Rej Bredberi - Here There Be Tygers

You have to beat a planet at its own game, said Chatterton. Get in, rip it up, poison its animals, dam its rivers, sow its fields, depollinate its air, mine it, nail it down, hack away at it, and get the hell out from under when you have what you want. Otherwise, a planet will fix you good. You can't trust planets. They're bound to be different, bound to be bad, bound to be out to get you, especially this far off, a billion miles from nowhere, so you get them first. Tear their skin off, I say. Drag out the minerals and run away before the damn world explodes in your face. That's the way to treat them.

The rocket ship sank down towards planet 7 of star system 84. They had travelled millions upon millions of miles. Earth was far away, her system and her sun forgotten, her system settled and investigated and profited on, and other systems rummaged through and milked and tidied up, and now the rockets of these tiny men from an impossibly remote planet were probing out to far universes. In a few months, a few years, they could travel anywhere, for the speed of their rocket was the speed of a god, and now for the ten thousandth time one of the rockets of the far-circling hunt was feathering down towards an alien world.

No, said Captain Forester. I have too much respect for other worlds to treat them the way you want to, Chatterton. It's not my business to rape or ruin, anyway, thank God. I'm glad I'm just a rocket man. You're the anthropologist-mineralogist. Go ahead, do your mining and ripping and scraping. I'll just watch. I'll just go around looking at this new world, whatever it is, however it seems. I like to look. All rocket men are lookers or they wouldn't be rocket men. You like to smell new airs, if you're a rocket man, and see new colours and new people if there are new people to see, and new oceans and islands.

Take your gun along, said Chatterton. In my holster, said Forester. They turned to the port together and saw the green world rising to meet their ship. I wonder what it thinks of us? said Forester.

It won't like me, said Chatterton. By God, I'll see to it it won't like me. And I don't care, you know. I don't give a damn. I'm out for the money. Land us over there, will you, Captain; that looks like iron country if I ever saw it. It was the freshest green colour they had seen since childhood.

Lakes lay like clear blue water droplets through the soft hills; there were no loud highways, signboards, or cities. It's a sea of green golf-links, thought Forester, which goes on for ever. Putting greens, driving greens, you could walk ten thousand miles in any direction and never finish your game. A Sunday planet, a croquet-lawn world, where you could lie on your back, clover in your lips, eyes half-shut, smiling at the sky, smelling the grass, drowse through an eternal Sabbath, rousing only on occasion to turn the

Sunday paper or crack the red-striped wooden ball through the hoop.

If ever a planet was a woman, this one is.

Woman on the outside, man on the inside, said Chatterton. All hard underneath, all male iron, copper, uranium, black sod. Don't let the cosmetics fool you.

He walked to the bin where the Earth Drill waited. Its great screw-snout glittered bluely, ready to stab seventy feet deep and suck out corks of earth, deeper still with extensions into the heart of the planet. Chatterton winked at it. We'll fix your woman, Forester, but good.

Yes, I know you will, said Forester, quietly.

The rocket landed.

It's too green, too peaceful, said Chatterton; I don't like it.

He turned to the captain. We'll go out with our rifles.

I give orders, if you don't mind.

Yes, and my company pays our way with millions of dollars of machinery we must protect; quite an investment.

The air on the new planet 7 in star system 84 was good. The port swung wide. The men filed out into the greenhouse world.

The last man to emerge was Chatterton, gun in hand.

As Chatterton set foot to the green lawn, the earth trembled. The grass shook. The distant forest rumbled. The sky seemed to blink and darken imperceptibly. The men were watching Chatterton when it happened.

An earthquake, by God!

Chatterton's face paled. Everyone laughed.

It doesn't like you, Chatterton!

Nonsense!

The trembling died away at last.

Well, said Captain Forester, it didn't quake for us, so it must be that it doesn't approve of your philosophy.

Coincidence, Chatterton smiled. Come on now on the double. I want the Drill out here in a half-hour for a few samplings.

Just a moment. Forester stopped laughing. We've got to clear the area first, be certain there're no hostile people or animals. Besides, it isn't every year you hit a planet like this, very nice; can you blame us if we want to have a look at it?

All right. Chatterton joined them. Let's get it over with.

They left a guard at the ship and they walked away over fields and meadows, over small hills and into little valleys. Like a bunch of boys out hiking on the finest day of the best summer in the most beautiful year in history, walking in the croquet weather where if you listened you could hear the whisper of the wooden ball across grass, the click through the hoop, the gentle undulations of voices, a sudden high drift of women's laughter from some ivy-shaded porch, the tinkle of ice in the summer tea-pitcher.

Hey, said Driscoll, one of the younger crewmen, sniffing the air. I brought a baseball and bat; we'll have a game later. What a diamond!

The men laughed quietly in the baseball season, in the good quiet wind for tennis, in the weather for bicycling and picking wild grapes.

How'd you like the job of mowing all this? asked Driscoll.

The men stopped.

I knew there was something wrong! cried Chatter-ton. This grass; it's freshly cut!

Probably a species of dichondra, always short.

Chatterton spat on the green grass and rubbed it in with his boot. I don't like it, I don't like it. If anything happened to us, no one on Earth would ever know. Silly policy: if a rocket fails to return, we never send a second rocket to check the reason why.

Natural enough, explained Forester. We can't waste time on a thousand hostile worlds, fighting futile wars. Each rocket represents years, money, lives. We can't afford to waste two rockets if one rocket proves a planet hostile. We go on to peaceful planets. Like this one.

I often wonder, said Driscoll, what happened to all those lost expeditions on worlds we'll never try again.

Chatterton eyed the distant forest. They were shot, stabbed, broiled for dinner. Even as we may be, any minute. It's time we got back to work, Captain!

They stood at the top of a little rise.

Feel, said Driscoll, his hands and arms out loosely. Remember how you used to run when you were a kid, and how the wind felt? Like feathers on your arms. You ran and thought any minute you'd fly, but you never quite did.

The men stood remembering. There was a smell of pollen and new rain drying upon a million grass blades.

Driscoll gave a little run. Feel it, by God, the wind! You know, we never have really flown by ourselves. We have to sit inside tons of metal, away from flying, really. We've never flown like birds fly, to themselves. Wouldn't it be nice to put your arms out like this He extended his arms. And run. He ran ahead of them, laughing at his idiocy. And fly! he cried. He flew.

Time passed on the silent gold wrist-watches of the men standing below. They stared up. And from the sky came a high sound of almost unbelievable laughter.

Tell him to come down, whispered Chatterton. He'll be killed.

Nobody heard. Their faces were raised away from Chatterton; they were stunned and smiling.

At last Driscoll landed at their feet. Did you see me? My God, I flew! They had seen.