The Sirian Experiments

Who was—who? Or what? Canopus?

This was why I caused the request to be sent that we might borrow or lease their Great Mountains. This was the cause of the disappointment at their refusal.

So! I was not to see Klorathy yet… Very well then. I set myself to my task, and again pushed these thoughts to the back of my mind.

A map of Isolated Southern Continent II shows that rather more than a third of the way down the mountain chain is a lake high among the peaks.

What we wanted was to accustom a sufficient number of suitable individuals to living on sparse supplies of oxygen. It happened that we had, on our Colonised Planet 2, some high mountains, and on them were living a species able to function on comparatively little oxygen. But they had been established for generations. We needed flexibility, adaptability. After some thought, we chose a species from C.P. 9, a damp, dismal sort of place, whose nature was to match, phlegmatic and dour. We space-lifted 30,000 of them not to the highest peaks but to a plateau halfway up a mountain range that had sparse but adequate food, and a wet changeable climate. There left them, under supervision, to adapt.

Meanwhile, 3 (1) was being surveyed and prepared. I visited there, I suppose it could be said, from curiosity, though there was not much on the place to feed interest.

It was arid, chilly, dusty. There were semi-frozen marshes, maintaining some sluggish lizards and frogs.

The vegetation was lichens, and a curious form of marsh weed that seemed half-animal. At any rate, while being anchored at one end in mud or slushy ice, the fronds, branches, feelers, crawled about all over the surface of the soil, sometimes even lifting and overturning stones and rocks, or burrowing down into mud, for the primitive insects and crustaceans. Sometimes these branches were half an R-mile long, and a single plant could cover a square mile. These animal-plants were a danger to our technicians. One was walking through what she believed to be quite ordinary, if unfamiliar vegetation, when the creature reached up with its “hands” or feelers, and tugged her over, and when she was rescued, it was only just in time, for the “plant” had already begun to dismantle her spacesuit, undoing screws and fastenings in search of the—obviously—delectable food within. This caused much excitement among our naturalists, it goes without saying; but as for me, I had a more localised interest in the place, namely, whether it would indeed be possible to change the planet’s climate, as our experts claimed. It had one great advantage from our point of view: there was oxygen locked up in the soil.

This moon revolves about Planet 3 four times in its year, and spins on its axis once. Planet 3 is far from its sun, and is itself on the cold and lethargic side.

I left instructions to follow our experts’ recommendations that thermonuclear explosions should be tried, with the aim of warming the planet, and returned to the settlement of our experimentees on the mountainside of Isolated S.C. II.

Enough time had passed for the first generation to have died out, and it was now a question of examining their progeny for signs of possible failure. None was found. Although they were existing on an oxygen supply of two-thirds of their familiar conditions on C.P. 9, they seemed to be thriving. I therefore took a decision: instead of giving them a further intermediate acclimatisation period, I ordered them to be transferred at once to as high as it was possible for animals to subsist. This was at over 15,000 R-feet, more than twice the height of their previous station, and the drop in oxygen level was severe, not only in comparison with that station halfway up the range but particularly in comparison with their Home Planet. The experts reported their lungs were already enlarging. I saw them established. It was now such an effort for them to accomplish what was needed that I ordered an abandonment of our usual policy and had housing installed for them.

As it happened, it was possible to get this from a Canopean settlement on the Isolated Northern Continent—I was interested, more than interested, in how this happened. I was pondering about how to get this housing easily, for while we had settlements over the other side of the mountain range—this was not far, relatively speaking, from my settlement of the old days, in the time of the Lombis—it happened we were short of suitable aircraft. It was at this moment I had a message from Klorathy offering the materials I needed. I record that I merely noted that this was Klorathy, that he was at work so close, in the continent north of this one, and that he had known where I was. I noted it, and went on with my task.

I did not meet the fleet of their cargocraft as they arrived on the sea parallel with the mountains we were on, for I was convinced that Klorathy would not be there personally. The materials were lifted to the high plateaux by our craft. The settlement was soon in existence, double-storey wooden buildings, set out according to a plan that was found attached to the consignments of dismantled dwellings. I merely ordered this plan to be put into effect.

The Planet 9 animals were not the most attractive I have known! Again, they were of small build, not more than three to four R-feet. They were stocky, and their original hairiness already enhanced, because of these cold heights they were adapting to. Very bright glassy blue eyes peered from under shelves of reddish fur. They had bred three or four or even five to a litter, but already were giving birth to only two or at the most three. They were strong, physically, but more importantly—as we believed—strong by moral nature. That is, they were not subject to emotional collapse under difficulties.

I watched these animals in their snowy valley lifted high up among those dreadful peaks, moving slowly in packs and groups, turning as one to face a new challenge—as, for instance, my appearance among them, or that of their supervisors. They stabilised their balance on long thick staves, and set their furry legs wide apart… the slow difficult turn of their heads, and the careful swivel of the cold blue eyes… the baffled glassy stare… all this was to see, or to fancy that one did, animals drugged, or tranced. I had seen this species on their Planet 9, where they are hardly a volatile or quick-moving kind, but at least did have some native liveliness. I was sorry for them, I admit. They had been told, on being rounded up for this experiment, that they were to accomplish a task of the greatest importance to Sirius, and that they would be honoured by the Empire if they succeeded: and what now remained in their progeny of this sense of importance was a feeling of having been chosen, or set apart. The supervisors reported that their instruction to their young centred on their “special destiny” and their “superior qualities.” All this was satisfactory.

Their high valley, with its beautiful lake, enjoyed three months of summer, when they were able to grow brief crops of a cereal we introduced from our Central Cereal Stocks that was able to flourish in high places, and to come to fruition within the three months. This was their staple, but they grew, too, various kinds of marrow and pumpkin. They kept some sort of sheep for milk and meat. But they were not able wholly to maintain themselves, so slow and difficult were their lives, and so prolonged their periods of snow; and so we supplied them yearly with additional foodstuffs, telling them it was an expression of the gratitude of the Empire. After all, it was not our intention to breed a species self-sufficient under difficult circumstances, but to breed one able to stay alive in the early stages of the new existence of 3 (1).

I did not stay long on that trip. I had heard that the intermediary settlement, on the mountainside, had been visited by observers from a “kingdom” further north along the mountain chain, and that attempts had been made to kidnap some of the animals. Presumably as slaves. It was a slave state of a particularly unpleasant sort. Further attempts would probably be made.