Title: The Native Soil
Author: Nourse, Alan Edward, 1928-1992
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.


*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Native Soil" ***


 The
 Native
 Soil

 by Alan E. Nourse


Before the first ship from Earth made a landing on Venus, there was much
speculation about what might be found beneath the cloud layers obscuring
that planet's surface from the eyes of all observers.

One school of thought maintained that the surface of Venus was a jungle,
rank with hot-house moisture, crawling with writhing fauna and
man-eating flowers. Another group contended hotly that Venus was an arid
desert of wind-carved sandstone, dry and cruel, whipping dust into
clouds that sunlight could never penetrate. Others prognosticated an
ocean planet with little or no solid ground at all, populated by
enormous serpents waiting to greet the first Earthlings with jaws agape.

But nobody knew, of course. Venus was the planet of mystery.

When the first Earth ship finally landed there, all they found was a
great quantity of mud.

There was enough mud on Venus to go all the way around twice, with some
left over. It was warm, wet, soggy mud--clinging and tenacious. In some
places it was gray, and in other places it was black. Elsewhere it was
found to be varying shades of brown, yellow, green, blue and purple. But
just the same, it was still mud. The sparse Venusian vegetation grew up
out of it; the small Venusian natives lived down in it; the steam rose
from it and the rain fell on it, and that, it seemed, was that. The
planet of mystery was no longer mysterious. It was just messy. People
didn't talk about it any more.

But technologists of the Piper Pharmaceuticals, Inc., R&D squad found a
certain charm in the Venusian mud.

They began sending cautious and very secret reports back to the Home
Office when they discovered just what, exactly was growing in that
Venusian mud besides Venusian natives. The Home Office promptly bought
up full exploratory and mining rights to the planet for a price that was
a brazen steal, and then in high excitement began pouring millions of
dollars into ships and machines bound for the muddy planet. The Board of
Directors met hoots of derision with secret smiles as they rubbed their
hands together softly. Special crews of psychologists were dispatched to
Venus to contact the natives; they returned, exuberant, with
test-results that proved the natives were friendly, intelligent,
co-operative and resourceful, and the Board of Directors rubbed their
hands more eagerly together, and poured more money into the Piper
Venusian Installation.

It took money to make money, they thought. Let the fools laugh. They
wouldn't be laughing long. After all, Piper Pharmaceuticals, Inc., could
recognize a gold mine when they saw one.

They thought.

       *       *       *       *       *

Robert Kielland, special investigator and trouble shooter for Piper
Pharmaceuticals, Inc., made an abrupt and intimate acquaintance with
the fabulous Venusian mud when the landing craft brought him down on
that soggy planet. He had transferred from the great bubble-shaped
orbital transport ship to the sleek landing craft an hour before, bored
and impatient with the whole proposition. He had no desire whatever to
go to Venus. He didn't like mud, and he didn't like frontier projects.
There had been nothing in his contract with Piper demanding that he
travel to other planets in pursuit of his duties, and he had balked at
the assignment. He had even balked at the staggering bonus check they
offered him to help him get used to the idea.

It was not until they had convinced him that only his own superior
judgment, his razor-sharp mind and his extraordinarily shrewd powers of
observation and insight could possibly pull Piper Pharmaceuticals, Inc.,
out of the mudhole they'd gotten themselves into, that he had
reluctantly agreed to go. He wouldn't like a moment of it, but he'd go.

Things weren't going right on Venus, it seemed.

The trouble was that millions were going in and nothing was coming out.
The early promise of high production figures had faltered, sagged,
dwindled and vanished. Venus was getting to be an expensive project to
have around, and nobody seemed to know just why.

Now the pilot dipped the landing craft in and out of the cloud blanket,
braking the ship, falling closer and closer to the surface as Kielland
watched gloomily from the after port. The lurching billows of clouds
made him queasy; he opened his Piper samples case and popped a pill into
his mouth. Then he gave his nose a squirt or two with his Piper
Rhino-Vac nebulizer, just for good measure. Finally, far below them, the
featureless gray surface skimmed by. A sparse scraggly forest of twisted
gray foliage sprang up at them.

The pilot sighted the landing platform, checked with Control Tower, and
eased up for the final descent. He was a skillful pilot, with many
landings on Venus to his credit. He brought the ship up on its tail and
sat it down on the landing platform for a perfect three-pointer as the
jets rumbled to silence.

Then, abruptly, they sank--landing craft, platform and all.

The pilot buzzed Control Tower frantically as Kielland fought down
panic. Sorry, said Control Tower. Something must have gone wrong. They'd
have them out in a jiffy. Good lord, no, _don't_ blast out again, there
were a thousand natives in the vicinity. Just be patient, everything
would be all right.

They waited. Presently there were thumps and bangs as grapplers clanged
on the surface of the craft. Mud gurgled around them as they were hauled
up and out with the sound of a giant sipping soup. A mud-encrusted
hatchway flew open, and Kielland stepped down on a flimsy-looking
platform below. Four small rodent-like creatures were attached to it by
ropes; they heaved with a will and began paddling through the soupy mud
dragging the platform and Kielland toward a row of low wooden buildings
near some stunted trees.

As the creatures paused to puff and pant, the back half of the platform
kept sinking into the mud. When they finally reached comparatively solid
ground, Kielland was mud up to the hips, and mad enough to blast off
without benefit of landing craft.

He surveyed the Piper Venusian Installation, hardly believing what he
saw. He had heard the glowing descriptions of the Board of Directors. He
had seen the architect's projections of fine modern buildings resting on
water-proof buoys, neat boating channels to the mine sites, fine
orange-painted dredge equipment (including the new Piper Axis-Traction
Dredges that had been developed especially for the operation). It had
sounded, in short, just the way a Piper Installation ought to sound.

But there was nothing here that resembled that. Kielland could see a
group of little wooden shacks that looked as though they were ready at a
moment's notice to sink with a gurgle into the mud. Off to the right
across a mud flat one of the dredges apparently had done just that: a
swarm of men and natives were hard at work dragging it up again. Control
Tower was to the left, balanced precariously at a slight tilt in a sea
of mud.

The Piper Venusian Installation didn't look too much like a going
concern. It looked far more like a ghost town in the latter stages of
decay.

Inside the Administration shack Kielland found a weary-looking man
behind a desk, scribbling furiously at a pile of reports. Everything in
the shack was splattered with mud. The crude desk and furniture was
smeared; the papers had black speckles all over them. Even the man's
face was splattered, his clothing encrusted with gobs of still-damp mud.
In a corner a young man was industriously scrubbing down the wall with a
large brush.

The man wiped mud off Kielland and jumped up with a gleam of hope in his
tired eyes. "Ah! Wonderful!" he cried. "Great to see you, old man.
You'll find all the papers and reports in order here, everything ready
for you--" He brushed the papers away from him with a gesture of
finality. "Louie, get the landing craft pilot and don't let him out of
your sight. Tell him I'll be ready in twenty minutes--"

"Hold it," said Kielland. "Aren't you Simpson?"

The man wiped mud off his cheeks and spat. He was tall and graying.
"That's right."

"Where do you think you're going?"

"Aren't you relieving me?"

"I am not!"

"Oh, my." The man crumbled behind the desk, as though his legs had just
given way. "I don't understand it. They told me--"

"I don't care what they told you," said Kielland shortly. "I'm a trouble
shooter, not an administrator. When production figures begin to drop, I
find out why. The production figures from this place have never gotten
high enough to drop."

"This is supposed to be news to me?" said Simpson.

"So you've got troubles."

"Friend, you're right about that."

"Well, we'll straighten them out," Kielland said smoothly. "But first I
want to see the foreman who put that wretched landing platform
together."

Simpson's eyes became wary. "Uh--you don't really want to see him?"

"Yes, I think I do. When there's such obvious evidence of incompetence,
the time to correct it is now."

"Well--maybe we can go outside and see him."

"We'll see him right here." Kielland sank down on the bench near the
wall. A tiny headache was developing; he found a capsule in his samples
case and popped it in his mouth.

Simpson looked sad and nodded to the orderly who had stopped scrubbing
down the wall. "Louie, you heard the man."

"But boss--"

Simpson scowled. Louie went to the door and whistled. Presently there
was a splashing sound and a short, gray creature padded in. His hind
feet were four-toed webbed paddles; his legs were long and powerful like
a kangaroo's. He was covered with thick gray fur which dripped with
thick black mud. He squeaked at Simpson, wriggling his nose. Simpson
squeaked back sharply.

Suddenly the creature began shaking his head in a slow, rhythmic
undulation. With a cry Simpson dropped behind the desk. The orderly fell
flat on the floor, covering his face with his arm. Kielland's eyes
widened; then he was sitting in a deluge of mud as the little Venusian
shook himself until his fur stood straight out in all directions.

Simpson stood up again with a roar. "I've told them a thousand times if
I've told them once--" He shook his head helplessly as Kielland wiped
mud out of his eyes. "This is the one you wanted to see."

Kielland sputtered. "Can it talk to you?"

"It doesn't talk, it squeaks."

"Then ask it to explain why the platform it built didn't hold the
landing craft."

Simpson began whistling and squeaking at length to the little creature.
Its shaggy tail crept between its legs and it hung its head like a
scolded puppy.

"He says he didn't know a landing craft was supposed to land on the
platform," Simpson reported finally. "He's sorry, he says."

"But hasn't he seen a landing craft before?"

Squeak, squeak. "Oh, yes."

"Wasn't he told what the platform was being made for?"

Squeak, squeak. "Of course."

"Then why didn't the platform stand up?"

Simpson sighed. "Maybe he forgot what it was supposed to be used for in
the course of building it. Maybe he never really did understand in the
first place. I can't get questions like that across to him with this
whistling, and I doubt that you'll ever find out which it was."

"Then fire him," said Kielland. "We'll find some other--"

"Oh, no! I mean, let's not be hasty," said Simpson. "I'd hate to have to
fire this one--for a while yet, at any rate."

"Why?"

"Because we've finally gotten across to him--at least I _think_ we
have--just how to take down a dredge tube." Simpson's voice was almost
tearful. "It's taken us months to teach him. If we fire him, we'll have
to start all over again with another one."

Kielland stared at the Venusian, and then at Simpson. "So," he said
finally, "I see."

"No, you don't," Simpson said with conviction. "You don't even begin to
see yet. You have to fight it for a few months before you really see."
He waved the Venusian out the door and turned to Kielland with burden of
ten months' frustration in his voice. "They're _stupid_," he said
slowly. "They are so incredibly stupid I could go screaming into the
swamp every time I see one of them coming. Their stupidity is positively
abysmal."

"Then why use them?" Kielland spluttered.

"Because if we ever hope to mine anything in this miserable mudhole,
we've got to use them to do it. There just isn't any other way."

With Simpson leading, they donned waist-high waders with wide, flat
silicone-coated pans strapped to the feet and started out to inspect the
installation.

A crowd of a dozen or more Venusian natives swarmed happily around them
like a pack of hounds. They were in and out of the steaming mud,
circling and splashing, squeaking: and shaking. They seemed to be having
a real field day.

"Of course," Simpson was saying, "since Number Four dredge sank last
week there isn't a whale of a lot of Installation left for you to
inspect. But you can see what there is, if you want."

"You mean Number Four dredge is the only one you've got to use?"
Kielland asked peevishly. "According to my records you have five
Axis-Traction dredges, plus a dozen or more of the old kind."

"Ah!" said Simpson. "Well, Number One had its vacuum chamber corroded
out a week after we started using dredging. Ran into a vein of stuff
with 15 per cent acid content, and it got chewed up something fierce.
Number Two sank without a trace--over there in the swamp someplace." He
pointed across the black mud flats to a patch of sickly vegetation. "The
Mud-pups know where it is, they think, and I suppose they could go drag
it up for us if we dared take the time, but it would lose us a month,
and you know the production schedule we've been trying to meet."

"So what about Numbers Three and Five?"

"Oh, we still have them. They won't work without a major overhaul,
though."

"Overhaul! They're brand new."

"They _were_. The Mud-pups didn't understand how to sluice them down
properly after operations. When this guck gets out into the air it
hardens like cement. You ever see a cement mixer that hasn't been
cleaned out after use for a few dozen times? That's Numbers Three and
Five."

"What about the old style models?"

"Half of them are out of commission, and the other half are holding the
islands still."

"Islands?"

"Those chunks of semisolid ground we have Administration built on. The
chunk that keeps Control Tower in one place."

"Well, what are they going to do--walk away?"

"That's just about right. The first week we were in operation we kept
wondering why we had to travel farther every day to get to the dredges.
Then we realized that solid ground on Venus isn't solid ground at all.
It's just big chunks of denser stuff that floats on top of the mud like
dumplings in a stew. But that was nothing compared to the other
things--"

They had reached the vicinity of the salvage operation on Number Five
dredge. To Kielland it looked like a huge cylinder-type vacuum cleaner
with a number of flexible hoses sprouting from the top. The whole
machine was three-quarters submerged in clinging mud. Off to the right a
derrick floated hub-deep in slime; grapplers from it were clinging to
the dredge and the derrick was heaving and splashing like a trapped
hippopotamus. All about the submerged machine were Mud-pups, working
like strange little beavers as the man supervising the operation wiped
mud from his face and carried on a running line of shouts, curses,
whistles and squeaks.

Suddenly one of the Mud-pups saw the newcomers. He let out a squeal,
dropped his line in the mud and bounced up to the surface, dancing like
a dervish on his broad webbed feet as he stared in unabashed curiosity.
A dozen more followed his lead, squirming up and staring, shaking gobs
of mud from their fur.

"No, _no_!" the man supervising the operation screamed. "_Pull_, you
idiots. Come back here! Watch _out_--"

The derrick wobbled and let out a whine as steel cable sizzled out.
Confused, the Mud-pups tore themselves away from the newcomers and
turned back to their lines, but it was too late. Number Five dredge
trembled, with a wet sucking sound, and settled back into the mud,
blub--blub--blub.

The supervisor crawled down from his platform and sloshed across to
where Simpson and Kielland were standing. He looked like a man who had
suffered the torment of the damned for twenty minutes too long. "No
more!" he screamed in Simpson's face. "That's all. I'm through. I'll
pick up my pay any time you get it ready, and I'll finish off my
contract at home, but I'm through here. One solid week I work to teach
these idiots what I want them to do, and you have to come along at the
one moment all week when I really need their concentration." He glared,
his face purple. "Concentration! I should hope for so much! You got to
have a brain to have concentration--"

"Barton, this is Kielland. He's here from the Home Office, to solve all
our problems."

"You mean he brought us an evacuation ship?"

"No, he's going to tell us how to make this Installation pay. Right,
Kielland?" Simpson's grin was something to see.

Kielland scowled. "What are you going to do with the dredge--just leave
it there?" he asked angrily.

"No--I'm going to dig it out, again," said Barton, "after we take
another week off to drum into those quarter-brained mud-hens just what
it is we want them to do--again--and then persuade them to do
it--again--and then hope against hope that nothing happens along to
distract them--again. Any suggestions?"

Simpson shook his head. "Take a rest, Barton. Things will look brighter
in the morning."

"Nothing ever looks brighter in the morning," said Barton, and he
sloshed angrily off toward the Administration island.

"You see?" said Simpson. "Or do you want to look around some more?"

       *       *       *       *       *

Back in Administration shack, Kielland sprayed his throat with Piper
Fortified Bio-Static and took two tetracycline capsules from his
samples case as he stared gloomily down at the little gob of blue-gray
mud on the desk before him.

The Venusian bonanza, the sole object of the multi-million-dollar Piper
Venusian Installation, didn't look like much. It ran in veins deep
beneath the surface. The R&D men had struck it quite by accident in the
first place, sampled it along with a dozen other kinds of Venusian
mud--and found they had their hands on the richest 'mycin-bearing
bacterial growth since the days of the New Jersey mud flats.

The value of the stuff was incalculable. Twenty-first century Earth had
not realized the degree to which it depended upon its effective
antibiotic products for maintenance of its health until the mutating
immune bacterial strains began to outpace the development of new
antibacterials. Early penicillin killed 96 per cent of all organisms in
its spectrum--at first--but time and natural selection undid its work in
three generations. Even the broad-spectrum drugs were losing their
effectiveness to a dangerous degree within decades of their
introduction. And the new drugs grown from Earth-born bacteria, or
synthesized in the laboratories, were too few and too weak to meet the
burgeoning demands of humanity--

Until Venus. The bacteria indigenous to that planet were alien to
Earth--every attempt to transplant them had failed--but they grew with
abandon in the warm mud currents of Venus. Not all mud was of value:
only the singular blue-gray stuff that lay before Kielland on the desk
could produce the 'mycin-like tetracycline derivative that was more
powerful than the best of Earth-grown wide spectrum antibiotics, with
few if any of the unfortunate side-effects of the Earth products.

The problem seemed simple: find the mud in sufficient quantities for
mining, dredge it up, and transport it back to Earth to extract the
drug. It was the first two steps of the operation that depended so
heavily on the mud-acclimated natives of Venus for success. They were as
much at home in the mud as they were in the dank, humid air above. They
could distinguish one type of mud from another deep beneath the surface,
and could carry a dredge-tube down to a lode of the blue-gray muck with
the unfailing accuracy of a homing pigeon.

If they could only be made to understand just what they were expected to
do. And that was where production ground down to a slow walk.

The next few days were a nightmare of frustration for Kielland as he
observed with mounting horror the standard operating procedure of the
Installation.

Men and Mud-pups went to work once again to drag Number Five dredge out
of the mud. It took five days of explaining, repeating, coaxing and
threatening to do it, but finally up it came--with mud caked and
hardened in its insides until it could never be used again.

So they ferried Number Six down piecemeal from the special orbital
transport ship that had brought it. Only three landing craft sank during
the process, and within two weeks Simpson and Barton set bravely off
with their dull-witted cohorts to tackle the swamp with a spanking new
piece of equipment. At last the delays were over--

Of course, it took another week to get the actual dredging started. The
Mud-pups who had been taught the excavation procedure previously had
either disappeared into the swamp or forgotten everything they'd ever
been taught. Simpson had expected it, but it was enough to keep Kielland
sleepless for three nights and drive his blood pressure to suicidal
levels. At length, the blue-gray mud began billowing out of the dredge
onto the platforms built to receive it, and the transport ship was
notified to stand by for loading. But by the time the ferry had landed,
the platform with the load had somehow drifted free of the island and
required a week-long expedition into the hinterland to track it down. On
the trip back they met a rainstorm that dissolved the blue-gray stuff
into soup which ran out between the slats of the platform, and back into
the mud again.

They did get the platform back, at any rate.

Meanwhile, the dredge began sucking up green stuff that smelled of
sewage instead of the blue-gray clay they sought--so the natives dove
mud-ward to explore the direction of the vein. One of them got caught in
the suction tube, causing a three-day delay while engineers dismantled
the dredge to get him out. In re-assembling, two of the dredge tubes got
interlocked somehow, and the dredge burned out three generators trying
to suck itself through itself, so to speak. That took another week to
fix.

Kielland buried himself in the Administration shack, digging through the
records, when the reign of confusion outside became too much to bear. He
sent for Tarnier, the Installation physician, biologist, and erstwhile
Venusian psychologist. Dr. Tarnier looked like the breathing soul of
failure; Kielland had to steel himself to the wave of pity that swept
through him at the sight of the man. "You're the one who tested these
imbeciles originally?" he demanded.

Dr. Tarnier nodded. His face was seamed, his eyes lustreless. "I tested
'em. God help me, I tested 'em."

"How?"

"Standard procedures. Reaction times. Mazes. Conditioning. Language.
Abstractions. Numbers. Associations. The works."

"Standard for Earthmen, I presume you mean."

"So what else? Piper didn't want to know if they were Einsteins or not.
All they wanted was a passable level of intelligence. Give them natives
with brains and they might have to pay them something. They thought
they were getting a bargain."

"Some bargain."

"Yeah."

"Only your tests say they're intelligent. As intelligent, say, as a
low-normal human being without benefit of any schooling or education.
Right?"

"That's right," the doctor said wearily, as though he had been through
this mill again and again. "Schooling and education don't enter into it
at all, of course. All we measured was potential. But the results said
they had it."

"Then how do you explain the mess we've got out there?"

"The tests were wrong. Or else they weren't applicable even on a basic
level. Or something. I don't know. I don't even care much any more."

"Well I care, plenty. Do you realize how much those creatures are
costing us? If we ever do get the finished product on the market, it'll
cost too much for anybody to buy."

Dr. Tarnier spread his hands. "Don't blame me. Blame them."

"And then this so-called biological survey of yours," Kielland
continued, warming to his subject. "From a scientific man, it's a prize.
Anatomical description: limited because of absence of autopsy specimens.
Apparently have endoskeleton, but organization of the internal organs
remains obscure. Thought to be mammalianoid--there's a fence-sitter for
you--but can't be certain of this because no young have been observed,
nor any females in gestation. Extremely gregarious, curious, playful,
irresponsible, etc., etc., etc. Habitat under natural conditions:
uncertain. Diet: uncertain. Social organization: uncertain." Kielland
threw down the paper with a snort. "In short, the only thing we're
certain of is that they're here. Very helpful. Especially when every
dime we have in this project depends on our teaching them how to count
to three without help."

Dr. Tarnier spread his hands again. "Mr. Kielland, I'm a mere mortal. In
order to measure something, it has to stay the same long enough to get
it measured. In order to describe something, it has to hold still long
enough to be observed. In order to form a logical opinion of a
creature's mental capacity, it has to demonstrate some perceptible
mental capacity to start with. You can't get very far studying a
creature's habitat and social structure when most of its habitating goes
on under twenty feet of mud."

"How about the language?"

"We get by with squeaks and whistles and sign language. A sort of
pidgin-Venusian. They use a very complex system among themselves." The
doctor paused, uncertainly. "Anyway, it's hard to get too tough with the
Pups," he burst out finally. "They really seem to try hard--when they
can just manage to keep their minds to it."

"Just stupid, carefree, happy-go-lucky kids, eh?"

Dr. Tarnier shrugged.

"Go away," said Kielland in disgust, and turned back to the reports with
a sour taste in his mouth.

Later he called the Installation Comptroller. "What do you pay Mud-pups
for their work?" he wanted to know.

"Nothing," said the Comptroller.

"_Nothing!_"

"We have nothing they can use. What would you give them--United Nations
coin? They'd just try to eat it."

"How about something they _can_ eat, then?"

"Everything we feed them they throw right back up. Planetary
incompatibility."

"But there must be _something_ you can use for wages," Kielland
protested. "Something they want, something they'll work hard for."

"Well, they liked tobacco and pipes all right--but it interfered with
their oxygen storage so they couldn't dive. That ruled out tobacco and
pipes. They liked Turkish towels, too, but they spent all their time
parading up and down in them and slaying the ladies and wouldn't work at
all. That ruled out Turkish towels. They don't seem to care too much
whether they're paid or not, though--as long as we're decent to them.
They seem to like us, in a stupid sort of way."

"Just loving, affectionate, happy-go-lucky kids. I know. Go away."
Kielland growled and turned back to the reports ... except that there
weren't any more reports that he hadn't read a dozen times or more.
Nothing that made sense, nothing that offered a lead. Millions of Piper
dollars sunk into this project, and every one of them sitting there
blinking at him expectantly.

For the first time he wondered if there really _was_ any solution to the
problem. Stumbling blocks had been met and removed before--that was
Kielland's job, and he knew how to do it. But stupidity could be a
stumbling block that was all but insurmountable.

Yet he couldn't throw off the nagging conviction that something more
subtle than stupidity was involved....

Then Simpson came in, cursing and sputtering and bellowing for Louie.
Louie came, and Simpson started dictating a message for relay to the
transport ship. "Special order, rush, repeat, rush," Simpson grated.
"For immediate delivery Piper Venusian Installation--one Piper
Axis-Traction Dredge, previous specifications applicable--"

Kielland stared at him. "Again?"

Simpson gritted his teeth. "Again."

"Sunk?"

"Blub," said Simpson. "Blub, blub, blub."

Slowly, Kielland stood up, glaring first at Simpson, then at the little
muddy creatures that were attempting to hide behind his waders, looking
so forlorn and chastised and woebegone. "All right," Kielland said,
after a pregnant pause. "That's all. You won't need to relay that order
to the ship. Forget about Number Seven dredge. Just get your files in
order and get a landing craft down here for me. The sooner the better."

Simpson's face lit up in pathetic eagerness. "You mean we're going to
_leave_?"

"That's what I mean."

"The company's not going to like it--"

"The company ought to welcome us home with open arms," Kielland snarled.
"They should shower us with kisses. They should do somersaults for joy
that I'm not going to let them sink another half billion into the mud
out here. They took a gamble and got cleaned, that's all. They'd be as
stupid as your pals here if they kept coming back for more." He pulled
on his waders, brushing penitent Mud-pups aside as he started for the
door. "Send the natives back to their burrows or whatever they live in
and get ready to close down. _I've_ got to figure out some way to make a
report to the Board that won't get us all fired."

He slammed out the door and started across to his quarters, waders going
splat-splat in the mud. Half a dozen Mud-pups were following him. They
seemed extraordinarily exuberant as they went diving and splashing in
the mud. Kielland turned and roared at them, shaking his fist. They
stopped short, then slunk off with their tails between their legs.

But even at that, their squeaking sounded strangely like laughter to
Kielland....

In his quarters the light was so dim that he almost had his waders off
before he saw the upheaval. The little room was splattered from top to
bottom with mud. His bunk was coated with slime; the walls dripped
blue-gray goo. Across the room his wardrobe doors hung open as three
muddy creatures rooted industriously in the leather case on the floor.

Kielland let out a howl and threw himself across the room. _His samples
case!_ The Mud-pups scattered, squealing. Their hands were filled with
capsules, and their muzzles were dripping with white powder. Two went
between Kielland's legs and through the door. The third dove for the
window with Kielland after him. The company man's hand closed on a
slippery tail, and he fell headlong across the muddy bed as the culprit
literally slipped through his fingers.

He sat up, wiping mud from his hair and surveying the damage. Bottles
and boxes of medicaments were scattered all over the floor of the
wardrobe, covered with mud but unopened. Only one large box had been
torn apart, its contents ravaged.

Kielland stared at it as things began clicking into place in his mind.
He walked to the door, stared out across the steaming gloomy mud flats
toward the lighted windows of the Administration shack. Sometimes, he
mused, a man can get so close to something that he can't see the
obvious. He stared at the samples case again. Sometimes stupidity works
both ways--and sometimes what looks like stupidity may really be
something far more deadly.

He licked his lips and flipped the telephone-talker switch. After a
misconnection or two he got Control Tower. Control Tower said yes, they
had a small exploratory scooter on hand. Yes, it could be controlled on
a beam and fitted with cameras. But of course it was special equipment,
emergency use only--

He cut them off and buzzed Simpson excitedly. "Cancel all I said--about
leaving. I mean. Change of plan. Something's come up. No, don't order
anything--but get one of those natives that can understand your
whistling and give him the word."

Simpson bellowed over the wire. "What word? What do you think you're
doing?"

"I may just be saving our skins--we won't know for a while. But however
you manage it, tell them we're definitely _not leaving Venus_. Tell them
they're all fired--we don't want them around any more. The Installation
is off limits to them from here on in. And tell them we've devised a way
to mine the lode without them--got that? Tell them the equipment will be
arriving as soon as we can bring it down from the transport."

"Oh, now look--"

"You want me to repeat it?"

Simpson sighed. "All right. Fine. I'll tell them. Then what?"

"Then just don't bother me for a while. I'm going to be busy. Watching
TV."

An hour later Kielland was in Control Tower, watching the pale screen as
the little remote-controlled explorer circled the installation. Three TV
cameras were in operation as he settled down behind the screen. He told
Sparks what he wanted to do, and the ship whizzed off in the direction
the Mud-pup raiders had taken.

At first, there was nothing but dreary mud flats sliding past the
cameras' watchful eyes. Then they picked up a flicker of movement, and
the ship circled in lower for a better view. It was a group of
natives--a large group. There must have been fifty of them working
busily in the mud, five miles away from the Piper Installation. They
didn't look so carefree and happy-go-lucky now. They looked very much
like desperately busy Mud-pups with a job on their hands, and they were
so absorbed they didn't even see the small craft circling above them.

They worked in teams. Some were diving with small containers; some were
handling lines attached to the containers; still others were carrying
and dumping. They came up full, went down empty, came up full. The
produce was heaped in a growing pile on a small semisolid island with a
few scraggly trees on it. As they worked the pile grew and grew.

It took only a moment for Kielland to tell what they were doing. The
color of the stuff was unmistakable. They were mining piles of blue-gray
mud, just as fast as they could mine it.

With a gleam of satisfaction in his eye, Kielland snapped off the screen
and nodded at Sparks to bring the cameras back. Then he rang Simpson
again.

"Did you tell them?"

Simpson's voice was uneasy. "Yeah--yeah, I told them. They left in a
hurry. Quite a hurry."

"Yes, I imagine they did. Where are your men now?"

"Out working on Number Six, trying to get it up."

"Better get them together and pack them over to Control Tower, fast,"
said Kielland. "I mean everybody. Every man in the Installation. We may
have this thing just about tied up, if we can get out of here soon
enough--"

Kielland's chair gave a sudden lurch and sailed across the room,
smashing into the wall. With a yelp he tried to struggle up the sloping
floor; it reared and heaved over the other way, throwing Kielland and
Sparks to the other wall amid a heap of instruments. Through the windows
they could see the gray mud flats careening wildly below them. It took
only an instant to realize what was happening. Kielland shouted, "Let's
get out of here!" and headed down the stairs, clinging to the railing
for dear life.

Control Tower was sinking in the mud. They had moved faster than he had
anticipated, Kielland thought, and snarled at himself all the way down
to the landing platform below. He had hoped at least to have time to
parley, to stop and discuss the whys and wherefores of the situation
with the natives. Now it was abundantly clear that any whys and
wherefores that were likely to be discussed would be discussed later.

And very possibly under twenty feet of mud--

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.





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Native Soil" ***

Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.