Free Bedlam Planet by John Brunner Page B

tufts of greenish antennae at both ends of their bodies sometimes scattered from the crunching of his feet; they lived in tunnels an inch below the friable surface. At high tide the rocks of the shoreline dipped beneath the water; when they returned to the air, vegetable fronds dangling from their sides glowed with colours as brilliant as a parakeet’s feathers, which faded to drab as the water dripped away again and were once more renewed by the tide.
    On the larger islands, carrying a back-pack of instruments and wielding a machete, he picked his way up theedges of streams, sometimes squelching in mud, sometimes going on a spongy mat of dry plant-stalks, sometimes struggling through deep layers of pebbles. From the close, mossy carpet of the “Asgard grass”, the range of flora extended by way of low shrubs and bushes to the big convoluted woodplants, but there were no trees. Occasionally he saw specimens of a rare type of wood-plant whose massive oblate body was supported clear of the ground on multiple roots, suggestive of a banyan, and he made a note of the location, because wood from that species was exceptionally tough and pliable.
    “Flowers” existed, but were neither colourful nor sweet-scented. There was a fertilisation process akin to pollination, which mixed the curious unfamiliar gene-equivalents and maintained variety—Yoko had shown him some examples under a microscope. Fluffy, sticky fruiting bodies dangled on flexible twigs and if they did not brush against another of their kind in the wind, they eventually dried out and wafted away like thistledown.
    Among the bushes and shrubs skulked a limited number of animals, all rather small—seldom bigger than a mans palm—and all herbivorous. He had seen a few, on previous trips, gnawing at the partly decayed bodies of dead fish cast ashore on the beach, but Yoko had told him this was probably due to some local mineral deficiency, for all the species which had yet been studied also gulped up sand recently wetted with sea-water and appeared to derive diet-supplements from it.
    The really vigorous life of Asgard was in the sea, not on land. On a world of islands lacking birds or flying insects, there was hardly any chance of an advanced life-form developing out of water. From the human point of view that was both good and bad. It meant that land-invaders would meet no competition to speak of, but equally it meant that sea-farming, which had become the staple source of food on Earth over the last hundred years, was impossible for at least a generation or two. They had brought no sea-creatures from Earth at all, although chemical tests by Dennis and his companionson the first visit had indicated that there were scores of useful species which could live in Asgard water. If a land-animal got out of control and ran wild, perhaps through a disaster which killed its keepers, it would be more or less limited to the island where men had established it, and would not seriously disturb the local ecological balance. Turned loose in the sea, however, where there could be no pens or sheepfolds, creatures from Earth could cause incalculable harm.
    There was room for error on man’s home world. Here, there was no margin at all.
    On one island, while sleeping on a high boulder which stuck up from the middle of a sloping sandy beach surrounded by fifty yards of clear ground in every direction, he woke under the accusing gaze of the moon—now mercifully diminishing past its full—and found a curious little beast sitting on his chest and exploring him with its tufted antennae. Asgard’s animals seemed to prefer multiple sense-organs, detecting scents, vibrations and heat and cold, which could be grown back quickly after they were damaged, to irreplaceable things like eyes and tongues.
    At first startled, then amused, he tried petting it, and it responded almost like a cat, arching itself to the touch. After a few minutes, it drew in its limbs and rested immobile. Shrugging, he