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Updated: April 30, 2025
Those Mud-pups were stubbornly and tenaciously determined to drive the Piper Venusian Installation off Venus permanently, by fair means or foul. They didn't care how it got off they just wanted it off." "But why? We weren't hurting them. There's plenty of mud on Venus." "Ah but not so much of the blue-gray stuff we were after, perhaps.
Number Two sank without a trace over there in the swamp someplace." He pointed across the black mud flats to a patch of sickly vegetation. "The Mud-pups know where it is, they think, and I suppose they could go drag it up for us if we dared take the time, but it would lose us a month, and you know the production schedule we've been trying to meet." "So what about Numbers Three and Five?"
The next few days were a nightmare of frustration for Kielland as he observed with mounting horror the standard operating procedure of the Installation. Men and Mud-pups went to work once again to drag Number Five dredge out of the mud.
Watch out " The derrick wobbled and let out a whine as steel cable sizzled out. Confused, the Mud-pups tore themselves away from the newcomers and turned back to their lines, but it was too late. Number Five dredge trembled, with a wet sucking sound, and settled back into the mud, blub blub blub.
"Send the natives back to their burrows or whatever they live in and get ready to close down. I've got to figure out some way to make a report to the Board that won't get us all fired." He slammed out the door and started across to his quarters, waders going splat-splat in the mud. Half a dozen Mud-pups were following him.
"Go away," said Kielland in disgust, and turned back to the reports with a sour taste in his mouth. Later he called the Installation Comptroller. "What do you pay Mud-pups for their work?" he wanted to know. "Nothing," said the Comptroller. "Nothing!" "We have nothing they can use. What would you give them United Nations coin? They'd just try to eat it." "How about something they can eat, then?"
The Mud-pups who had been taught the excavation procedure previously had either disappeared into the swamp or forgotten everything they'd ever been taught. Simpson had expected it, but it was enough to keep Kielland sleepless for three nights and drive his blood pressure to suicidal levels.
Suddenly one of the Mud-pups saw the newcomers. He let out a squeal, dropped his line in the mud and bounced up to the surface, dancing like a dervish on his broad webbed feet as he stared in unabashed curiosity. A dozen more followed his lead, squirming up and staring, shaking gobs of mud from their fur. "No, no!" the man supervising the operation screamed. "Pull, you idiots. Come back here!
Off to the right a derrick floated hub-deep in slime; grapplers from it were clinging to the dredge and the derrick was heaving and splashing like a trapped hippopotamus. All about the submerged machine were Mud-pups, working like strange little beavers as the man supervising the operation wiped mud from his face and carried on a running line of shouts, curses, whistles and squeaks.
"Oh, we still have them. They won't work without a major overhaul, though." "Overhaul! They're brand new." "They were. The Mud-pups didn't understand how to sluice them down properly after operations. When this guck gets out into the air it hardens like cement. You ever see a cement mixer that hasn't been cleaned out after use for a few dozen times? That's Numbers Three and Five."
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