"Build another warehouse, two-foot-thick fused dirt floors, monolithic
construction. Transfer all perishables to it."
Marin nodded. That would do it. It would take time, of course, and
power, all they could draw out of the recently set up atomic
generator. All other construction would have to be suspended. No
wonder Hafner was disturbed.
"Why not build more cats?" Marin suggested.
The executive smiled nastily. "You weren't here when we opened the
doors. The warehouse was swarming with rats. How many robot cats would
we need--five, fifteen? I don't know. Anyway the engineer tells me we
have enough parts to build three more cats. The one lying there can't
be salvaged."
It didn't take an engineer to see that, thought Marin.
Hafner continued, "If we need more, we'll have to rob the computer in
the spaceship. I refuse to permit that."
Obviously he would. The spaceship was the only link with Earth until
the next expedition brought more colonists. No exec in his right mind
would permit the ship to be crippled.
But why had Hafner called him back? Merely to keep him informed of the
situation?
* * * * *
Hafner seemed to guess his thoughts. "At night we'll floodlight the
supplies we remove from the warehouse. We'll post a guard armed with
decharged rifles until we can move the food into the new warehouse.
That'll take about ten days. Meanwhile, our fast crops are ripening.
It's my guess the rats will turn to them for food. In order to protect
our future food supply, you'll have to activate your animals."
The biologist started. "But it's against regulations to loose any
animal on a planet until a complete investigation of the possible ill
effects is made."
"That takes ten or twenty years. This is an emergency and I'll be
responsible--in writing, if you want."
The biologist was effectively countermanded. Another rabbit-infested
Australia or the planet that the snails took over might be in the
making, but there was nothing he could do about it.
"I hardly think they'll be of any use against rats this size," he
protested.
"You've got hormones. Apply them." The executive turned and began
discussing construction with the engineer.
* * * * *
Marin had the dead rats gathered up and placed in the freezer for
further study.
After that, he retired to the laboratory and worked out a course of
treatment for the domesticated animals that the colonists had brought
with them. He gave them the first injections and watched them
carefully until they were safely through the initial shock phase of
growth. As soon as he saw they were going to survive, he bred them.
Next he turned to the rats. Of note was the wide variation in size.
Internally, the same thing was true. They had the usual organs, but
the proportions of each varied greatly, more than is normal. Nor were
their teeth uniform. Some carried huge fangs set in delicate jaws;
others had tiny teeth that didn't match the massive bone structure. As
a species, they were the most scrambled the biologist had ever
encountered.
He turned the microscope on their tissues and tabulated the results.
There was less difference here between individual specimens, but it
was enough to set him pondering. The reproductive cells were
especially baffling.
Late in the day, he felt rather than heard the soundless whoosh of the
construction machinery. He looked out of the laboratory and saw smoke
rolling upward. As soon as the vegetation was charred, the smoke
ceased and heat waves danced into the sky.
They were building on a hill. The little creatures that crept and
crawled in the brush attacked in the most vulnerable spot, the food
supply. There was no brush, not a blade of grass, on the hill when the
colonists finished.
* * * * *
Terriers. In the past, they were the hunting dogs of the agricultural
era. What they lacked in size they made up in ferocity toward rodents.
They had earned their keep originally in granaries and fields, and,
for a brief time, they were doing it again on colonial worlds where
conditions were repeated.
The dogs the colonists brought had been terriers. They were still as
fast, still with the same anti-rodent disposition, but they were no
longer small. It had been a difficult job, yet Marin had done it well,
for the dogs had lost none of their skill and speed in growing to the
size of a great dane.
The rats moved in on the fields of fast crops. Fast crops were made to
order for a colonial world. They could be planted, grown, and
harvested in a matter of weeks. After four such plantings, the
fertility of the soil was destroyed, but that meant nothing in the
early years of a colonial planet, for land was plentiful.
The rat tide grew in the fast crops, and the dogs were loosed on the
rats. They ranged through the fields, hunting. A rush, a snap of their
jaws, the shake of a head, and the rat was tossed aside, its back
broken. The dogs went on to the next.
Until they could not see, the dogs prowled and slaughtered. At night
they came in bloody, most of it not their own, and exhausted. Marin
pumped them full of antibiotics, bandaged their wounds, fed them
through their veins, and shot them into sleep. In the morning he
awakened them with an injection of stimulant and sent them tingling
into battle.
It took the rats two days to learn they could not feed during the day.
Not so numerous, they came at night. They climbed on the vines and
nibbled the fruit. They gnawed growing grain and ravaged vegetables.
The next day the colonists set up lights. The dogs were with them,
discouraging the few rats who were still foolish enough to forage
while the sun was overhead.
An hour before dusk, Marin called the dogs in and gave them an
enforced rest. He brought them out of it after dark and took them to
the fields, staggering. The scent of rats revived them; they were as
eager as ever, if not quite so fast.
The rats came from the surrounding meadows, not singly, or in twos and
threes, as they had before; this time they came together. Squealing
and rustling the grass, they moved toward the fields. It was dark, and
though he could not see them, Marin could hear them. He ordered the
great lights turned on in the area of the fields.
The rats stopped under the glare, milling around uneasily. The dogs
quivered and whined. Marin held them back. The rats resumed their
march, and Marin released the dogs.
The dogs charged in to attack, but didn't dare brave the main mass.
They picked off the stragglers and forced the rats into a tighter
formation. After that the rats were virtually unassailable.
The colonists could have burned the bunched-up rats with the right
equipment, but they didn't have it and couldn't get it for years. Even
if they'd had it, the use of such equipment would endanger the crops,
which they had to save if they could. It was up to the dogs.
The rat formation came to the edge of the fields, and broke. They
could face a common enemy and remain united, but in the presence of
food, they forgot that unity and scattered--hunger was the great
divisor. The dogs leaped joyously in pursuit. They hunted down the
starved rodents, one by one, and killed them as they ate.
When daylight came, the rat menace had ended.
The next week the colonists harvested and processed the food for
storage and immediately planted another crop.
[Illustration]
Marin sat in the lab and tried to analyze the situation. The colony
was moving from crisis to crisis, all of them involving food. In
itself, each critical situation was minor, but lumped together they
could add up to failure. No matter how he looked at it, they just
didn't have the equipment they needed to colonize Glade.
The fault seemed to lie with Biological Survey; they hadn't reported
the presence of pests that were endangering the food supply.
Regardless of what the exec thought about them, Survey knew their
business. If they said there were no mice or rats on Glade, then there
hadn't been any--_when the survey was made_.
The question was: when did they come and how did they get here?
Marin sat and stared at the wall, turning over hypotheses in his mind,
discarding them when they failed to make sense.
His gaze shifted from the wall to the cage of the omnivores, the
squirrel-size forest creature. The most numerous animal on Glade, it
was a commonplace sight to the colonists.
And yet it was a remarkable animal, more than he had realized. Plain,
insignificant in appearance, it might be the most important of any
animal Man had encountered on the many worlds he had settled on. The
longer he watched, the more Marin became convinced of it.
He sat silent, observing the creature, not daring to move. He sat
until it was dark and the omnivore resumed its normal activity.
_Normal?_ The word didn't apply on Glade.
The interlude with the omnivore provided him with one answer. He
needed another one; he thought he knew what it was, but he had to have
more data, additional observations.
He set up his equipment carefully on the fringes of the settlement.
There and in no other place existed the information he wanted.
He spent time in the digger, checking his original investigations. It
added up to a complete picture.
When he was certain of his facts, he called on Hafner.
The executive was congenial; it was a reflection of the smoothness
with which the objectives of the colony were being achieved.
"Sit down," he said affably. "Smoke?"
The biologist sat down and took a cigarette.
"I thought you'd like to know where the mice came from," he began.