A stream of men were floundering out of Administration shack, plowing
through the mud with waders only half strapped on as the line of low
buildings began shaking and sinking into the morass. From the direction
of Number Six dredge another crew was heading for the Tower. But the
Tower was rapidly growing shorter as the buoys that sustained it broke
loose with ear-shattering crashes.
Kielland caught Sparks by the shoulder, shouting to be heard above the
racket. "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've
cut loose the dredges."
"Bother the dredges. Get your men collected and into the shelters. We'll
have a ship here any minute."
"But what's happening?"
"We're leaving--if we can make it before these carefree, happy-go-lucky
kids 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 as
the landing craft eased down through the haze. Only the top of Control
Tower was out of the mud now. The Administration shack gave a lurch,
sagging, as a dozen indistinct gray forms pulled and tugged at the
supporting structure beneath it. Already a circle of natives was
converging on the Earthmen as they gathered near the landing platform
shelters.
"They're cutting loose the landing platform!" somebody wailed. One of
the lines broke with a resounding snap, and the platform lurched. Then a
dozen men dived through the mud to pull away the slippery, writhing
natives as they worked to cut through the remaining guys. Moments later
the landing craft was directly overhead and men and natives alike
scattered 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 creatures
hurled themselves on those lines as a hatchway opened above and a ladder
dropped down. The men scurried up the ropes just as the plastic dome of
the Control Tower sank with a gurgle.
Kielland and Simpson paused at the bottom of the ladder, blinking at the
scene of devastation around them.
"Stupid, you say," said Kielland heavily. "Better get up there, or we'll
go where Control Tower went."
"But--everything--gone!"
"Wrong again. Everything saved." Kielland urged the administrator up the
ladder and sighed with relief as the hatch clanged shut. The jets
bloomed and sprayed boiling mud far and wide as the landing craft lifted
soggily out of the mire and roared for the clouds above.
Kielland wiped sweat from his forehead and sank back on his cot with a
shudder. "_We_ should be so stupid," he said.
"I must admit," he said later to a weary and mystified Simpson, "that I
didn't expect them to move so fast. But when you've decided in your mind
that somebody's really pretty stupid, it's hard to adjust to the idea
that maybe he _isn't_, all of a sudden. We should have been much more
suspicious of Dr. Tarnier's tests. It's true they weren't designed for
Venusians, but they were designed to assess intelligence, and
intelligence isn't a quality that's influenced by environment or
species. It's either there or it isn't, and the good Doctor told us
unequivocally that it was there."
"But their behavior."
"Even that should have tipped us off. There is a very fine line dividing
incredible stupidity and incredible _stubbornness_. It's often a tough
differential to make. I didn't spot it until I found them wolfing down
the tetracycline capsules in my samples case. Then I began to see the
implications. Those Mud-pups were stubbornly and tenaciously determined
to drive the Piper Venusian Installation off Venus permanently, by fair
means or foul. They didn't care how it got off--they just wanted it
off."
"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 about
harvest time and started loading wheat into the hold? I suppose the
farmer wouldn't mind too much. After all, there's plenty of vegetation
on Earth--"
"They're _growing_ the stuff?"
"For all they're worth," said Kielland. "Lord knows what sort of
metabolism uses tetracycline for food--but they are growing mud that
yields an incredibly rich concentration of antibiotic ... their native
food. They grow it, harvest it, live on it. Even the way they shake
whenever they come out of the mud is a giveaway--what better way to
seed 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 to
have to get that brilliant intelligence of theirs into action," Simpson
said ominously. "We'll bring enough equipment down there to mine them
out of house and home."
"Why?" said Kielland. "After all, they're mining it themselves a lot
more efficiently than we could ever do it. And with Piper warehouses
back on Earth full of old, useless antibiotics that they can't sell for
peanuts? No, I don't think we'll mine anything when a simple trade
arrangement will do just as well." He sank back in his cot, staring
dreamily through the port as the huge orbital transport loomed large
ahead of them. He found his throat spray and dosed himself liberally in
preparation for his return to civilization. "Of course, the natives are
going to be wondering what kind of idiots they're dealing with to sell
them pure refined extract of Venusian beefsteak in return for raw chunks
of unrefined native soil. But I think we can afford to just let them
wonder 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.