William Oberfield

“ There would be only one lonely and sick man left long before help could come. What would that last man do? Go completely mad and try to devour himself? Like the two snakes who met one sunny afternoon and decided to swallow one another. ”

“ You can't dig them out and they escape all the ordinary weed-fighting methods. One of their cute little tricks is to attach themselves to other plants and seeds and absorb them, strangely enough not harming their own species. Add to that the rapid growth, almost comparable to the motion of the minute hand of a clock, and planting anything from Earth among them is something like throwing a housecat into a den of wild lions."
"A very pretty picture," McBride groaned. "We can't go back to Earth for a year, everything on Venus is poison and we have less than two months' supply of food. ”

“ McBride looked around, seeing little you wouldn't see on Earth. What's wrong with me? he thought. It's my place to keep the spirits of the men up, not to dampen them. Flaunders is right, of course. This stuff is still only vegetation, even if it is styled after Jack's beanstalk. Jack chopped down the beanstalk and killed the giant. Our giant is the threat of starvation, but killing it is still a matter of stalk-chopping. ”

“ Flaunders snorted. "A hell of a lot of good it did. We destroyed the weeds and the properties of the soil with them. By the time we reactivated the soil the weed seeds had come on the wind. Same thing all over again. How much good did the hothouse do us, even with all the filters? Nearly microscopic seed came in on our clothing, in our hair. I'd rather fight elephants or pre-historic monsters. At least they're big enough to see and slow enough to cope with."
These were two skeletons, speaking of starvation under a tree loaded down with plump, ripe fruit, watching small animals scamper. ”

“ What did every man tell himself? That it wouldn't happen again, ever, this terrible thing. When they found the strength and courage to go back and clean up the remains of a meal, knowing it to be the remains of a meal, when they had put what was left of Heinie in a hole and covered it with dirt and set up a stone marker, they promised one another it would never ever happen again. ”

“ McBride said as Flaunders drew near. "Might have known there'd be a catch to this world."
"More than a catch," Flaunders said. "I hope none of the men has eaten anything native to Venus."
McBride shook his head. "They haven't if they've followed orders. I told them not to touch anything until you had made a report." He looked at the other questioningly. "Poison?"
"We brought twelve white rats and two monkeys along for experimental purposes," Flaunders said. "Now we have only six rats. Each of the others we fed a different kind of native fruit or meat. ”

“ The ship had contained enough food for only about two months to begin with, and more than two weeks had now come out of that. Starvation was becoming a very real possibility in his mind.
"We're up against something big," he said, peeved with himself for having to admit it. "We're fighting millions of years of evolution."
McBride sensed something disturbing in the other's voice. Maybe a trace of fear. "What do you mean?" he said.
Flaunders enlarged. "A very long time ago a war started here on Venus. It was a war among plants. You find the same thing on Earth, too, but not on this scale. ”

“ Slow miserable death on one side and food on the other! A chance to live a little longer. Maybe Flaunders would find something in another week, and one meal might make the difference between seeing that and not seeing it. One wanted to live! You couldn't bring Heinie back anyway, so why not live? Heinie had wanted it that way. A human is an animal as much as a pig or a cow. ”

“ Died within minutes."
"You tried it on just the six rats and not the monkeys?" McBride asked, and got a nod from Flaunders. "Then that's just six things tested. Maybe something edible will turn up yet."
"Small chance." Flaunders was positive. "Thompson used a little of his chemistry and found a substance he couldn't identify, not only in the stuff we fed the rats but in twenty-some other plants. He even found it in the flesh of the animals we caught. That makes it pretty certain that it will be found in everything. When the rats died we pegged that substance as the poison. ”