Cliff Lane took out his modine and blasted the suffering pig with a shake of his head.
Both he and Downing were a little sick.
"What—?"
"Fungus. As I gather it, the Solar sector of the Galaxy is alive with a violent evolution of fungus. We live in it, we breathe it, and we—eat it. They cringed in horror at what they found on the microscope slides, and this is the fourth pig I've killed. But I'm completely fungicided now, and I can handle 'em. But you see, Downing, you are alive with fungus spores looking for a place to live. They can't live on you, but what few that do escape the bactericidal action of the skin find it quite easy to go to work on an animal that has never been required to strive for life against fungi."
"Are the whole race like this?"
"No. Not entirely. But they haven't our strength against such—not by a jugful. They're right on the edge of the Solar sector, as I get it. They have some fungi, but it's nothing like the stuff we have on Terra. I think that Sol may be the center—the evolution may well have started there, mutated there, and anything that grows elsewhere may be spore-born on the Arrhenius Theory to the rest of the Galaxy. Brother, we're tough!"
"Well, what have we accomplished besides killing guinea pigs, discovering a set of new weapons, and blasting the guts out of a couple of their best craft?"
Lane smiled. "I've succeeded in carrying over to them the problem of why we're here. They do not understand any more than we do, but they're willing to let us seek out the machine."
"What about blasting their ships?"
"Won't bother them too much. They'll rather enjoy the development of the slicing cut—after all their human appearance, they're still cats. They like to fight silently, and slash quietly, and then to slink away in the night. They're strictly predators, and their evaluation of life is rather low."