Part 3 (1/2)

Mechanically, he counted them. Twenty. Most of them were feeding, but four of them seemed to be standing a little apart from the others, watching the forest, acting as lookouts.

_Typical herd action_, Dodeth thought.

He wished Yerdeth were here; he'd show that fool what good his ten-to-the-billionth odds were.

And yet, in another way, Dodeth had the feeling that his parabrother was right. How could the life of the World have suddenly evolved such creatures? For they looked even more impossible when seen in the flesh.

Their locomotive limbs ended in lumpy protuberances that showed no sign of toes, and they were covered all over with a dull gray hide, except for the hands at the ends of their handling limbs and the necks and the faces of their oddly-shaped heads, where the skin ranged in color from a pinkish an to a definitive brown, depending on the individual. There was no hair anywhere on their bodies except on the top and back of their heads. No, wait--there were two long tufts above each eye. They--

”Do you see what they're _eating_?” Wygor's voice whispered.

Dodeth hadn't. He'd been too busy looking at the things themselves.

But when he did notice, he made a noise like a throttled ”_Geep!_”

_Hurkles!_

There were few enough of the animals--only a few small population was needed to keep the Balance, but they were important. And the swamps were drying up, and the quiggies were moving in on them, and _now_--

Dodeth made a hasty count. Twenty! By the Universal Motivator, these predators had eaten a hurkle apiece!

Overhead, the Yellow Sun, a distant dot of intensely bright light, shed its wan glow over the ghastly scene. Dodeth wished the Moon were out; its much brighter light would have shown him more detail.

But he could see well enough to count the gnawed skeletons of the little, harmless hurkles. Even the Moon, which wouldn't bring morning for another fifteen work periods yet, couldn't have made it any plainer that these beasts were deadly dangerous to the Balance.

”How often do they eat?” he asked in a strained voice.

It was Wygor's robot, Arsam, who answered. ”About three times every work period. They sleep then. Their metabolic cycle seems to be timed about the same as yours, sir.”

”_Gaw!_” said Dodeth. ”Sixty hurkles per sleep period! Why, they'll have the whole hurkle population eaten before long! Wygor! As soon as we can get shots of all this, we're going back! There's not a moment to lose! This is the most deadly dangerous thing that has ever happened to the World!”

”Fry me, yes,” Wygor said in an awed voice. ”Three hurkles in one period.”

”Allow me to correct you, sir,” said the patrol robot. ”They do not eat that many hurkles. They eat other things besides.”

”Like what, for instance?” Dodeth asked in a choked voice.

The robot told him, and Dodeth groaned. ”Omnivores! That's even worse!

Ardan, pa.s.s the word to the scouts to get their pictures and meet at that tree down there behind us in ten minutes. We've got to get back to the city!”

Dodeth Pell laid his palms flat on the speaker's bench and looked around at the a.s.sembled Keepers of the Balance, wise and prudence thinkers, who had spent lifetimes in ecological service and had shown their capabilities many times over.

”And that's the situation, sirs,” he said, after a significant pause.

”The moving and still bathygraphs, the data sheets, and the samplings of the area all tell the same story. I do not feel that I, alone, can make the decision. Emotionally, I must admit, I am tempted to destroy all twenty of the monsters. Intellectually, I realize that we should attempt to capture at least one family group--if we can discover what const.i.tutes a family group in this species. Unfortunately, we cannot tell the s.e.xes apart by visual inspection; the s.e.x organs themselves must be hidden in the folds of that gray hide. And this is evidently not their breeding season, for we have seen no sign of s.e.xual activity.

”We have very little time, sirs, it seems to me. The damage they have already done will take years to repair, and the danger of upsetting the Balance irreparably grows exponentially greater with every pa.s.sing work period.