soon as he arrived at Xi Scorpii—while he was still descending the stairway scaffold that huddled close up against the Wayfarer’s flank. His mood was surly—it had been a bad trip out. The Wayfarer was a cargo ship, with only minimal provision for passengers; he had been obliged to share his cabin with a young scientist-candidate whose single-minded enthusiasm for the mutational aspects of genetic chemistry left him with a very unflattering picture of the scientific mind.
Carrying a piece of luggage in each hand, Hitchcock trudged down the stairs. It was a long way down, and the scaffold felt rickety. It trembled and creaked in the wind.
Any civilized place would have had an elevator.
The wind was cold. It howled around him. It chilled his throat. It penetrated through the thin overcoat he wore—a coat which was all he’d have needed on any civilized planet. His ash-gray hair was tangled. His ears tingled painfully. His jowls were numb. His head ached and his nostrils watered. It was a dreadful planet.
He paused on the stairway and set down his bags. He tried to draw his collar, tight. It was no use—the cold air continued to ooze through. Grimly, he stared down again. The camera looped over his shoulder bumped his side.
The landing field toward which he descended would not have done justice to a survey camp. It was nothing but a leveled-off rock plain without pavement, no larger than a city block. Various atmosphere craft crowded the edge of the field on the side nearest the outpost’s black dome. On the other side, a cold sea spread all the way to the edge of the sky. Sluggish, floe-choked waves smashed on the rocks, building castles of ice with their spray.
Critically, Hitchcock glanced toward the bright sun. It burned in a blue, clear sky, but it gave no warmth. Nor was the system’s other star more than a fleck of light down close to the ice-dappled sea.
Definitely, this planet wasn’t fit for anything to live on —neither man nor any other creature.
Already, he saw as he continued his descent, the ship was disgorging its cargo. Its hoist settled massive crates and bundles of supplies on sledges which were dragged toward the dome by harnessed teams of shaggy, dirty-white, short-legged creatures about the size of very large dogs. At rest, while waiting for their sleds to be loaded, they squatted on their hind legs, their apparently boneless arms curled up almost double and their mittenlike paws, pressed flat against their bodies. No one was directing them. They seemed to know what to do.
Halfway down the scaffold, Hitchcock stopped again. He turned to the man behind him and pointed at the laboring creatures. “Are those the natives?” he asked. He had to shout to be heard above the howl of the wind.
The man—another of those eager young scientist-candidates—didn’t seem to understand the question. “The Floppers?” he wondered uncertainly, then nodded.
Hitchcock unlimbered his camera and put the scene on tape. It was an outrage! The poor things were slaves!
When he reached the bottom, a man in a thick, hooded garment was waiting beside a sled with removable benches set on it.
Its eight-flopper team squatted stoically, cringing from the frigid wind. The man reached out to take Hitchcock’s luggage. “Climb aboard,” he invited loudly. “We’ll be heading for the dome in a minute, as soon as the rest of you get down.”
Hitchcock didn’t let go of his bags. He glanced at the harnessed Floppers. “Thank you,” he said stiffly—and his teeth rattled with the cold. “I prefer to walk.”
The man shrugged, but he looked concerned. “It’s a long way to hike in this wind,” he advised, nodding toward the dome a half mile away. “The first thing you know, you’ve took a deep breath, and then you’ve got frost in your lungs. Better ride along with the rest of us peasants.”
“If they have to pull me, I will not ride,” Hitchcock insisted staunchly.
“Who—the floppers?” the man wondered incredulously. “They grew up in this weather. They eat it for breakfast.”
“They didn’t grow up to be slaves,” Hitchcock retorted.
The man looked at him queerly. “You must be this Hitchcock we heard about,” he said. “Listen, mister—somewhere you’ve got the idea these floppers are people. They’re not. They’re just smart animals.”
“No creature in the universe was ever born to be a slave,” Hitchcock intoned.
The man made an exasperated noise. “Just take my word for it. If you walk, you’ll wish you hadn’t. Now climb aboard. We’re ready to move.”
He jerked an imperative thumb at the sled. Hitchcock eyed him for a long, stubborn moment.
Then the cold and the wind persuaded him. He went to the rear of the sled and put his baggage in the rack, all the time stamping his feet to put warmth in them. His hands were numb and blue. Shivering, he told himself the creatures could endure the climate better than himself, and that they would drag the sled whether he rode it or not. He would not add much to their burden.
But he hadn’t forgotten his mission. He raised his camera and taped the scene—first the sled and its load of huddled, windlashed passengers—then swung the lens forward to the Floppers waiting mutely in their harnesses. They had a sad, downtrodden look. Hitchcock let his camera dwell on them.
Unfortunately, they were ugly as sin.
He demanded quarters of his own, and got them. Coldly, he rejected the suggestion that a flopper could carry his luggage. Lordly, austere, he strode along the corridor to his room.
When he got there, a flopper was inside. With single-minded concentration, it went on sweeping while Hitchcock laid his bags on the bed. For all the sign it gave, it might not have noticed his entrance.
It would have been as tall as Hitchcock, but its legs were too short. Its pelt was silvery gray. Its head was revolting— a slab-shaped, almost neckless thing set on top of a shoulderless body. The big, goggling eyes were placed far apart, leaving space for the big, lipless mandible-jaws in. between them. On top, the single ear stood up like the peak of a much-too-small cowl.
The rest of the creature was equally hideous—the flexible arms as seemingly boneless as a fire hose, and the flat, big, floppy feet. It was marsupial, with a pendulous pouch that pulsed spasmodically, as if something alive was inside. But the creature was also unquestionably—almost indecently— masculine. It had a musky smell. Hitchcock stared at it with sick distaste.
It continued to work the broom with brainless absorption. It swept around Hitchcock’s feet as if he was a piece of furniture.
“Stop that!” Hitchcock commanded offendedly.
The flopper stopped. Looking up at him dumbly, it rolled its bulbous brown eyes.
“Get out of here!” Hitchcock told it.
The flopper just looked at him, dumb and trembling. Tentatively, it started sweeping again.
“No! Get out!” Hitchcock yelled.
Frantically, the flopper went on sweeping. It tried to work too fast. The broom flew out of its flipperlike hands and whacked Hitchcock’s knee. Hitchcock yowled with pain and rage.
The creature fled, bounding out the door on all fours. Hitchcock grabbed the broom and chased it as far as the hall, until it disappeared around a comer.
Slamming the door, Hitchcock went back and sat on the bed. He rolled down his hose to inspect his whacked knee. It was an angry red, but not damaged.
The stupid brute!
Someone knocked on the door. Hitchcock pulled up the hose and refastened the top to his undershorts. Smoothing down his tunic skirt, he said, “You may enter.”
A slovenly dressed man came in—ankle socks, ill-fitting kilt, and turtleneck. He had a full, untrimmed, black beard. “What’s the ruckus in here?” he asked.
“Ruckus?” Hitchcock repeated incredulously. “Here?”
“Yeah. Here,” the man insisted. “One of my cleaning boys skedaddled out of this hallway and dove in his hutch like a carload of hell was looking for him. He’d cleaned up this far, so he must’ve been here.” He glanced down at his feet. “That’s his broom.” He picked it up.
“I told it to leave,” Hitchcock said. “I refuse to be a party to its slavery.”
“Exactly how did you say it?” the man asked intently.
“I asked it please to get out of here,” Hitchcock stated primly. “I must say the creature was unpardonably stupid. I had to repeat it twice.”
The bearded man looked skeptical, but didn’t challenge the assertion. “That’s not in his vocabulary,” he told Hitchcock. “You’re new here, so I guess it isn’t your fault. But after this, if you want a Flopper to scram, say, ‘That’s all,’ and he’ll get right out. They’re real obedient if you’re proper with ‘em. But you got to give ‘em the right commands.”
“I’ll keep my own room clean,” Hitchcock announced frigidly. “Keep your slaves out of here.”
“If you want ‘em to stay out, bolt the door,” the bearded man advised. “It’ll worry the boy to have his routine monkeyed with, but it’s better than to scuttle his training.”
“Keep them away from me,” Hitchcock repeated.
The man looked him up and down. His eyes were steady; “Don’t expect ‘em to understand everything you say,” he said finally. “They don’t.”
He backed out of the room and shut the door.
Mindful of his banged knee, still seething, Hitchcock rummaged in his bags for the liniment tube he always carried. He most certainly would keep his door locked. The mere thought of that mindless creature pawing his possessions made him tremble with rage.
It was terrible, the indignities a man of good will was forced to endure!
* * * *
2
“I hope your room is satisfactory,” Ben Reese said as they began Hitchcock’s tour of the outpost. He was a plump man, Ben Reese—almost forty, with a round face and an almost bald scalp. Hitchcock worried him.
“Adequate,” Hitchcock replied. He had a nerve-rattling way of walking—never looking where they went. Constantly, he twisted his head in one direction, then another. “Spartan, but adequate.”
“We don’t have many luxuries here,” Reese admitted. “Everything we have has to come in the supply ship.”
“Um-m-m,” Hitchcock muttered. “Tell me, Mr. Reese— what is it like to be the undisputed monarch of an entire solar system?”
Shocked speechless, Reese stopped in his tracks and. stared at the man. “I don’t think you understand,” he said finally. Hitchcock walked loftily on. Reese had to run to catch up. “All I do is... is co-ordinate our research work here,” he explained, breathless. “And ... and I estimate our supply needs. The ship only comes once a year—someone has to do it.”
But Hitchcock’s attention was on something else. Maybe he was deaf—he didn’t seem to have heard.
They followed the dome’s main hall. Their buskinned feet whispered softly on the tiles. Only a few people passed them. In the dim light, the near silence, it was like the cellars under a castle. Floppers intent on their tasks scurried past like industrious gnomes.
At the hall’s end, where it split into two out-curving corridors, Rees
e paused. “Would you rather see the anatomy lab first?” he asked. “Or the biochemical department?”
Hitchcock didn’t reply. Not far up one of the corridors, a flopper was belaboring the floor with a mop. A sloppy bucket sloshed by its feet. With an almost expressionless look of glee, Hitchcock turned his camera on it.
The flopper worked on, oblivious of them. After a long moment, Hitchcock stopped his camera and turned. “You said something?” he inquired.
“I asked what you wanted to see first,” Reese said.
Hitchcock glanced down at him as if he were a bug. “It makes absolutely no difference,” he assured Reese. “Before I am done here, I will expect to have seen everything.”
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