Mike Curry

“ The animals, too, were almost like Earth animals. They reproduced by fission, like some of the lower forms of life on Earth. The trocoid was like an oversized wasp. The murderous ithycyphos was like a razorback horse, with a cry like a woman under torture. The meat-rich ayala made him think of landbound seals. There were other animals, too, other birds, and fish in the nearby sea.
Still the urgency beat at him and, without quite knowing why, he began to walk across the plowed field to the enclosure where he kept a few ayala to fatten. ”

“ No woman ever became pregnant on Asmarad. Nobody ever knew why. And then he had seen all the women die. Sudden deaths, painless and unexplained. The doctors could only suggest that the female physiology, complex and delicate as it was, could not adapt even to the slight changes on Asmarad. But the doctors never really knew.
Their purpose on Asmarad defeated, the men planned to return to Earth. And then Brey had seen the atomic explosion that had wrecked the ship and the entire community, killing them all. All but Brey. ”

“ Until it was discovered, colonization had been restricted to a handful of planets whose conditions were nearly identical to Earth's.
But the discovery of the faculty of adaptable evolution had opened a thousand worlds to Earthmen. It took centuries on some planets to evolve, slowly and painfully and with suitable protective measures, only decades on others. It made Brey proud. Proud that the human body was capable of so much. ”

“ And then an internal grinding shock of terrible power slammed him to the ground.
He was not knocked unconscious, but lay on his face on the rich red dirt, his mind shocked into stupor. At length he shook his head, pushed heavily up with his hands and climbed to shaky feet. He leaned against the logs of the enclosure, gathering strength. ”

“ A woman. They look like Earthmen. Bipeds. I think they have intellects. Must be non-human. Like the lilithae.
From the tree outside he heard the trocoid's muffled screeches. He knew it was the standard routine of the asexual bird for fissioning—when an old trocoid's instinct told it that it was about to die, it found a breeding place safe from the ithycyphos, supplied it with food, barricaded itself inside, and then fissioned into two nearly-grown, mindless trocoids. ”

“ On Earth it had taken a billion years for the human body to evolve into that of an intelligent biped. Now, on some of the more alien planets which imposed severe conditions on the preservation of human life, it took surprisingly less time to evolve in order to meet these conditions. ”