The Planet with No Nightmare Part 4

The traction-scooter was going up a slope that had been eroded concave.

It was at the very top of the half-moon angle, upside down, standing Ekstrohm on his head. Since he was not strapped into his seat, he fell.

As he fell he thought ruefully that he had contrived to have an accident in the only way possible with a traction-scooter.

Ekstrohm's cranium collided with the ground, and he stopped thinking....

Ekstrohm blinked open his eyes, wondering. He saw light, then sky, then pigs.

Live pigs.

But--the pigs shouldn't be alive. When he was this close they should be dead.

Only they weren't.

Why ... why ...

He moved slightly and the nearest pig fell dead. The others went on with their business, roaming the plain. Ekstrohm expected the dropping of the pig to stampede the rest into dropping dead, but they didn't seem to pay any attention to their fallen member.

I've been lying here for hours, he realized. I didn't move in on them.

The pigs moved in on me while I was lying still. If I keep still I can get a close look at them in action.

So far, even with video, it had been difficult to get much of an idea of the way these creatures lived--when they weren't dead.

Observe, observe, he told himself.

There might be some relations.h.i.+p between the flying whale and the pigs.

Could it be the whales were intelligent alien masters of these herds of pigs?

Ekstrohm lay still and observed.

Item: the pigs ate the soft, mosslike gra.s.s.

Item: the pigs eliminated almost constantly.

Item: the pigs fought regularly.

Fought?

_Fought?_

Here was something, Ekstrohm realized.

Why did animals fight?

Rationalizations of nature-lovers aside, some fought because they had plain mean nasty dispositions--like some people. That didn't fit the pigs. They were indolent grazers. They hadn't the energy left over for sheer-cussedness. There had to be a definite goal to their battles.

It wasn't food. That was abundant. The gra.s.sy veldt reached to all horizons.

s.e.x. They had to be fighting for mates!

He became so excited he twitched a foot slightly. Two more pigs dropped dead, but the others paid no heed.

He watched the lazily milling herd intently, at the same time keeping an eye out for the flying whales. Back on Earth porpoises had been taught to herd schools of fish and of whales. It was not impossible an intelligent species of whale had learned to herd ma.s.ses of land animals.

But Ekstrohm knew he needed proof. He had to have something to link the pseudo-death of the wart-hogs to the inexplicable presence of the whales. Perhaps, he thought, the "death" of the pigs was the whales' way of putting them into cold storage--a method of making the meat seem unattractive to other animals, on a world perhaps without carrion scavengers....

Something was stirring among the pigs.

One under-sized beastie was pawing the dirt, a red eye set on the fattest animal in sight. Then Shortie charged Fatso. But abruptly a large raw-boned critter was in Shortie's path, barring him from Fatso.

Faced by Big Boy, Shortie trembled with rage and went into a terrible temper tantrum, rolling on the ground, pawing it in frenzy, squealing in maddened rage. Then Shortie was on his feet, desperate determination showing in every line of his body. With heedless, desperate, foolhardy courage he charged Big Boy.

Big Boy took the headlong charge in his side with only a trifling grunt.

Shortie bounced ten feet in the light gravity, and grimly wallowed to his feet. He leveled an eye at Big Boy, and his legs were pumping in frenzied fury again.

Big Boy s.h.i.+fted his kilos of weight casually and met Shortie head on.

The tremendous _ker-rack_ reverberated from the bluff behind Ekstrohm.

Shortie lay on the ground.

No, Ekstrohm thought, he isn't dead. His sides were pumping in and out.

But he was knocked cold.

Ekstrohm had to sympathize with him. He had never seen a more valiant try against insurmountable odds.

Big Boy was ambling over towards Fatso, apparently to claim his prize.

Fatso apparently was the sow.

But Big Boy stalked on past Fatso. She squealed after him tentatively, but he turned and blasted her back with a bellowing snort.

Ekstrohm watched the scene repeated with other actors several times before he was sure.

The older males, the Big Boys, _never_ collected the favors of the harem for themselves.

Instinctively, the pigs were practicing _birth control_. The older males abstained, and forced the younger males to do the same.

On a world like this, Ekstrohm's first thought was of death.

He thought, these pigs must be like lemmings, deliberately trying to destroy their own race, to commit geno-suicide.

But that didn't answer any of the other questions, about the _pseudo_-death, the alien whales ...