The Meldens, with a fierce pride in their only tangible asset, had made the best of their bad bargain. With the plucky determination of the eternally unlucky, they had farmed the edges of the rain forest and collected meagre low-yield ores from the vast blazing deserts. Their dogged persistence would have been inspiring had it not been so tedious; and their efforts might have been considered a tribute to the vaunting spirit of life had they not invariably ended in failure. Because, despite all their travail, the Meldens were able to achieve nothing better than slow starvation in the present, and the promise of racial degeneration and extinction in the future.

'This, then, is Melde,' said the manager. 'Or rather, this is what Melde would be were it not for one additional factor. That factor spells the difference between success and failure. I refer, of course, to the presence of ganzer eggs.

'Ganzer eggs!' the manager repeated. 'No other planet possesses them; no other planet so desperately needs them. Ganzer eggs! No object in the known universe so clearly epitomizes the quality of desirability. Ganzer eggs! Let us consider them, if you will.'

Ganzer eggs were the sole export of the planet Melde. And luckily for the Meldens, the eggs were always in heavy use. On Orichades, ganzer eggs were utilized as love-objects; on Opiuchus II, they were ground up and eaten as a sovereign aphrodisiac; on Morichades, after consecration, they were worshipped by the irrational K'tengi. Many other uses could be cited.

Thus, ganzer eggs were a vital natural resource, and the only one which the Meldens possessed. With them, the Meldens could maintain a tolerable degree of civilization. Without them, the race would surely perish.

To acquire a ganzer egg, all one had to do was pick it up. But therein lay certain difficulties, since the ganzers, not unnaturally, objected to this practice.

The ganzers were forest dwellers, remotely of lizard origin. They also were destroyers, clever at concealment, wily and ferocious, and completely untameable. These qualities rendered the collection of ganzer eggs extremely perilous.

'It is a curious situation,' the manager pointed out, 'and not without its paradoxical overtones, that the main source of life on Melde is also the main cause of death. It is something for you all to think about as you begin your workday. And so I say, take good care of yourselves, keep guarded at all times, look before you leap, observe every precaution with your indentured lives, and also with the costly bodies which have been entrusted to your keeping. But in addition, remember that you must fulfill your norm, since every day's work unfulfilled by so much as a single egg is penalized by the addition of an additional week. Therefore, be careful, but not too careful, and be perseverant, but not blindly so, and courageous, but not rash, and assiduous, but never foolhardy. Follow these simple maxims and you will have no difficulty. Good luck, boys!'

Marvin and his fellow workers were then formed into ranks and marched into the forest on the double.

Within an hour they reached their search area. Marvin Flynn took this opportunity to ask the foreman for instructions.

'Instructions?' the foreman asked. 'What kind of type instructions?' (He was an Orinathian deportee with no language aptitude.)

'I mean,' Flynn said, 'what am I supposed to do?'

The foreman pondered the question and at length responded: 'You supposed pick eggs of ganzer.' (Amusingly enough, he pronounced it 'guntser'.)

'I understand that,' Flynn said. 'But I mean to say, I don't even know what a ganzer eggs looks like.'

'Not to worry,' the foreman replied. 'You know when see no mistake, yes.'

'Yes, sir,' Marvin said. 'And when I find a ganzer egg, are there any special rules for handling it? I mean to say, is breakage a problem, or-'

'To handle,' the foreman said, 'you pick up egg, put in bag. You understand this thing yes no?'

'Of course I do,' Marvin said. 'But also, I would like to know about daily quota expectations. I mean to say, is there some sort of a quota system, or perhaps an hourly breakdown? I mean, how does one know when one has fulfilled his norm?'

'Ah!' said the foreman, a look of comprehension finally crossing his broad, good-natured face. 'Of finish is like this. You pick ganzer egg, put in bag, check?'

'Check,' Marvin said instantly.

'You do so time after time until bag is full. Catch?'

'I believe I do,' Marvin said. 'The full bag represents the actual or ideal quota. Let me just go over the steps again to make absolutely sure I've got it. First, I locate the ganzer eggs, applying Terran associations to the concept, and presumably having no difficulty in identification. Second, having located and identified the desired object, I proceed to "put it in my basket", by which I assume that I lift it manually to initiate the transaction, and then proceed with actions consonant with that beginning. Third, repeating this strategy S for an x number of times, I perform the equation Sx=B!, when B represents the capacity of the bag and ! represents the sum of x transactions necessary to fulfill B. Finally, the sum of all strategies completed, I return to the camp, where I turn in the contents of my bag. Do I have it straight, sir?'

The foreman tapped his teeth with his tail and said, 'You put me on, huh, kid?'

'Well, sir, I merely wished to ascertain-'

'You make big joke on old-planet Orinathian yokel, yah, sure, huh. You think you so smart, but you ain't so smart. Remember – nobody likes wise guy.'

'I'm sorry,' Flynn said, swishing his tail deferentially. (But he wasn't sorry. It was his first show of spirit since this downward-trending series of events had begun for him, and he was glad to find himself capable of some show of spirit, no matter how ill-timed or badly considered.)

'Anyhow, me I tink you catch elementary rudiments of job all right so you go now perform work-labour big, and keep nose clean or I break six or more of your limbs, dig?'

'Dig,' said Flynn, wheeled and cantered into the forest and there began his search for ganzer eggs.

Chapter 10

Marvin Flynn wondered as he wandered just what a ganzer egg looked like. He also would have enjoyed knowing what he was supposed to use his equipment for; the sunglasses were useless in the dim recesses of the forest, and the heavy tripod was incomprehensible.

He slid silently through the forest, his nostrils flared wide, his eyes extended and swivelling, their blink-rate reduced. His golden hide, scented faintly with appisthyme, twitched sensitively as his great muscles moved beneath it, apparently relaxed yet poised for instant action.

The forest was a symphony of greens and greys, cut through with the occasional scarlet theme of a creeper, or the purple flourish of a lillibabba shrub, or rarer still, the haunting oboe countermelody of an orange whip-whinger. Yet withal, the effect was essentially a sombre and thought-provoking one, like the sight of a vast amusement park in the silent hour before dawn.

But there! Right over there! A little to the left! Yes, yes, just beneath the boku tree! Is that… ? Could it be… ?

Flynn parted the leaves with his right arms and bent low. There, in a nest of grass and woven twigs, he saw a glittering ovoid that resembled nothing quite so much as an ostrich egg encrusted with precious gems.

The foreman had been right. There could be no mistaking a ganzer egg.

Gazing carefully upon that singular object, and taking stock of his impressions, Marvin could see the light of a million fairy fires burning bright in the curved and multihued ganzer surface. Shadows drifted across it like the fragrance of half-remembered dreams, twisting and turning like the descending ghosts of phantoms. An emotion welled up in Marvin, of twilight and evensong, of slow cattle grazing near a crystal brook, of dusty, heartbroken cypresses beside a white stone road.