Arcturus Times Three

By JACK SHARKEY
Illustrated by SCHELLING
A man who lived three lives? A piker! Jerry Norcriss lived hundreds—all over the Galaxy!
ZOOLOGY 2097
Trial-and-error familiarization with new life-forms is dangerously impractical on a far planet, where the representation of Earth men may be a solitary five-man crew. The loss of even a single man constitutes, in effect, obliteration of one-fifth of that planet's Earth-population. This is the why of the Space Zoologist.
The science of Contact came into being as a result of a government-subsidized crash program in the early seventies, following on the heels of the disastrous second Mars landing.
The first flight to Mars had been simple in intent. The job of the men on board had been merely to land in one piece and radio the joyous news back to Earth, to take some samplings of soil and air, some photographs and then return to Earth. All this was accomplished without incident.
It was the second Mars landing that occasioned the discovery of the quilties. These furry beasts, somewhere between marmosets and koalas in appearance save for overall bright orange and green tangles of fur, were found to be friendly, and unanimously adopted by the crew members as mascots and pets. The animals, disarmingly akin to ambulant rag-toys cut from patchwork counterpanes, did indeed deserve the nickname of quilties . They were cuddly, friendly, with sad eyes and mournful squeaky voices that endeared them to all the men on that flight.
Fortunately, their discovery was radioed back to Earth along with the usual information in that first day's report. There were no subsequent messages.
Mars Flight Three found the remains of the crew where the quilties had left them.
On investigation by the ship's doctor, it was found that the biology of the quilty was similar to that of a hornet, and they considered man—as they would anything warm and fleshy—in the relative position of a caterpillar. During the cuddling with the small beasts, minute hairlike spines at the base of the quilties' tails had managed to prick the flesh of the crewmen. By the following morning, the men had been eaten to death from within by the grubs of gestating baby quilties.