red-haired flinter cole sipped his black coffee and looked around the chrome and white tile galley of space freighter gorbals, in which he was riding down the last joint of a dogleg journey to the hermit planet of new cornwall.
"nothing's been published about the planet for the last five hundred years," he said in a nervous, jerky voice. "you people on gorbals at least see the place, and i understand you're the only ship that does."
"that's right, twice every standard year," said the cook. he was a placid, squinting man, pink in his crisp whites. "but like i said, no girls, no drinks, nothing down there but hard looks and a punch in the nose for being curious. we mostly stay aboard, up in orbit. them new cornish are the biggest, meanest men i ever did see, doc."
"i'm not a real doctor yet," cole said, glancing down at the scholar grays he was wearing. "if i don't do a good job on new cornwall i may never be. this is my ph. d. trial field assignment. i should be stuffing myself with data on the ecosystem so i can ask the right questions when i get there. but there's nothing!"
"what's a pee aitch dee?"
"that's being a doctor. i'm an ecologist—that means i deal with everything alive, and the way it all works in with climate and geography. i can use any kind of data. i have only six months until gorbals comes again to make my survey and report. if i fumble away my doctorate, and i'm twenty-three already...." cole knitted shaggy red eyebrows in worry.
"well hell, doc, i can tell you things like, it's got four moons and only one whopper of a continent and it's low grav, and the forest there you won't believe even when you see it—"
"i need to know about stompers. bidgrass company wants belconti u. to save them from extinction, but they didn't say what the threat is. they sent travel directions, a visa and passage scrip for just one man. and i only had two days for packing and library research, before i had to jump to tristan in order to catch this ship. i've been running in the dark ever since. you'd think the bidgrass people didn't really care."
"price of stomper egg what it is, i doubt that," the cook said, scratching his fat jaw. "but for a fact, they're shipping less these days. must be some kind of trouble. i never saw a stomper, but they say they're big birds that live in the forest."
"you see? the few old journal articles i did find, said they were flightless bird-homologs that lived on the plains and preyed on the great herds of something called darv cattle."
"nothing but forest and sea for thousands of miles around bidgrass station, doc. stompers are pure hell on big long legs, they say."
"there again! i read they were harmless to man."
"tell you what, you talk to daley. he's cargo officer and has to go down with each tender trip. he'll maybe know something can help you."
the cook turned away to inspect his ovens. cole put down his cup and clamped a freckled hand over his chin, thinking. he thought about stomper eggs, new cornwall's sole export and apparently, for five hundred years, its one link with the other planets of carina sector. their reputedly indescribable flavor had endeared them to gourmets on a hundred planets. they were symbols of conspicuous consumption for the ostentatious wealthy. no wonder most of the literature under the new cornwall reference had turned out to be cookbooks.
orphaned and impecunious, a self-made scholar, cole had never tasted stomper egg.
the cook slammed an oven door on the fresh bread smell.
"just thought, doc. i keep a can or two of stomper egg, squeeze it from cargo for when i got a passenger to feed. how'd you like a mess for chow tonight?"
"why not?" cole said, grinning suddenly. "anything may be data for an ecologist, especially if it's good to eat."
the stomper egg came to the officers' mess table as a heaped platter of bite-sized golden spheres, deep-fried in bittra oil. their delicate, porous texture hardly required chewing. their flavor was like—cinnamon? peppery sandalwood? yes, yes, and yet unique....
cole realized in confusion that he had eaten half the platterful and the other six men had not had any. he groped for a lost feeling—was it that he and the others formed a connected biomass and that he could eat for all of them? ridiculous!
"i'm a pig," he laughed weakly. "here, mr. daley, have some."
daley, a gingery, spry little man, said "by me" and slid the platter along. it rounded the table and returned to cole untouched.
"fall to, doc," daley said, grinning.
cole was already reaching ... lying in his stateroom and he was the bunk cradling a taut, messianic body flaming with imageless dreams. he dreamed himself asleep and slept himself into shamed wakefulness needing coffee.
it was ship-night. cole walked through dimmed lights to the galley and carried his cup of hot black coffee to main control, where he found daley on watch, lounging against the gray enamel computer.
"i feel like a fool," cole said.
"you're a martyr to science, doc. which reminds me, cookie told me you got questions about bidgrass station."
"well yes, about stompers. what's wiping them out, what's their habitat and life pattern, oh anything."
"i learned quick not to ask about stompers. i gather they're twenty feet high or so and they're penned up behind a stockade. i never saw one."
"well dammit! i read they couldn't be domesticated."
"they're not. bidgrass station is in a clearing the new cornish cut from sea to sea across a narrow neck of land. on the west is this stockade and beyond it is lundy peninsula, a good half-million square miles of the damndest forest ever grew on any planet. that's where the stompers are."
"how thickly settled is this lundy peninsula?"
"not a soul there, doc. the settlement is around car truro on the east coast, twelve thousand miles east of bidgrass. i never been there, but you can see from the air it isn't much."
"how big a city is bidgrass? does it have a university?"
daley smiled again and shook his head. "they got fields and pastures, but it's more like a military camp than a town. i see barracks for the workers and egg hunters, hangars and shops, a big egg-processing plant and warehouses around the landing field. i never get away from the field, but i'd guess four, five thousand people at bidgrass."
cole sighed and put down his cup on the log desk.
"what is it they import, one half so precious as the stuff they sell?"
daley chuckled and rocked on his toes. "drugs, chemicals, machinery parts, hundreds of tons of warburton energy capsules. pistols, blasters, cases of flame charge, tanks of fire mist—you'd think they had a war on."
"that's no help. i'll make up for lost time when i get there. i'll beat their ears off with questions."
daley's gnomish face grew serious. "watch what you ask and who you ask, doc. they're suspicious as hell and they hate strangers."
"they need my help. besides, i'll deal only with scientists."
"bidgrass isn't much like a campus. i don't know, doc, something's wrong on that planet and i'm always glad to lift out."
"why didn't you and the others eat any of that stomper egg?" cole asked abruptly.
"because the people at bidgrass turn sick and want to slug you if you mention eating it. that's reason enough for me."
well, that was data too, cole thought, heading back to his stateroom.
two days later daley piloted the cargo tender down in a three-lap braking spiral around new cornwall. cole sat beside him in the cramped control room, eyes fixed on the view panel. once he had the bright and barren moon cairdween at upper left, above a vastly curving sweep of sun-glinting ocean, and he caught his breath in wonder.
"i know the feeling, doc," daley said softly. "like being a giant and jumping from world to world."
clouds obscured much of the sprawling, multi-lobed single continent. the sharpening of outline and hint of regularity cole remembered noting on tristan and his own planet of belconti, the mark of man, was absent here. yet new cornwall, as a human settlement, was two hundred years older than belconti.
the forests stretched across the south and west, broken by uplands and rain shadows, as the old books said. he saw between cloud patches the glint of lakes and the crumpled leaf drainage pattern of the great northeastern plain but, oddly, the plain was darker in color than the pinkish-yellow forest. he mentioned it to daley.
"it's flowers and vines and moss makes it that color," the little man said, busy with controls. "whole world in that forest top—snakes, birds, jumping things big as horses. doc, them trees are big."
"of course! i read about the epiphytal biota. and low gravity always conduces to gigantism."
"there's lundy," daley grunted, pointing.
it looked like a grinning ovoid monster-head straining into the western ocean at the end of a threadlike neck. across the neck bidgrass station slashed between parallel lines of forest edge like a collar. cole watched it again on the landing approach, noting the half-mile of clearing between the great wall and the forest edge, the buildings and fields rectilinear in ordered clumps east of the wall, and then the light aberration of the tender's lift field blotted it out.
"likely i won't see you till next trip," daley said, taking leave. "good luck, doc."
cole shuffled down the personnel ramp, grateful for the weight of his two bags in the absurdly light gravity. trucks and cargo lifts were coming across the white field from the silvery warehouses along its edge. men also, shaggy-haired big men in loose blue garments, walking oddly without the stride and drive of leg muscles. their faces were uniformly grim and blank to cole, standing there uncertainly. then a ground car pulled up and a tall old man in the same rough clothing got out and walked directly toward him. he had white hair, bushy white eyebrows over deep-set gray eyes, and a commanding beak of a nose.
"who might you be?" he demanded.
"i'm flinter cole, from belconti university. someone here is expecting me."
the old man squinted in thought and bit his lower lip. finally he said, "the biologist, hey? didn't expect you until next gorbals. didn't think you could make the connections for this one."
"it left me no time at all to study up in. but when species extinction is the issue, time is important. and i'm an ecologist."
"well," the old man said. "well. i'm garth bidgrass."
he shook cole's hand, a powerful grip quickly released.
"hawkins there in the car will take you to the manor house and get you settled. i'll phone ahead. i'll be tied up checking cargo for a day or two, i expect. you just rest up awhile."
he spoke to the driver in what sounded like old english, then moved rapidly across the field toward the warehouses in the same strange walk as the other men. as far as cole could see, he did not bend his knees at all.
hawkins, also old but frail and stooped, took cole's bags to the car. when the ecologist tried to follow him he almost fell headlong, then managed a stiff-legged shuffle. momentarily he longed for the earth-normal gravity of belconti and the ship.
they drove past unfenced fields green with vegetable and cereal crops, and fenced pastures holding beef and dairy cattle of the old earth breeds. it was a typical human ecosystem. then they passed a group of field workers, and surprise jolted the ecologist. they were huge—eight or nine feet tall, both men and women, all with long hair and some of them naked. they did not look up.
cole looked at hawkins. the old man glared at him from red-rimmed eyes and chattered something in archaic english. he speeded up, losing the giants behind a hedge, and the manor house with the palisade behind it loomed ahead.
the great fence dwarfed the house. single baulks of grassy brown timber ten feet on a side soared two hundred feet into the air, intricately braced and stayed. high above, a flyer drifted as if on sentry duty. half a mile beyond, dwarfing the fence in its turn, arose the thousand-foot black escarpment of the forest edge.
the manor house huddled in a walled garden with armed guards at the gate. it was two-storied and sprawling, with a flat-roofed watch tower at the southeast corner, and made of the same glassy brown timber. hawkins stopped the car by the pillared veranda where a lumpy, gray, nondescript woman waited. cole got out, awkwardly careful in the light gravity.
the woman would not meet his glance. "i'm flada vignoli, mr. bidgrass's niece and housekeeper," she said in a dead voice. "i'll show you your rooms." she turned away before cole could respond.
"let me carry the bags, i need to," he said to hawkins, laughing uncertainly. the old man hoisted his skinny shoulders and spat.
the rooms were on the second floor, comfortable but archaic in style. the gray woman told him that hawkins would bring his meals, that garth bidgrass would see him in a few days to make plans, and that mr. bidgrass thought he should not go about unescorted until he knew more about local conditions.
cole nodded. "i'll want to confer with your leading biologists, mrs. vignoli, as soon as i can. for today, can you get me a copy of your most recent biotic survey?"
"ain't any biologists, ain't any surveys," she said, standing in the half-closed door.
"well, any recent book about stompers or your general zo?logy. it's important that i start at once."
the face under the scraggly gray hair went blanker still. "you'll have to talk to mr. bidgrass." she closed the door.
cole unpacked, bathed, dressed again and explored his three rooms. like a museum, he thought. he looked out his west windows at the palisade and forest edge. then he decided to go downstairs, and found his door was locked.
the shock was more fear than indignation, he realized, wondering at himself. he paced his sitting room, thinking about his scholarly status and the wealth and power of belconti, until he had the indignation flaming. then a knock came at the door and it opened to reveal old hawkins with a wheeled food tray.
"what do you mean, locking me in?" cole asked hotly.
he pushed past the food tray into the hall. hawkins danced and made shooing motions with his hands, chattering shrilly in the vernacular. cole walked to the railing around the stairwell and looked down. at the foot of the stair a giant figure, man or woman he could not say, sat and busied itself with something in its lap.
cole went back into his room. the food was boiled beef, potatoes and beets, plain but plentiful, plus bread and coffee. he ate heartily and looked out his windows again to see night coming on. finally he tried the door and it was not locked. he shrugged, pushed the food tray into the hall and closed the door again. then he shot the inside bolt.
in bed, he finally dropped off into a restless, disturbed sleep.
emboldened by morning and a hearty tray breakfast, cole explored. he was in a two-floor wing, and the doors into the main house were locked. through them he heard voices and domestic clatter. unlocked across the second-floor hall was another suite of rooms like his own. downstairs was still another suite and along the south side a library. the door into the garden was locked.
my kingdom, cole thought wryly. prisoner of state!
he explored the library. tristanian books, historical romances for the most part, none less than three hundred years old. no periodicals, nothing of new cornwall publication. he drifted from window to window looking out at the formal garden of flower beds, hedges and white sand paths. then he saw the girl.
she knelt in a sleeveless gray dress trimming a hedge. her tanned and rounded arms had dimpled elbows, he noted. she turned suddenly and he saw, framed by reddish-brown curls, her oval face with small nose and firm chin. the face was unsuitably grave and the eyes wide.
she was not staring at his window, cole decided after a qualm, but listening. then she rose, picked up her basket of trimmings and glided around the corner of the house. before he could pursue her plump vision to another window, a man appeared.
he looked taller than cole and was built massively as a stone. straight black hair fell to his shoulders, cut square across his forehead and bound by a white fillet. under the black bar of eyebrow the heavy face held itself in grim, unsmiling lines. he moved with that odd, unstriding new cornish walk that suggested tremendous power held in leash.
cole crossed the hall and watched the blue-clad form enter a door in the wing opposite. the girl was nowhere. again cole felt a twinge of fear, and boiled up anger to mask it.
inside looking out, he thought. peeping like an ecologist in a bird blind!
when hawkins brought lunch cole raged at him and demanded to see garth bidgrass. the old man chattered incomprehensibly and danced like a fighting cock. thwarted, the ecologist ate moodily and went down to the library. the garden was empty and he decided on impulse to open a window. a way of retreat, but from what and to where, he wondered as he worked at the fastenings. just as he got it free, a woman stooped through the library door. she was at least seven feet tall.
cole stood erect and held his breath. not looking at him, the woman dropped to her knees and began dusting the natural wood half-panelling that encircled the room between bookcases. she had long blonde hair and a mild, vacant face; she wore a shapeless blue dress.
"hello," cole said.
she paid no attention.
"hello!" he said more sharply. "do you speak galactic english?"
she looked at him out of empty blue eyes and went back to her work. he went past her gingerly and up to his room. there he wrote a note to garth bidgrass, paced and fanned his indignation, tore up the note and wrote a stronger one. when hawkins brought his dinner, cole beat down his chattering objections and stuffed the note into the old man's coat pocket.
"see that bidgrass gets it at once! do you hear, at once!" he shouted.
after nightfall, nervous and wakeful, cole looked out on the garden by the pale light of two moons. he saw the girl, wearing the same dress, come out of the opposite wing, and decided on impulse to intercept her.
as he climbed through the library window he said to himself, "anything may be data to an ecologist, especially if it's pretty to look at."
he met her full face at the house corner and her hands flew up, fending. she turned and he said, "please don't run away from me. i want to talk to you."
she turned back with eyes wide and troubled, in what nature had meant to be a merry, careless face.
"do you know who i am?" he asked.
she nodded. "uncle garth says i'm not to talk to you." it was a little girl's voice, tremulous.
"why? what am i, some kind of monster?"
"n-no. you're an outworlder, from a great, wealthy planet."
"belconti is a very ordinary planet. what's your name?"
