Robert Sheckley - Off-Limits Planet

But add four psychotic bipeds to any normal biped world ...

The result could be catastrophic!

Bipeds, for all their good qualities, were nature's most delicate creatures. If psychotics were allowed to breed into normal stock, a sizeable percentage of the race could be infected. It had happened before.

Once infected, bipeds were the terror of the galaxy. Biped worlds had been known to go to war — against all and sundry. Hereditary nomads, the bipeds ranged through space, bombing any world that stood in their way. Often they smashed planets out of sheer pique, or used them as refueling stations, or as large targets.

The psychotic bipeds would naturally head for a biped world. They would land, acting quite normal, and be accepted in all good faith…

Olg prayed that the local authorities would be alert enough to apprehend them before any intermarriage had occurred.

When Loom returned with the list, they were ready. Swiftly they flew to the nearest biped world, landed, and made contact with the planetary representative.

"Have you any record of recent psychoses?" they asked the biped.

"I'll have to check the records," the biped said. He hurried to do so, but died of old age before his task was completed.

Olg and Loom cursed their bad luck. They had hit a world where the life span was unusually short, even for bipeds.

His successor took over, while Olg and Loom waited and fumed.

"What was the question?" the new planetary representative asked.

"Psychotics?" Loom asked, very rapidly, in order for the biped to have time to answer.

As fast as Loom could speak, it took years, as the bipeds measured time.

"I don't—" the biped began, and died.

His successor, fortunately, was a youth. The lad had time to check the records and tell them no, before he died of advanced old age.

"At this rate," Loom said, back in their ship, "We'll never catch up with them."

Olg looked unhappy. This, of course, was why Central usually left the bipeds alone. It was next to impossible to talk to them, except over several generations.

The psychiatrists knew that it was entirely possible that the psychotics had begun to infect a population already. Their descendants might be spreading the seeds of destruction further.

If so, they had to discover and isolate the polluted segment of the race.

"How many more biped worlds are there?" Olg asked.

"One hundred and four," Loom said.

With sinking hopes, the psychiatrists got under way again.

"AND the rest is, obvious," Gik said. "You can easily induct it from there."

Smiles lighted the brutish faces of the Lis workers. Inducting happily, they returned to their work.

Gik saw that the minerals crew was doing nicely. He directed the scattering of diamonds next, for esthetic effect.

Another team was assigned the task of rebuilding a range of stubby mountains. After that, eight major rivers had to be deflected to their natural courses, and millions of square miles of grass had to be replanted. And even that was only the beginning.

"A thorough mess," Gik said to himself. He sniffed the air, and decided that it would have to be shipped out and cleaned, before being really fit to breathe.

"Sir," said a voice at Gik's shoulder.

"Don't bother me," Gik said. After purifying the air, he would have to restore its natural fragrance. That would require several million tons of—

"Sir," the voice said again.

Gik turned, and saw a tiny, wizened worker.

"What is it?"

"Sir—I can't induct."

"You can't induct! What did you learn in school?"

"Not very much, sir," the little worker said miserably. "Sir— won't you tell me the rest?"

"Stop bothering me," Gik said. "Even without inducting, you should be able to work out the rest."

"No sir," the little worker said. "Not accurately. I perceive, of course, the direct implied casual relationship between the wrecked Game Preserve and the escape and assumed subsequent race reintegration of the psychotic bipeds. But I ask myself, is it a one-to-one bearing, a progression in logical arithmeticism, or are there imperceptible but course-changing overtones, gap-bridging potentials emerging, and the like? I ask myself, according to the former major hypothesis, was a war then begun by a psychotic strain on a biped planet in which one of the attrition points was the Game Preserve? If so, what should I expect, morphologically? Was the Game Preserve used as (a) a refueling station, (b) a target area, (c) a general base of operations, to explore only the more obvious of the series? Or, to explore a second major hypothesis, could not the original escaped psychotics have gone to two biped worlds, separated though conjoined? I would judge a small operational probability for this, since, after all, it takes two to make a war. One defective biped race could, conceivably, have been held in check or the occurrence reported to Center. But with two— and this is only a supposition based on a shaky hypothesis—we have all the quasi-logical foundations for a war. However, going back to the first major hypothesis—"

"Spare me your dull-witted chatter," Gik said.

"I'm sorry, sir," the worker said.

"You're wrong," Gik said.

"I was afraid so," the worker said, sniffing back tears.

"And you're remarkably stupid."

"I know it," the worker said.

"Get back to work. There's a lot to be done."

"Yes sir." The wizened little worker drew back his tail, preparatory to frustration-suicide. But Gik stopped him.

"I'm short-handed as it is," he said. "If you promise to get right back to work, I'll tell you the rest."

"Oh, I will sir!" the little worker said.

"Very well," Gik said. "Now then—"

AFTER checking fifty-four biped worlds, the psychiatrists still had not found the missing psychotics. Their search pattern loomed in front of them, clear out to the galactic rim.

They knew that the original madmen were long since dead. Now the problem was their descendants, if any.

As they roared toward the fifty-fifth biped world, Loom detected a beat in his wave detector.

They focused, and the wave grew into a typical psychotic pattern, clearly amplified.

They got a fix and hurried over, ignoring all galactic speed laws. Without delay, they landed.

It was obvious at once that this was a strange world. Usually, bipeds were careful about breeding quotas, since, as a race, they were slightly claustrophobic. But on this world they had spawned limitlessly.

And the marks of infection were manifest, even at a casual glance. Wars were raging over the face of the planet; millions were starving. More millions were diseased, or crippled.

Illing with the Ill sense, the psychiatrists saw that the tremendous population was unable to feed itself, and was equally unable to control its breeding. This was proof of insanity right there.

And to make matters worse, cooperation, usually so prized among bipeds, operated only spasmodically here.

On top of all this, these bipeds had artificially split themselves into races and subraces, and invented separate classifications within the classifications.

This was the final proof of psychosis, since bipeds were indivisibly the children of one race, and one race only.

This was where the psychotics had landed.

"The question now is," Loom said, "how many—and what—other worlds have they infected? How many planets have they blasted, sacked, ripped apart, destroyed?"

They illed and elged the information carefully, already certain of the answer. Bipeds were natural-born spacers, and insane bipeds always spread to the stars.

Olg saw the answer first. For an instant he was unable to believe it. Then Loom saw it.

"These bipeds," Loom said, "have never been in contact with any others. They've never been in space!"