Lloyd Biggle Jr. - The Orzu Problem

All right. So I’ve been in the government service for twenty years, and my rating is only Grade 10. That isn’t my fault. The Special Problems Section is a tough place to work. I’ve been up and down plenty of times during those twenty years. I’ve dropped from Grade 3 down to Grade 7, and once I went from Grade 2 all the way down to Grade 8. I never blamed anyone but myself for those demotions. When a man pulls a boner, he has to live with it.

This last time, though, I was at the top—a bona fide Grade 1, and the only one on this Base. Central Administration bounced me all the way to Grade 10 without a hearing, and I hadn’t done a thing. I was as innocent as a man can be in these corrupt times, and I can prove it.

It began with a letter, and the Chief brought it in himself. The Chief takes a personal interest in the members of his staff, and when he comes up with a first class stinker, he likes to see the expression on the face of the man that gets it. He leered at me, and slid the letter across my desk.

“Special Problems Section, Base XVI,” I read. “Requisition: With all possible dispatch furnish one pair live Orzus to Galaxia Zoological Gardens. Details as to capture and shipment are left to your discretion.”

“Pretty good joke,” I said. “I suppose we tell them to go chase their own Orzus?”

“We do not,” the Chief said.

I didn’t like his tone of voice. I snapped, “Since when does the Galaxia Zoological Gardens have any authority over Special Problems?”

“Ever since the Galactic Commission passed a special resolution ordering all Special Problems Sections to extend full cooperation. Galaxia Zoological Gardens are to have a prize collection of monstrosities from all over the galaxy. An added tourist attraction for the capital, they say, and maybe it’s a good idea. If the collection is hideous enough, it might make the politicians look good.”

“One pair live Orzus, coming up,” I said.

With considerable reluctance I laid aside the problem of the decreasing birth rate on Parmo, and went down to the libraitSr to stalk my Orzus.

Normally a problem of this type is no problem at all. Special Problems simply passes the request along to the local Colonial Administrator. The Administrator finds someone in his organization who can carry it out, and sends Special Problems a billing for any expense involved. Special Problems passes the billing along, with appropriate padding, of course, to the department that originated the request. And the problem is buried in an Action Taken file.

The library had a new girl in the reference section—a trim little redhead with green eyes and the kind of figure I didn’t think they allowed out on the perimeter.

“Where did you come from?” I said. “I thought this Base had some kind of regulation against being beautiful.”

“I’ve heard that line eighty-seven times in the last four days,” she said. “And I came out here to marry a man in the Supply Department.”

“Dial me one pair of Orzus,” I said.

She did. We worked out eleven different ways to spell Orzu, and all we got was a blank screen.

I went to see the Chief. “Just tell me one thing,” I said. “What’s an Orzu?”

The Chief laughed. “Maybe that’s why it’s a special problem.” Sometimes his sense of humor is positively malicious.

I went back to my desk and prepared a message for the Director of the Galaxia Zoological Gardens. “With regard to your request for one pair Orzus, please advise as to planet and species desired.”

I hoped he’d assume that this sector was overpopulated with Orzus and their near relations, and he’d have to do some research before he bothered me again. With luck, he might even decide to forget about his Orzus, I sent the message down to Communications, and went back to my problem of the birth rate on Parmo. I also went back to the problem of the little redhead.

I’ve been married eleven times, at various Bases around the galaxy, and that doesn’t include a number of unofficial cohabitation experiments. With due modesty I might say I’ve had a measure of practical experience that no psych-conditioning can touch, and it took me just three days to eliminate the opposition and take over.

There was only one drawback. She was a girl with old-fashioned ideas. No cohabitation for her—it had to be marriage or nothing. “All right,” I said. “Let’s get married.”

We set a date. My work was going along nicely. There is nothing quite like a decreasing-birth-rate problem for a man planning to get married. Then back came the reply from the Director of Galaxia Zoological Gardens, by high-priority space relay.

“Orzus desired native to planet Arnicus, Pron II, Sector 1169,” he wrote. “Reference Journal of Galactic Explorations, Vol. LXVI, No. 5, p. 1043.”

Whereupon I wrote out a requisition for one pair of live Orzus, to be shipped to the Galaxia Zoological Gardens, and addressed it to the Colonial Administrator on Arnicus.

It was that simple. I sent it down to Communications. Communications sent it right back with a sarcastic note to the effect that there was no Colonial Administrator on Arnicus. In fact, there wasn’t anybody on Arnicus. The place wasn’t deemed fit for human habitation.

Back to the library I went, and my redhead wasn’t exactly pleased to find me there on business. I checked out the reel of the appropriate number of the Journal of Galactic Exploration, and dug up a few survey reports on Arnicus.

I started reading, and what I found would have curled my hair if I had any. Arnicus is a super-tropical world, with two continents at its polar caps, and five thousand miles of boiling ocean separating them. The average temperature at its poles is 200 Fahrenheit in the shade, with lots of shade, in the form of silty, swampy jungle.

Orzu himself was specifically designed for populating nightmares—a giant reptile, nine feet high at the shoulders, fifteen feet long, and with a bristling crop of tentacles where his nose should have been. It was also claimed that he had three eyes. I doubted that the explorer had gotten close enough to count accurately, but on an Orzu one eye, more or less, couldn’t have much influence on the total effect.

I wrote up a little report on the generally hellish nature of Orzu and his environment, and took it to the Chief. He read it through as if he enjoyed it immensely. “When do you leave?” he said.

“When do I leave?” I squealed. “Listen, I can’t leave. I’m getting married next week.”

“You don’t say,” he said. He pulled my file, and went through it, counting slowly. “…eight, nine, ten, eleven! It isn’t as if it were something that hasn’t happened before. You’ll have plenty of time to get married after you collect the Orzus.” He grinned happily. “I’m glad this came along. I’ve been wanting to get you onto a normal-gravity base so you can see how much weight you’ve put on.”

“That’s a great idea,” I said. “Send me back to Terra for that leave I was supposed to have last year. I think the girl would like that. But leave Orzu out of it.”

“I’ll fix it up with Exploration to get you a ship and crew,” he said. “But you go along to boss the operation. Either you bring back Orzu, or you stay on Arnicus and grow your own tentacles. Special Problems has a reputation to maintain.”

As you know, Special Problems has top priority over any department except the military. It took just three days to get an expedition together and equip it. The military cooperated with the loan of a space cruiser.

As I had figured, my little redhead didn’t take kindly to the idea. She was looking forward to getting married, which is an excellent state of mind for a woman to be in. When I told her we’d have to wait she threw a tantrum and quite a few other things. The same night I saw her down by the space port strolling with her man from the Supply Department. And when I went down to the library to wish her good by, she told me not to hurry back.