Page:Astounding Science Fiction (1950-01).djvu/85

 toes and they were obviously very comfortable.

"Well?" said Ole Doc, looking down the endless rows of vats.

"All of them," said O'Hara weakly.

"And they number—?" said Ole Doc.

"About eighteen thousand," said O'Hara.

"Well, if THIS is your problem," said Ole Doc, "I would suggest a hurry-up to the Department of Agriculture back on Earth. You need, evidently, half an army corps of nurses. But as for the problem of getting these babies—"

"Oh, that isn't it!" said O'Hara. "You see, it's these condemned Achnoids. " [sic]They're so confounded routine in everything they do. And I guess maybe its my fault, too, because there are so many details on this station that if one Earthman had to listen to them all and arrange them every day he would go crazy. So I guess I'm pretty humpy with them—the ambulating pinwheels! Well, this is the lion shed. We turn out eighteen thousand lions every three months, that being our charted gestation period. Then they go into the pits where they are fed by a facsimile lionness udder and finally they are booted out into the wilderness to go mop up catbeasts. All that is very simple. But these Achnoids—"

"When did you learn about this?"

"Oh, almost six months ago. But I wasn't terribly bothered. Not right then. I just sent a routine report through to Earth. But these Achnoids go right on with routine work unless something stops them. And the labels were all mixed up on that jettison shipment and they picked up phials marked with our code number for lions and dumped them into these vats. That's their routine work in this department. That's the only way we could ship cattle and such things, you see, because I don't think you'd like to travel on a cattle spaceship, would you? And it would be expensive, what with the price of freight. And we need lots of stock. So to avoid shipping such things as these lions—"

"I'd think it was to be avoided," said Ole Doc wryly,

"—we've developed a very highly specialized system of handling and marking. And evidently our codes aren't identical with the codes at the intended destination of these babies. There's an awful lot of paper work comes off Earth about this sort of thing and frankly I didn't even know they were shipping babies by this system. I went back through all my reports but I must have misfiled something because there isn't anything on it which I've received. Well—"

"You said you messaged the department," said Ole Doc.

"Oh, heck. You know government like it is these days. Earth has three billion inhabitants and one and three quarters billion are working for the government and they still can't keep up with the administration of colonies and stations in space."

"One billion," corrected Ole Doc. OLE MOTHER METHELUSAH