Binder1, page 18
I asked Bob which text he preferred. He didn't have any recollection of the variant title; didn’t recall the ;early reprint at all (take a look at a Silverberg bibliography and you’ll understand why that might be); and ;said whatever text I pleased was fine with him.
So what the hell: I used a 1971 Ballantine collection to avoid photocopying a thirty-year-old magazine.
The SF genre and the greater field of literature are fortunate that Robert Silverberg continues to write ;prolifically. Because of my tastes and present purposes, 1 am fortunate that he wrote so much and so well ;thirty years ago.
COLLECTING ;TEAM
Robert Silverberg
From fifty thousand miles up, the situation looked promising. It was a middle-sized, brown-and-green, inviting-looking planet, with no sign of cities or any other such complications. Just a pleasant sort of place, the very ;sort we were looking for to redeem what had been a ;pretty futile expedition.
I turned to Clyde Holdreth, who was staring reflectively at the thermocouple.
“Well? What do you think?”
“Looks fine to me. Temperature’s about seventy down there—nice and warm, and plenty of air. I think it’s ;worth a try.”
Lee Davison came strolling out from the storage hold, smelling of animals, as usual. He was holding one of the ;blue monkeys we pickled up on Alpheraz, and the little ;beast was crawling up his arm. “Have we found something, gentlemen?”
“We’ve found a planet,” I said. “How’s the storage space in the hold?”
“Don’t worry about that. We’ve got room for a whole ;zoofull more, before we get filled up. It hasn’t been a very fruitful trip.”
“No,” I agreed. “It hasn’t. Well? shall we go down and see what’s to be seen?”
“Might as well,” Holdreth said. “We can’t go back to Earth with just a couple of blue monkeys and some ;anteaters, you know.”
“I’m in favor of a landing too,” said Davison. “You?”
I nodded. “I’ll set up the charts, and you get your animals comfortable for deceleration.”
Davison disappeared back into the storage hold, while Holdreth scribbled furiously in the logbook, writing ;down the coordinates of the planet below, its general ;description, and so forth. Aside from being a collecting ;team for the zoological department of the Bureau of ;Interstellar Affairs, we also double as a survey ship, and ;the planet down below was listed as unexplored on our ;charts.
I glanced out at the mottled brown-and-green ball spinning slowly in the viewport, and felt the warning ;twinge of gloom that came to me every time we made a ;landing on a new and strange world. Repressing it, I ;started to figure out a landing orbit. From behind me ;came the furious chatter of the blue monkeys as Davison ;strapped them into their acceleration cradles, and under that the deep, unmusical honking of the Rigelian ;anteaters, noisily bleating their displeasure.
The planet was inhabited, all right. We hadn’t had the ship on the ground more than a minute before the ;local fauna began to congregate. We stood at the viewport ;and looked out in wonder.
“This is one of those things you dream about,” Davison said, stroking his little beard nervously. “Look at them! ;There must be a thousand different species out there.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Holdreth.
I computed how much storage space we had left and how many of the thronging creatures outside we would ;be able to bring back with us. “How are we going to ;decide what to take and what to leave behind?”
“Does it matter?” Holdreth said gaily. “This is what you call an embarrassment of riches, I guess. We just ;grab the dozen most bizarre creatures and blast off— ;and save the rest for another trip. It’s too bad we ;wasted all that time wandering around near Rigel.”
“We did get the anteaters,” Davison pointed out. They were his finds, and he was proud of them.
I smiled sourly. “Yeah. We got the anteaters there.” The anteaters honked at that moment, loud and clear. ;“You know, that’s one set of beasts I think I could do ;without.”
“Bad attitude,” Holdreth said. “Unprofessional.”
“Whoever said I was a zoologist, anyway? I’m just a spaceship pilot, remember. And if I don’t like the way ;those anteaters talk—and—smell—I see no reason why ;I—”
“Say, look at that one,” Davison said suddenly.
I glanced out the viewport and saw a new beast emerging from the thick-packed vegetation in the background. I’ve seen some fairly strange creatures since I ;was assigned to the zoological department, but this one ;took the grand prize.
It was about the size of a giraffe, moving on long, wobbly legs and with a tiny head up at the end of a ;preposterous neck. Only it had six legs and a bunch of ;writhing snakelike tentacles as well, and its eyes, great ;violet globes, stood out nakedly on the ends of two ;thick stalks. It must have been twenty feet high. It ;moved with exaggerated grace through the swarm of ;beasts surrounding our ship, pushed its way smoothly ;toward the vessel, and peered gravely in at the viewport. ;One purple eye stared directly at me, the other at ;Davison. Oddly, it seemed to me as if it were trying to ;tell us something.
“Big one, isn’t it?” Davison said finally.
“I’ll bet you’d like to bring one back, too.”
“Maybe we can fit a young one aboard,” Davison said. “If we can find a young one.” He turned to ;Holdreth. “How’s the air analysis coming? I’d like to ;get out there and start collecting. God, that’s a crazylooking beast!”
The animal outside had apparently finished its inspection of us, for it pulled its head away and, gathering its legs under itself, squatted near the ship. A small ;doglike creature with stiff spines running along its back ;began to bark at the big creature, which took no notice. ;The other animals, which came in all shapes and sizes, ;continued to mill around the ship, evidently very curious about the newcomer to their world. I could see ;Davidson’s eyes thirsty with the desire to take the ;whole kit and caboodle back to Earth with him. I knew ;what was running through his mind. He was dreaming ;of the umpteen thousand species of extraterrestrial wildlife roaming around out there, and to each one he was ;attaching a neat little tag: Something-or-other davisoni.
“The air’s fine,” Holdreth announced abruptly, looking up from his test tubes. “Get your butterfly nets and let’s see what we can catch.”
There was something I didn’t like about the place. It was just too good to be true, and I learned long ago that ;nothing ever is. There’s always a catch someplace.
Only this seemed to be on the level. The planet was a bonanza for zoologists, and Davison and Holdreth ;were having the time of their lives, hipdeep in obliging ;specimens.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Davison said for at least the fiftieth time, as he scooped up a small purplish ;squirrel-like creature and examined it curiously. The ;squirrel stared back, examining Davison just as curiously.
“Let’s take some of these,” Davison said. “I like them.”
“Carry ’em on in, then,” I said shrugging. I didn’t care which specimens they chose, so long as they filled ;up the storage hold quickly and let me blast off on schedule. I watched as Davison grabbed a pair of the ;squirrels and brought them into the ship.
Holdreth came over to me. He was carrying a sort of a dog with insect-faceted eyes and gleaming furless ;skin. “How’s this one, Gus?”
“Fine,” I said bleakly. “Wonderful.”
He put the animal down—it didn’t scamper away, just sat there smiling at us—and looked at me. He ran a ;hand through his fast-vanishing hair. “Listen, Gus, you’ve ;been gloomy all day. What’s eating you?”
“I don’t like this place,” I said.
“Why? Just on general principles?”
“It’s too easy, Clyde. Much too easy. These animals just flock around here waiting to be picked up.”
Holdreth chuckled. “And you’re used to a struggle, aren’t you? You’re just angry at us because we have it ;so simple here!”
“When I think of the trouble we went through just to get a pair of miserable vile-smelling anteaters, and—” ;“Come off it, Gus. We’ll load up in a hurry, if you ;like. But this place is a zoological gold mine!”
I shook my head. “I don’t like it, Clyde. Not at all.” Holdreth laughed again and picked up his facetedeyed dog. “Say, know where I can find another of ;these, Gus?”
“Right over there,” I said, pointing. “By that tree. With its tongue hanging out. It’s just waiting to be ;carried away.”
Holdreth looked and smiled. “What do you know about that!” He snared his specimen and carried both of ;them inside.
I walked away to survey the grounds. The planet was too flatly incredible for me to accept on face value, ;without at least a look-see, despite the blithe way my ;two companions were snapping up specimens.
For one thing, animals just don’t exist this way—in big miscellaneous quantities, living all together happily.
I hadn’t noticed more than a few of each kind, and there must have been five hundred different species, ;each one stranger looking than the next. Nature doesn’t ;work that way.
For another, they all seemed to be on friendly terms with one another, though they acknowledged the unofficial leadership of the giraffe-like creature. Nature doesn’t ;work that way, either. I hadn’t seen one quarrel between the animals yet. That argued that they were all ;herbivores, which didn’t make sense ecologically.
I shrugged my shoulders and walked on.
Half an hour later, I knew a little more about the geography of our bonanza. We were on either an immense island or a peninsula of some sort, because I ;could see a huge body of water bordering the land some ;ten miles off. Our vicinity was fairly flat, except for a ;good-sized hill from which I could see the terrain.
There was a thick, heavily wooded jungle not too far from the ship. The forest spread out all the way toward ;the water in one direction, but ended abruptly in the ;other. We had brought the ship down right at the edge ;of the clearing. Apparently most of the animals we saw ;lived in the jungle.
On the other side of our clearing was a low, broad plain that seemed to trail away into a desert in the ;distance; I could see an uninviting stretch of barren ;sand that contrasted strangely with the fertile jungle to ;my left. There was a small lake to the side. It was, I ;saw, the sort of country likely to attract a varied fauna, ;since there seemed to be every sort of habitat within a ;small area.
And the fauna! Although I’m a zoologist only by osmosis, picking up both my interest and my knowledge second-hand from Holdreth and Davison, I couldn’t ;help but be astonished by the wealth of strange animals. They came in all different shapes and sizes, colors ;and odors, and the only thing they all had in common ;was their friendliness. During the course of my afternoon’s wanderings a hundred animals must have come ;marching boldly right up to me, given me the once-over, and walked away. This included half a dozen ;kinds that I hadn’t seen before, plus one of the eye-stalked, intelligent-looking giraffes and a furless dog. ;Again, I had the feeling that the giraffe seemed to be ;trying to communicate.
I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it at all.
I returned to our clearing, and saw Holdreth and Davison still buzzing madly around, trying to cram as ;many animals as they could into our hold.
“How’s it going?” I asked.
“Hold’s all full,” Davison said. “We’re busy making our alternate selections now.” I saw him carrying out ;Holdreth’s two furless dogs and picking up instead a ;pair of eight-legged penguinish things that uncomplainingly allowed themselves to be carried in. Holdreth was ;frowning unhappily.
“What do you want those for, Lee? Those dog-like ones seem much more interesting, don’t you think?”
“No,” Davison said. “I’d rather bring along these two. They’re curious beasts, aren’t they? Look at the ;muscular network that connects the—”
“Hold it, fellows,” I said. I peered at the animal in Davison’s hands and glanced up. “This is a curious ;beast,” I said. “It’s got eight legs.”
“You becoming a zoologist?” Holdreth asked, amused.
“No—but I am getting puzzled. Why should this one have eight legs, some of the others have six, and some ;of the others only four?”
They looked at me blankly, with the scorn of professionals.
“I mean, there ought to be some sort of logic to evolution here, shouldn’t there? On Earth we’ve developed a four-legged pattern of animal life; on Venus, ;they usually run to six legs. But have you ever seen an ;evolutionary hodgepodge like this place before?”
“There are stranger setups,” Holdreth said. “The symbiotes on Sirius Three, the burrowers of Mizar— ;but you’re right, Gus. This is a peculiar evolutionary ;dispersal. I think we ought to stay and investigate it ;folly.”
Instantly I knew from the bright expression on Davison’s face that I had blundered, and made things ;worse than ever. I decided to take a new tack.
“I don’t agree,” I said. “I think we ought to leave with what we’ve got, and come back with a larger ;expedition later.”
Davison chuckled. “Come on, Gus, don’t be silly! This is a chance of a lifetime for us—why should we call ;in the whole zoological department on it?”
I didn’t want to tell them I was afraid of staying longer. I crossed my arms. “Lee, I’m the pilot of this ;ship, and you’ll have to listen to me. The schedule calls ;for a brief stopover here, and we have to leave. Don’t ;tell me I’m being silly.”
“But you are, man! You’re standing blindly in the path of scientific investigation, of—”
“Listen to me, Lee. Our food is calculated on a pretty narrow margin, to allow you fellows more room ;for storage. And this is strictly a collecting team. There’s ;no provision for extended stays on any one planet. ;Unless you want to wind up eating your own specimens, I suggest you allow us to get out of here.”
They were silent for a moment. Then Holdreth said, “I guess we can’t argue with that, Lee. Let’s listen to Gus ;and go back now. There’s plenty of time to investigate ;this place later when we can take longer. ”
“But—oh, all right,” Davison said reluctantly. He picked up the eight-legged penguins. “Let me stash ;these things in the hold, and we can leave.” He looked ;strangely at me, as if I had done something criminal.
As he started into the ship, I called to him.
“What is it, Gus?”
“Look here, Lee. I don’t want to pull you away from here. It’s simply a matter of food,” I lied, masking my ;nebulous suspicions.
“I know how it is, Gus.” He turned and entered the ship.
I stood there thinking about nothing at all for a moment, then went inside myself to begin setting up ;the blastoff orbit.
I got as far as calculating the fuel expenditure when I noticed something. Feed wires were dangling crazily ;down from the control cabinet. Somebody had wrecked ;our drive mechanism, but thoroughly.
For a long moment, I stared stiffly at the sabotaged drive. Then I turned and headed into the storage hold.
“Davison?”
“What is it, Gus?”
“Come out here a second, will you?”
I waited, and a few minutes later he appeared, frowning impatiently. “What do you want, Gus? I’m busy and I—” His mouth dropped open. “Look at the drive!”
“You look at it,” I snapped. “I’m sick. Go get Holdreth, on the double.”
While he was gone I tinkered with the shattered mechanism. Once I had the cabinet panel off and could ;see the inside, I felt a little better; the drive wasn’t ;damaged beyond repair, though it had been pretty well ;scrambled. Three or four days of hard work with a ;screwdriver and solderbeam might get the ship back ;into functioning order.
But that didn’t make me any less angry. I heard Holdreth and Davison entering behind me, and I whirled ;to face them.
“All right, you idiots. Which one of you did this?”
They opened their mouths in protesting squawks at the same instant. I listened to them for a while, then ;said, “One at a time!”
“If you’re implying that one of us deliberately sabotaged the ship,” Hodlreth said, “I want you to know—”
“I’m not implying anything. But the way it looks to ;me, you two decided you’d like to stay here a while longer to continue your investigations, and figured the ;easiest way of getting me to agree was to wreck the ;drive.” I glared hotly at them. “Well, I’ve got news for ;you. I can fix this, and I can fix it in a couple of days. So ;go on—get about your business! Get all the zoologizing ;you can in, while you still have time. I—”
Davison laid a hand gently on my arm. “Gus,” he said quietly, “we didn’t do it. Neither of us.”
Suddenly all the anger drained out of me and was replaced by raw fear. I could see that Davison meant it.
“If you didn’t do it, and Holdreth didn’t do it, and I didn’t do it—then who did?”
Davison shrugged.
“Maybe it’s one of us who doesn’t know he’s doing it,” I suggested. “Maybe—” I stopped. “Oh, that’s nonsense. Hand me that tool-kit, will you, Lee?”
They left to tend to the animals, and I set to work on the repair job, dismissing all further speculations and ;suspicions from my mind, concentrating solely on joining Lead A to Input A and Transistor F to Potentiometer K, as indicated. It was slow, nerve-harrowing work, ;and by the mealtime I had accomplished only the barest preliminaries. My fingers were starting to quiver ;from the strain of small-scale work, and I decided to ;give up the job for the day and get back to it tomorrow.
I slept uneasily, my nightmares punctuated by the moaning of the accursed anteaters and the occasional ;squeals, chuckles, bleats, and hisses of the various other ;creatures in the hold. It must have been four in the ;morning before I dropped off into a really sound sleep, ;and what was left of the night passed swiftly. The next ;thing I knew, hands were shaking me and I was looking ;up into the pale, tense faces of Holdreth and Davison.
