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The Native Soil
by Alan E. Nourse
Before the first ship from Earth made a landing on Venus, there was muchspeculation about what might be found beneath the cloud layers obscuringthat 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 andman-eating flowers. Another group contended hotly that Venus was an ariddesert of wind-carved sandstone, dry and cruel, whipping dust intoclouds that sunlight could never penetrate. Others prognosticated anocean planet with little or no solid ground at all, populated byenormous 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 agreat quantity of mud.
There was enough mud on Venus to go all the way around twice, with someleft over. It was warm, wet, soggy mud--clinging and tenacious. In someplaces it was gray, and in other places it was black. Elsewhere it wasfound to be varying shades of brown, yellow, green, blue and purple. Butjust the same, it was still mud. The sparse Venusian vegetation grew upout of it; the small Venusian natives lived down in it; the steam rosefrom it and the rain fell on it, and that, it seemed, was that. Theplanet of mystery was no longer mysterious. It was just messy. Peopledidn't talk about it any more.
But technologists of the Piper Pharmaceuticals, Inc., R&D squad found acertain charm in the Venusian mud.
They began sending cautious and very secret reports back to the HomeOffice when they discovered just what, exactly was growing in thatVenusian mud besides Venusian natives. The Home Office promptly boughtup full exploratory and mining rights to the planet for a price that wasa brazen steal, and then in high excitement began pouring millions ofdollars into ships and machines bound for the muddy planet. The Board ofDirectors met hoots of derision with secret smiles as they rubbed theirhands together softly. Special crews of psychologists were dispatched toVenus to contact the natives; they returned, exuberant, withtest-results that proved the natives were friendly, intelligent,co-operative and resourceful, and the Board of Directors rubbed theirhands more eagerly together, and poured more money into the PiperVenusian Installation.
It took money to make money, they thought. Let the fools laugh. Theywouldn't be laughing long. After all, Piper Pharmaceuticals, Inc., couldrecognize a gold mine when they saw one.
They thought.
* * * * *
Robert Kielland, special investigator and trouble shooter for PiperPharmaceuticals, Inc., made an abrupt and intimate acquaintance withthe fabulous Venusian mud when the landing craft brought him down onthat soggy planet. He had transferred from the great bubble-shapedorbital transport ship to the sleek landing craft an hour before, boredand impatient with the whole proposition. He had no desire whatever togo 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 hetravel to other planets in pursuit of his duties, and he had balked atthe assignment. He had even balked at the staggering bonus check theyoffered him to help him get used to the idea.
It was not until they had convinced him that only his own superiorjudgment, his razor-sharp mind and his extraordinarily shrewd powers ofobservation and insight could possibly pull Piper Pharmaceuticals, Inc.,out of the mudhole they'd gotten themselves into, that he hadreluctantly 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 tohave 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 Kiellandwatched gloomily from the after port. The lurching billows of cloudsmade him queasy; he opened his Piper samples case and popped a pill intohis mouth. Then he gave his nose a squirt or two with his PiperRhino-Vac nebulizer, just for good measure. Finally, far below them, thefeatureless gray surface skimmed by. A sparse scraggly forest of twistedgray foliage sprang up at them.
The pilot sighted the landing platform, checked with Control Tower, andeased up for the final descent. He was a skillful pilot, with manylandings on Venus to his credit. He brought the ship up on its tail andsat it down on the landing platform for a perfect three-pointer as thejets rumbled to silence.
Then, abruptly, they sank--landing craft, platform and all.
The pilot buzzed Control Tower frantically as Kielland fought downpanic. Sorry, said Control Tower. Something must have gone wrong. They'dhave them out in a jiffy. Good lord, no, _don't_ blast out again, therewere a thousand natives in the vicinity. Just be patient, everythingwould be all right.
They waited. Presently there were thumps and bangs as grapplers clangedon the surface of the craft. Mud gurgled around them as they were hauledup and out with the sound of a giant sipping soup. A mud-encrustedhatchway flew open, and Kielland stepped down on a flimsy-lookingplatform below. Four small rodent-like creatures were attached to it byropes; they heaved with a will and began paddling through the soupy muddragging the platform and Kielland toward a row of low wooden buildingsnear some stunted trees.
As the creatures paused to puff and pant, the back half of the platformkept sinking into the mud. When they finally reached comparatively solidground, Kielland was mud up to the hips, and mad enough to blast offwithout benefit of landing craft.
He surveyed the Piper Venusian Installation, hardly believing what hesaw. He had heard the glowing descriptions of the Board of Directors. Hehad seen the architect's projections of fine modern buildings resting onwater-proof buoys, neat boating channels to the mine sites, fineorange-painted dredge equipment (including the new Piper Axis-TractionDredges that had been developed especially for the operation). It hadsounded, in short, just the way a Piper Installation ought to sound.
But there was nothing here that resembled that. Kielland could see agroup of little wooden shacks that looked as though they were ready at amoment's notice to sink with a gurgle into the mud. Off to the rightacross a mud flat one of the dredges apparently had done just that: aswarm of men and natives were hard at work dragging it up again. ControlTower was to the left, balanced precariously at a slight tilt in a seaof mud.
The Piper Venusian Installation didn't look too much like a goingconcern. It looked far more like a ghost town in the latter stages ofdecay.
Inside the Administration shack Kielland found a weary-looking manbehind a desk, scribbling furiously at a pile of reports. Everything inthe shack was splattered with mud. The crude desk and furniture wassmeared; the papers had black speckles all over them. Even the man'sface was splattered, his clothing encrusted with gobs of still-damp mud.In a corner a young man was industriously scrubbing down the wall with alarge brush.
The man wiped mud off Kielland and jumped up with a gleam of hope in histired eyes. "Ah! Wonderful!" he cried. "Great to see you, old man.You'll find all the papers and reports in order here, everything readyfor you--" He brushed the papers away from him with a gesture offinality. "Louie, get the landing craft pilot and don't let him out ofyour 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 justgiven way. "I don't understand it. They told me--"
"I don't care what they told you," said Kielland shortly. "I'm a troubleshooter, not an administrator. When production figures begin to drop, Ifind out why. The production figures from this place have never gottenhigh 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 Iwant to see the foreman who put that wretched landing platformtogether."
Simpson's eyes became wary. "Uh--you don't really want to see him?"
"Yes, I think I do. When there's such obvious