Have you ever tried to pick up something and found out it either
weighed considerably more, or was fastened to the floor? That's what
happened to me. With Martian gravity what it is, I figured I'd have a
weight of possibly one earth pound of lift. Instead, I nearly broke my
back--and the zloor still didn't budge.
I put more pressure to bear, all my strength--and the zloor
complacently went on eating.
Hands on hips, I stood above the rabbit-like animal and stared at it.
Finally, I muttered, "More than one way to bring home a zloor," and,
taking my gun by the barrel, I swung it viciously down at the gentle
looking little animal--feeling like a heel as I did it.
I might have saved my feelings, because two seconds later I was gazing
wide-eyed at the shattered stock of my rifle and the zloor was still
eating away at the tree.
I tried just one more experiment before I called it a day. I put the
rifle barrel under him and tried to pry him off the ground. The zloor
still ignored me, but the steel barrel bent under the pressure. The
animal hadn't budged.
* * * * *
Without knocking, I walked back into Mike Holiday's room. He was lying
stretched out on the bed, his hands behind his head, staring at the
ceiling.
He didn't need to look at me. He said, "Nap, you are now a full-fledged
member of the zloor club."
"What does one of those things weigh?" I snapped.
"Hey, red-head," he grunted, "don't take it out on me, I didn't invent
them. Far as I know, nobody's ever weighed one, but it's been estimated
that they go about five tons here on Mars. Six times that on earth."
"That's insane!"
"Sure is. That's why the government wants one so badly. Just isn't
natural for such an animal to develop in the solar system."
"Or anywhere else!"
He got up on one elbow and grinned over at me. "The theory is that it's
a life form from some planet belonging to a white dwarf star. Some time
ago a guy named Adams at the Mount Wilson observatory, back on Earth,
estimated that the density of some of the white dwarfs was two thousand
times greater than platinum. I'm not much up on it myself."