A Surprise Picnic

A Surprise Picnic.

T
he regulations said wait, so the two crewmen on the exploration ship
James Lovelock waited and fretted inside the ship while on the planet's
surface five hundred miles below automated probes sucked and licked and
snapped and smelt the biosphere. At last all the lights on one of the
myriad consoles in the cabin glowed green and Murphy and Greenspan with
great relief climbed into the landing vehicle that would take them on
the ground below.

"I wish," said Murphy, "that just once they'd let us sleep until
they're actually ready to have us pay a visit."

"Yeh," replied Greenspan. "That'll be the day when we're transported to
the surface on the backs of flying pigs."

"Yeh," said Murphy, with resignation, "You're right."

The short, squat crewman and his nearly identical colleague had been
'first-footing' as the preliminary exploration of new planets was
colloquially known, for almost ten years. They knew more about each
other than their own mothers and had developed a telepathic
understanding normally reserved for twins. In fact, they were often
mistaken for brothers, because their squat bodies and swarthy Aegean
looks seemed to have been cast from the same mould.

The landing vehicle settled with a pneumatic wheeze on the surface,
bounced, settled again and shivered as legs and antennae unfolded from
its body.

"What's this place called again?" asked Murphy, playing with a joystick
that controlled one of the exterior cameras.

Greenspan referred to a much thumbed manual, retrieved a page that had
come loose and was floating to the cabin floor and said, "Er, SG598,
dash 3."

The designation SG indicated that the planet was located in the
constellation Sagittarius while the number simply indicated the local
star was the 598th to be catalogued in that sector and the planet the
third in line travelling spaceward.

"Catchy," muttered Murphy, although the planets they explored were
nearly always unnamed. It was supposed to be one of the perks of their
trade, to be able to submit a name to the Committee of Planetary
Nomenclature, and perhaps to be immortalized. They had discovered quite
early in their careers, however, that their claims were often
superseded by those of committee members, their husbands or wives,
children, local politicians, whoever. Thus there was no Planet
Greenspan or Murphy's World anywhere in the known universe, an omission
the two explorers had given up any hope of correcting.

The monitor attached to the exterior camera lost its fuzz as the dust
and detritus caused by their arrival floated back to the ground.

"We've landed in Paradise," said Murphy.

Greenspan looked up from the manual with a gluestick and half a page in
his hand. The monitor showed a profusion of plant life.

"Panning," said Murphy in response to Greenspan's unspoken request. The
camera moved across glades laden with greenery, its lens focussing on
springs of crystal clear water meandering through verdant meadows
before moving on to shrubs and trees nodding in the morning sunshine.
Everything that grew seemed to be in bud.

"Wow," said Greenspan, the repairs to the manual forgotten. "What a
great place for a picnic, Murph."

But first there was business to complete. With the professionalism born
of years of experience the two crewmen busied themselves sampling the
local flora. Of fauna, there seemed to be little sign.

"S'funny thing," grunted Murphy after four days of solid
cataloguing.

"Yeh, no significant animal life," said Greenspan, not looking up from
where he was slicing a section of a plant stem with a laser
microtome.

Greenspan slid the plant section onto a slide and placed it in the
viewer. On the monitor a perfectly regular stem cross section appeared,
in giant detail. Greenspan gazed at the various transport vessels
stained red and green by the two dyes he'd dipped the plant in.
"Dicot," he said, tapped it into the computer and tagged it with the
slide's serial number. "Dicot number 6,816."

"Damn waste of a lot of biomass, if you ask me," said Murphy. " Several
thousand tons of plant material and nothing bigger than a gnat to eat
it."

It was true. While a few insects hovered in the glades, there was no
flutter of wings or trill of bird song and there was no sign that any
reptile or mammal had ever patrolled the undergrowth. The soil teemed
with life, worms along with bacteria and other micro organisms broke
down the dead plant material, but there was no moth to lay its eggs on
the leaves, no shrew to feed on the larvae, no dove cooing to its mate,
no ant eater to lick the ants from under the rotting logs. It was
weird.

"Let's take a trip north," said Murphy. "Maybe we'll find something
when we get out of the equatorial zone."

The landing vehicle flew north at 500 meters. Murphy and Greenspan
gazed out the port holes at mountains that climbed to the clouds then
descended to plains, all covered in a dense blanket of plant life. As
the climate grew cooler with their passage northward, the vegetation
changed from sub tropical to temperate, but its density and profusion
never changed.

"Paradise is boring," announced Murphy, not taking his eyes from the
motion sensor that was scanning a kilometer either side of the ship.
"Empty, too."

Greenspan didn't bother to register his agreement. He knocked the ship
off auto and grasping the steering yoke, headed away from the single
island continent that stretched from pole to pole and comprised the
planet's entire land mass, aiming for the coast. They crossed it, gold
fringed, and screamed out over the ocean.

"This is fun, Spanny," Murphy said dryly. And then was riveted to the
screen in front of him as the motion sensor went crazy. He adjusted the
scale to react only to life forms larger than a metre in length. The
screen settled down, registering blips every half minute or so.

Greenspan, set the autopilot to hover a discreet fifty meters above the
ocean surface and walked over to sit beside his colleague.

"Resettlement's going to love this place. The animal life's all in the
sea and the land is covered in greenery. We'll get a commendation.
Maybe even a bonus. We really have discovered paradise."

The motion sensor registered a large blip, before settling back to its
former routine.
"That was a big one," Murphy said. "Do you suppose there's anything
sentient in the ocean? Is there anyone down there?"

Greenspan got up from his seat and stretched himself out on a sleep
couch. "I'll tell you in the morning, Murph."

Murphy grunted and opaqued the portholes, bringing twilight to the
cabin but no rest to his mind.

Eight hours later, the portholes de-opaqued and it was morning.
Greenspan groaned in his couch and opened an eye. It focussed on his
colleague who was sitting at the screen , flicking through the planet
inventory. He didn't look happy. Greenspan groaned again, "I know
something's worrying you, Murphy. And I know that you know that I know.
So let's talk about it. You make the breakfast, okay?'

Murphy didn't look away from the screen but pointed to the small
galley. There was a pot of coffee and a pile of croissants, both
steaming, on the table.

"Okay, let's talk about it now," said Greenspan with resignation.

"It just doesn't feel right, Spanny," said Murphy after two hours of
solid debate, cupping both hands around his coffee mug, elbows on the
table, staring straight ahead as he sorted through his instinctive
messages. "I can't be specific, I just know something's not right. The
rules are being broken on this planet."

Greenspan picked up the coffee jug and placed it under the spigot for
the third time since they'd first sat down. It began to spit fresh
ground coffee into the jug immediately.

"I don't know that they were ever rules, Murph - guidelines sure. But
this is a big universe - maybe our ecology, our hierarchies don't work
here. This place could be different, you know."

"Have we, or anyone else for that matter, ever catalogued a planet that
varied in any significant way from Dawkin's Blueprint?" Murphy paused
while his shipmate scratched his chin. "No, not one!" he said answering
his own question.

"You're right, Murph," said Greenspan, giving in to the undeniable
correctness of Murphy's statement. "Beats me how this place
ticks."

"We've missed something, Spanny. Out there," Murphy gestured to the
porthole, "is the answer that will confirm the rule."

Dawkins Blueprint was a hypothesis laboriously constructed over a
lifetime by the great biologist and published at the beginning of the
21st century. What James Hutton's rules did in the 18th century for the
primitive science of geology, Dawkins Blueprint did for xenobiology in
the 21st. While the author never ventured off Earth, the rules he
constructed about life elsewhere turned out to be remarkably accurate.
So accurate that his Blueprint spawned a religion which used it as
proof of God's existence. If you want to see the Hand of God, look for
it in the bonding of chemicals, so went the litany of the Church of
Richard. Believers made great students, applying as they did religious
zeal to their studies. Greenspan and Murphy were both lapsed
Richardists.

Life wants to occur, so Dawkins had written, but it will always follow
the rules. Thus no first footers in more than a century of exploration
had ever come across a silicone-based life form. Neither did flight
ever precede the gift of sight. And flowering plants never developed
without abundant terrestrial animal life. Not seldom. Never.

But if the land areas were bereft of animal life, the sea more than
made up for it. Over the course of the next week, Greenspan and Murphy
carried on with the business of describing and recording the multitude
of marine life. A pattern emerged - several thousand species were
divided into genera, further sub divided into families and thus into a
hundred or so orders and roughly ten classes. The hierarchical
relationships were meticulously described by the two xenobiologists and
assigned properly obscure names that would later be considered by the
various committees of nomenclature and then submitted to the scientific
community. It was a process that took years. Between themselves,
though, they preferred something more prosaic than the teeth-chipping
names of proper taxonomy.

"It's another bouncer," said Greenspan as the net they had lowered into
the depths from the belly of the ship, emerged on the surface and the
creature within it proceeded to thump against the restraint. "Open the
net," he instructed the computer.

"Belay that order!"

The computer obeyed its last instruction and the net remained closed,
swinging on its tether as the bouncer became more frantic. Greenspan
turned from the monitor and raised a quizzical eyebrow at Murphy,
"Specimen?"

"Yeh," said Murphy. "Okay?"

"I'll ready the tank," replied Greenspan. He lowered an umbilical from
the ship which would suck up sufficient of the ocean below to provide
an environment for the creature now thrashing in the net. They called
them bouncers because they had the habit of leaping out of the ocean
and skipping across the surface, like a flat pebble skimmed across a
lake.
Other creatures were variously wrigglers, swarmers, thrashers,
frankensteins and one class of marine life whose members had the
capacity to gulp in air from the surface and expand their internal
cavities until they swelled like balloons and floated free. After an
interval of anything up to an hour the air was released in an explosive
belch and they fell back to the ocean. Zeppies Greenspan and Murphy had
named them for this ability and their cigar shaped forms. Sometimes the
wind carried the zeppies for miles. The horizon was seldom completely
free of them.

Sedated and subdued, the two-metre-long bouncer floated in the specimen
tank. Its saucer-like eyes, magnified by the thick plastic, looked out
at the two crewmen accusingly.

Greenspan leaned back in his chair, locked his fingers behind his head
and stretched.
"Ahhh, that's better," he grimaced. "Murph, my boy, I believe we're
done. It's time for that picnic."

So it was that the two swarthy crewmen opened the airlock and for the
first time ventured out onto the surface of the planet tentatively
named Paradise. They sat astride a velo - a machine that resembled the
legendary Harley Davidson motor cycle except that the wheels were
replaced by turbines and two banks of nozzles, fore and aft, that blew
air at very high pressure. By swiveling the nozzles, the velo could be
made to go in any direction the riders decided.

"Which way, Murph?" said Greenspan from the forward saddle.

"Out there, Spanny!" replied Murphy from the rear saddle, pointing
dramatically into the interior like some heroic explorer.

Free of the constraints of the landing vehicle for the first time,
Greenspan exuberantly took the velo on a hair-raising ride at speed
just above the forest floor. Wisely, he allowed the on-board pilot to
actually steer the vehicle while he kept his hands lightly on the
steering bars, player piano style.

The velo looped around giant trees, banking between interlocking
branches where there was no margin for error and screamed through
avenues of shrubs before swooping down to hover over a clearing
containing a mirror-like pool. On sighing jets the velo sank softly to
land at the water's edge.

"Yo," whooped Greenspan, "that was a ride and a half!"

Even the thoughtful Murphy had been excited by the ride, leaping off
the velo and performing a little dance of triumph and freedom.
First-footing was an exacting and grueling marathon of identification
and classification. Finishing the task felt like the last day of
school.

Greenspan opened the generous panniers that were built into the fairing
of the velo and began taking out plastic containers of food which he
stacked on the local equivalent of the grass. This was followed by a
collapsible table, chairs and a sunshade. In a few moments the glade
had been transformed into a picnic spot, indistinguishable from any
park on Earth.

The meal, supplied by the ship's autochef, was a replica of similar
alfresco meals that Greenspan had enjoyed as a child. He had programmed
it into the autochef when they had officially taken over the James
Lovelock. It contained the recipes for chocolate cupcakes, gingerbread
men and peanut butter sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Greenspan's
inner child was particularly demonstrative but, thought the shrinks at
the Academy, it made a nice balance with Murphy's disciplined adult
which was quite dominant in his own psychological make-up.

Greenspan was soon munching on a crisp bread roll that he'd stuffed
with ham and salad. A piece of beetroot squeezed out of the roll and
plopped into his lap leaving a crimson trail down his coverall.

"Come on, Murph," said Greenspan, talking around the ham and salad
roll, "get into the spirit of things. We're done. We can go
home."

Murphy grunted and began loading a roll of his own with cooked meat and
salad. He left out the beetroot, after glancing at Greenspan's stained
clothes.

Murphy worried at his roll, tearing off small segments with his teeth.
Through the vegetation at the edge of the clearing he glimpsed patches
of blue and gold - the sea and the beach. The soft lapping of waves
drifted through the glade.

"Sure is weird without birds and insects, Murph," said Greenspan, spoon
poised over a waxed cup of green jelly with a covering of sugar rainbow
sprinkles. "You don't notice them usually, but you sure miss 'em when
they're not there."

Behind the two men, on the edge of the clearing, a large shrub began
blooming, its flowers opening with an audible pop to reveal brilliant
yellow petals. The flowers' stamens unfurled, black filaments tipped
with blue. Finally, the stigmas emerged. An faint perfume drifted
across the glade.

Both men turned in their chairs to gaze at the phenomenon. Murphy
leaped to his feet as if stung. "Goddamn it, Greenspan. Now you tell
me, if there's no significant animal life and no insects to speak of,
what's pollinating those flowers!"

As if to emphasize his argument, other shrubs and trees in the vicinity
began opening their own flowers. There were blooms of every shape,
varying from tiny bell-like blossoms to titans two meters across. Every
primary color was present, but the dominant attractant appeared to be
fragrance. Murphy and Greenspan began to feel light-headed.

"Pack up the stuff, Spanny. Let's get our kits. Something's
pollinating these flowers and it sure ain't the wind." Murphy indicated
the largest blooms with a jerk of his head. A vivid green spike
protruded from the center of the flowers - the pistil - it was covered
in pollen grains the size of gravel. "Not unless they get the mother
and father of winds on this planet , that is."

Packed and sitting astride the velo, Greenspan's inner child intruded
with a note of regret.
"It's a pity, I was enjoying myself." He then pressed the starter
button and allowed the velo to rise on its air cushion. The twist grip
throttle rotated the jets and the velo moved forward toward the beach
and the ship.

It was as well that the velo slowed to negotiate a particularly dense
copse of rose-like plants whose branches were groaning with vermilion
flowers. It barred their entry to the beach and the ship. The two
biologists avoided being torn to shreds on the sharp thorns
as the velo's pilot eventually identified a path around them. Instead
of bursting onto the fringe of sugary sand with belching jets the velo
arrived cautiously. Greenspan set it down and shading his eyes looked
out to sea where the ship hovered.

"Lots of zeppies today, Murph," said Greenspan, the beginnings of
concern on his face.

There were indeed a lot of the cigar shaped creatures, on the horizon
and closer in, being blown towards the beach and the two men by a stiff
on-shore breeze.

"Do you think they could be the pollinators?" said Greenspan
again.

Murphy paused to think about it before speaking. Pollination was his
specialty. "Very hit and miss strategy. The breeze might blow the
zeppies onto the plants but how do you ensure that they carry the
pollen load to others?" replied Murphy, also shading his eyes against
the setting sun.

"They're coming this way," said Greenspan nervously. "Maybe we should
get back to the ship."

The breeze suddenly picked up and the shoal?, flock? of zeppies put on
a little aerial spurt that put them between the two xenobiologists and
the ship. Murphy hesitated, human instinct overriding scientific
curiosity. The two xenobiologists watched the zeppies float closer. At
the surf line they all dropped to the water with a collective sigh,
audible even above the sound of the waves and disappeared beneath the
surface.

Another cloud of the floating creatures appeared over the horizon.
Greenspan turned to Murphy, embarrassed that he had been slightly
afraid.

"Let's get our kits and get some cameras set up. You're right -
something must be pollinating those flowers. Our job here isn't
finished after all."

Murphy was still looking out to sea, his eyes flicking between the spot
where the creatures had landed in the water and the new bunch of
approaching zeppies. Greenspan was already astride the velo. He blipped
the throttle causing the machine to rise up on its air cushion and then
settle. "Come on, Murph, let's make it before that bunch of zeppies
arrives, eh."

Murphy turned away and began mounting the velo. As he was buckling up,
something horrible crawled out of the surf and began scampering along
the strand on six legs with clacking mandibles and spurred joints. It
was joined by others. They looked like giant cockroaches. Giant,
dangerous cockroaches.

"Jeez, Murph, I don't remember classifying anything like that," said
Greenspan. He pushed the throttle against the stop and the velo roared
and leaped into the air. The noise and the sand blown into the air by
the jets had caught the attention of the creatures. They paused for a
moment to locate the source of the noise, then began scuttling towards
them. Their carapaces opened to reveal two sets of wings. As the velo
took off, so did the creatures. Greenspan reacted instinctively and
swiveled the jets through 180 degrees. As it was designed to do, the
velo flipped in the air and took off in the opposite direction, away
from the creatures, back into the jungle.

The swarm of giant, flying cockroaches fell behind and after ten
minutes Greenspan felt confident enough to slow down. He brought the
velo to a gentle stop above a level patch formed by the angle of fallen
trees, then gently let the machine settle to the ground.
For a moment the two men didn't speak because conversation was
redundant at that point in time between the two of them. What the hell
was that! How could have missed them! We're going to have start
classifying all over again! Damn! Those were the thoughts that passed
through their minds. There was no need to vocalize them.

"We've got to get back to the ship," said Murphy at last.

"There's no evidence that those creatures were hostile," replied
Greenspan. "They may have been curious."

"I don't want to take the chance, do you? Also, we don't know what
other life forms are going to be surfing into shore. If we missed
these, we may have missed several other species. Murphy, do you think
those...things, were zeppies?"

"I think there's more than a good chance. And if they were then we have
to assume that the rest of the marine life is some sort of larval
stage, too."

Greenspan's mouth made an ooh, "Mosquitoes, metre-long mosquitoes. Wait
on, if they're pollinating the flowers then they have to be nectar or
pollen feeders, don't they?"

Murphy thought about it, for a second. "It makes sense - if anything
makes sense in this place. I guess we'll find out more when we
look."

The two short, swarthy xenobiologists climbed aboard the velo.
Greenspan took them cautiously to a height of two meters and headed for
the beach. It was a slow flight, the two men alert for anything that
might be hostile, but the forest floor, although covered in a carpet of
plant life, had not yet burst into bloom or attracted any life
forms.

"Lack of light, I expect," said Murphy in Greenspan's ear in response
to his partner's unspoken question. "Photoperiod turns them on, just
like everywhere else. It must be Spring, I guess." Neither of them had
noticed any difference in the local climate during the few weeks they
had been there, probably due to their location in the tropical
zone.

The velo purred up to the vegetation fringing the beach and Greenspan
brought the vehicle to a stop and let it settle behind the trunk of a
gnarled old tree that had probably been there for centuries. As other
vegetation had grown up, it had competed for the light, so that now,
although its roots and trunk were in shade, its upper branches craned
forward over the beach. It was the perfect place to spy from.

Murphy climbed out of his saddle and began clambering up the trunk. He
paused to look back at Greenspan waiting patiently, still astride the
velo. Murphy gave him a grin he did not feel.

Murphy continued upwards into the foliage and finding a stout branch
that thrust over the beach crawled along it on his belly. He parted the
leaves at the end of the branch and looked out over the sand.

The beach was a battlefield.

It took Murphy a moment to take in what he was witnessing. The beach
was littered with the corpses of monsters, many of them still
twitching, some of them still being torn apart by other monsters, their
attackers. He counted at least a dozen different species before his
xenobiologist's mind gave up on the task. Each set of waves seemed to
bring fresh reinforcements to the battle. He saw one creature, a
segmented worm with three rows of legs and huge sail-like wings charge
up the beach with antennae waving. Two wasp-like creatures detached
themselves from a swarm that was attacking a zeppy-cockroach.The wasps,
buzzing like saws, dive-bombed the galloping worm. The sharp spike that
protruded like a black scimitar from their foreheads sliced through the
worm. Fountains of green goo erupted and the segmented worm writhed.
Murphy saw why the worm was segmented. It split into several segments
and the individual parts, those that had not been gutted by the wasps,
continued their flight up the beach. That's some survival strategy
Murphy thought to himself. In spite of the unremitting attacks by the
dive-bombing wasps, two of the worm segments made it to the fringe of
forest and the sanctuary of a large shrub. They disappeared into the
floral tube of one of its creamy yellow flowers. The flower began
rhythmically undulating from the movement of the creatures inside.
They'd been inside for only a few seconds when the wasps returned and
it took only a few seconds for their razor sharp spikes to harry the
worm segments. They wriggled out of the shrub and fled to another of
the same species close by where the ritual was repeated.

Murphy saw that amid the chaos of the battle, there was a clear
objective for some of the monster species - to reach particular trees
or shrubs. Why the monsters should be fighting among themselves, Murphy
had no idea. They didn't seem to be competing for the right to visit
the same plants, after all. He was mystified.

Sliding backwards down the branch he speculated that it must be part of
the pollination strategy of the plants. He couldn't get the overall
picture, though; he left it to his hindbrain to work on it while he
concentrated on survival. He made an undignified return to where
Greenspan waited, landing on his back at the base of the tree, arms and
legs in the air. Grenspan didn't even crack a smile - his inner child
was hiding in terror.

When Murphy had risen to his feet, dusting leaves and dirt from
himself, he saw Greenspan apologetically holding up a large carving
knife, part of the picnic set. "It's all I could find, Murph," he said.
"It's not going to be enough, is it?"

Murphy shrugged, "We could have artillery and a brigade of marines and
we'd still have a battle on our hands."

Greenspan tucked the knife in his belt. "I've been thinking, Murph. If
the marine life we've been classifying is larval, then where are the
adult stages? Why haven't we seen any mature creatures?"

Murphy gestured in the direction of the beach, "They're all out there,
on the beach, Spanny, beating the shit out of each other."

"Okay, but when they've finished fighting, where do they go? We haven't
seen a sign of them and we've been looking kinda hard, Murph."

"Yeh, I know, it's a damn puzzle."

Greenspan stuffed his hands into the capacious pockets of his coverall,
"Any chance of making it back to the ship, Murph?"

"Not for a while. I think we should retreat into the interior aways and
hole up. The mature stage is probably senescent - they'll mate, lay
eggs and die. That's why we haven't seen any mature adults, I
expect."

Greenspan scratched his head in puzzlement, "Yeh, I guess. Funny,
though - I mean, there are always flies and mosquitoes around."

There was a loud pop from overhead, followed by another, then still
another. A royal blue bloom glistened high in the trees. Immediately a
thick, cloying perfume filled the air. The sounds of battle on the
beach beyond approached still closer. Murphy jumped astride the velo
and strapped himself in, "Move it, Spanny, it's the smell of the
flowers that attracts the creatures. And they're not friendly, I can
assure you."

His partner gunned the velo's turbines and pointed the nose inland.
Behind them, a pack of snake-like creatures was swarming all over the
tree while more of the wasps that Murphy had seen earlier swooped and
slashed at them.

They entered the dark coolness of the forest underlayer. Ferny fronds
snatched at them as they glided along its twilight paths. Rounding a
massive fallen log, they glimpsed ahead of them, shining like an
emerald on velvet, a patch of forest floor open to the sky. Greenspan
headed for it, slowed and parked on its edge. Safe.

Greenspan's inner child made a cautious reappearance, "Seeing as we've
got time to kill, Murph, we might as well finish our picnic. What do
you think?"

Later, full of ham and salad, raspberry jelly and jam tarts, the two
men lay on their backs on the grass-like herb that served as a
universal groundcover on this planet. Murphy's eyes drooped and
travelled back to his last holiday on Frolic. Greenspan soon joined him
in his dream and the soft susurration of snoring buzzed through the
glade. As they revisited the pleasure palaces of the famous holiday
planet, the sunlight was reviving a plant that had remained dormant on
the forest floor for many seasons. It needed only a small gap in the
canopy above caused by a falling tree to give it life again.

With stately elegance the plant extended a massive leaf that had been
tightly curled around its stem. It was followed by another. Other
plants of the same species, sprung from seeds blown here perhaps a
century ago, also began extending leaves. With the fronds extended to
catch the sunlight, the plants began making food at a frantic pace,
knowing that their time was limited. Finally, from the center of each
plant grew a massive flowerbud on a drooping stalk, and as the petals
opened it actually creaked. The glade filled with an irresistible
odor.

"Whassat that you said, my dear?" Greenspan swam up to the surface of
consciousness reluctantly from his dream. He awoke fully and sat up. He
felt...aroused, vital, full of vigor. He glanced up to see his partner
leaning over the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. She wanted him.
He had to have her. Murphy would have to look elsewhere.

Grasping his partner by the shoulder, he roughly pulled him around,
"Sorry, Murph, she's mine, " he snarled.

His partner's eyes narrowed menacingly and he shrugged his shoulder
away from Greenspan's grasp, "Take your hands off of me, Greenspan. You
can wait your turn - which will never come," he added derisively. He
looked his partner up and down,
"Why would she want a slob like you, with food stains all over him
anyway."

"You...," the rage inside Greenspan would not be denied. He snatched
the knife from his belt and flung himself at Murphy, a snarl already
formed over bared teeth. The two men fell backwards, hand at wrist,
clawing for the throat, screaming like two cats. They fell into the
middle of the huge flower and rolled around, lunging at each other
before one kicked the other out with a well-timed boot. Murphy
retreated on his knees, his body coated in yellow dust from the flower.
Greenspan rolled out of the flower and leaped after him, also covered
in the yellow dust. Murphy tripped him and they both fell headlong into
another of the huge blooms, fought again for possession of the knife
with knees and elbows and teeth.

Both men were becoming tired, unused as they were to physical exertion.
The small clearing, initially so pristine, was showing signs of the
struggle. Most of the blooms had figured in the fight and were closing
up, the ground cover was scuffed and torn and everywhere there were
torn leaves and branches, even the velo had a long scratch in the
paintwork of one of its panniers, caused by a vicious stab of the knife
that would have hamstrung Murphy had it landed.

The two xenobiologists lay under the last of the open blooms, Greenspan
on top of Murphy, his knife centimeters away from his partner's throat,
straining like a mad thing to plunge it into his flesh while Murphy,
teeth bared in an agony of effort, held his wrist with ebbing strength.
The bloom, like the others, withered and ceased emitting its potent
scent.
"Spanny," Murphy gasped as the last of his strength left him, "please
don't. I love you."

And the knife paused at the last second and was withdrawn.

"My God, Murphy, I nearly killed you," gasped Greenspan turning away
and retching. "What was that insanity?"

Murphy was still too tapped out to do anything but lie on his back and
sob for breath.
Greenspan continued.

"There was a woman here - I wanted her and I had to fight you for her.
It was the only
thing that was important." Greenspan tailed off in an agony of grief
for his part in the near-tragedy.

Murphy propped himself up on a scraped elbow, winced as the earth
ground in to the raw flesh and sat up. "I feel as if I've gone ten
rounds with Sonny Liston."

"Who?" said Greenspan.

"Black fist fighter, Twentieth Century. Tough old bastard, just like
you."

This set off a fresh wave of guilt in Greenspan, " Murph, I'm
sorry..."

Murphy managed a laugh that ended in a fit of coughing, "Not your
fault, Spanny, I'd have killed you if I'd gotten inside your guard. I
believe we were both victims of a pretty powerful survival strategy.
Let's get back to the ship and let the 'doc look us over, I think I
might have cracked a rib."

"Yeh," said Greenspan, grinning, "I ain't so good either. Look." His
two front teeth were broken off at gum level.

They paused at the border between jungle and beach, hovering at ten
meters, hand poised on the emergency boost, but the danger was past.
The waves were even now sweeping the corpses from the sand. Those that
had fallen inland would rot down to provide fertilizer for the plants
they had so viciously fought over.

"I wonder where they lay their eggs?" Murphy mused to himself. "Perhaps
they lay them in the sand of the beach and when they hatch the
vestigial larvae crawl down into the water. Who knows?"

"Probably lay 'em in the sand," said Greenspan over his shoulder, his
missing teeth causing him to lisp. "When they hatch they crawl into the
water. Like turtles." Good, the bond was working again.

They paused before the airlock of the ship. "We've got one of those
things in there, Murph," said Greenspan, "A bouncer. Wonder what it
turned into?"

They pulled to one side of the hovering reentry vehicle and operated
the automatic airlock recycle mechanism from the dashboard of the velo.
No monster with slavering fangs rushed out at them, just a sheet of
water. The two men had learned respect for the fauna of Paradise and it
was with great caution that they sidled the velo up to the door and
peered in. One of the great wasps, black horn glinting malevolently,
perched on the dissection table amid the devastation of the dissection
tank. Seeing the two men, it chittered and scuttled forward. Murphy
extended a shaking hand and patted the head that it had extended out of
the airlock door.

"Well, that proves it, I guess," he said.

Back in the mother ship far above the jungle the two xenobiologists
were again able to don the mantle of their profession. The 'doc had
patched and grafted, splinted and sutured the two pioneers injuries.
And in the case of Greenspan's dentistry, performed a complete oral
renewal so that his teeth, firm as marble set in granite, gleamed
magnificently.

Murphy and Greenspan completed their individual reports, stamped and
sealed them and popped them into the slot on the drone. Then Greenspan,
ever the child, brought forth a bottle of Frolic champagne, popped the
cork, poured the foaming liquid into real crystal glasses and proposed
the toast: "I give you the planet Surprise. May all who visit her
survive and prosper!"

"It's an amazing thing, Spanny," said Murphy still only on his second
glass of champagne
in spite of having sat in discussion for several hours. "An
interventionist plant species is very unusual in a hierarchical system.
But not unheard of, or at least, not unconsidered in the
Blueprint."

Greenspan beamed at him over his fifth glass of Frolic champagne.

"What an amazing strategy, though. We isolated a pheromone, an
hallucinogen and a narcotic in those plant samples we managed to
salvage. Fantastic! First lure your pollinator, then deceive him into
thinking you're the most desirable thing ever conceived. Finally,
enrage him so such an extent that you pursue, or are pursued, from
flower to flower pollinating as you go. Spanny, it was us who
pollinated those lilies just as we were supposed to!"

Greenspan topped up his glass, still grinning.

"And that's why all the animal life is in the ocean. On land, the
strategy is so successful nothing survives the Spring. I'll bet most of
those creatures I saw were, in reality, quite docile. Just like Horace,
in fact."

On hearing his name, the giant wasp crept forward to be stroked and
patted, butting his head against Murphy's chair like a love-sick
dog.

"That doesn't explain why we were affected by that one species in the
forest when all the others had no effect at all." A small frown crossed
his face. "Ah, let's leave it to the xenoanthropologists and the rest
of them to find out, I've had quite enough of Surprise to last me a
lifetime."

Greenspan continued to grin.

Finally Murphy could stand it no longer, "Spanny, what are you grinning
about? Have you had too much champagne!"

"You said you loved me. I remember quite clearly, you said, 'Please
don't - I love you.'"

Murphy was unembarrassed, "Well, I had to get you to stop somehow,
Spanny. And in any case, I'm kinda fond of you, you know."

"Yeh, I know," said the half-drunk xenobiologist, "That's why we get
on."

"Spanny," said Murphy, "you've had too much pheromone for your own
good. Damn good thing we're going on a vacation."

"A vacation?" said Murphy.

"A vacation, Spanny. Four weeks on Frolic, all expenses paid."

"Murph," said Greenspan, "I love you."

"Yeh, I know . That's why we get on."