The Night of Hoggy Darn

The talented author of "The Fishdollar Affair" returns with another compelling story of a frontier world--grim New Cornwall of the Black Learning.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, December 1958. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Red-haired Flinter Cole sipped his black coffee and looked around the chrome and white tile galley of Space Freighter Gorbals, in which he was riding down the last joint of a dogleg journey to the hermit planet of New Cornwall.

"Nothing's been published about the planet for the last five hundred years," he said in a nervous, jerky voice. "You people on Gorbals at least see the place, and I understand you're the only ship that does."

"That's right, twice every standard year," said the cook. He was a placid, squinting man, pink in his crisp whites. "But like I said, no girls, no drinks, nothing down there but hard looks and a punch in the nose for being curious. We mostly stay aboard, up in orbit. Them New Cornish are the biggest, meanest men I ever did see, Doc."

"I'm not a real doctor yet," Cole said, glancing down at the scholar grays he was wearing. "If I don't do a good job on New Cornwall I may never be. This is my Ph. D. trial field assignment. I should be stuffing myself with data on the ecosystem so I can ask the right questions when I get there. But there's nothing!"

"What's a pee aitch dee?"

"That's being a doctor. I'm an ecologist--that means I deal with everything alive, and the way it all works in with climate and geography. I can use any kind of data. I have only six months until Gorbals comes again to make my survey and report. If I fumble away my doctorate, and I'm twenty-three already...." Cole knitted shaggy red eyebrows in worry.

"Well hell, Doc, I can tell you things like, it's got four moons and only one whopper of a continent and it's low grav, and the forest there you won't believe even when you see it--"

"I need to know about stompers. Bidgrass Company wants Belconti U. to save them from extinction, but they didn't say what the threat is. They sent travel directions, a visa and passage scrip for just one man. And I only had two days for packing and library research, before I had to jump to Tristan in order to catch this ship. I've been running in the dark ever since. You'd think the Bidgrass people didn't really care."

"Price of stomper egg what it is, I doubt that," the cook said, scratching his fat jaw. "But for a fact, they're shipping less these days. Must be some kind of trouble. I never saw a stomper, but they say they're big birds that live in the forest."

"You see? The few old journal articles I did find, said they were flightless bird-homologs that lived on the plains and preyed on the great herds of something called darv cattle."

"Nothing but forest and sea for thousands of miles around Bidgrass Station, Doc. Stompers are pure hell on big long legs, they say."

"There again! I read they were harmless to man."

"Tell you what, you talk to Daley. He's cargo officer and has to go down with each tender trip. He'll maybe know something can help you."

The cook turned away to inspect his ovens. Cole put down his cup and clamped a freckled hand over his chin, thinking. He thought about stomper eggs, New Cornwall's sole export and apparently, for five hundred years, its one link with the other planets of Carina sector. Their reputedly indescribable flavor had endeared them to gourmets on a hundred planets. They were symbols of conspicuous consumption for the ostentatious wealthy. No wonder most of the literature under the New Cornwall reference had turned out to be cookbooks.

Orphaned and impecunious, a self-made scholar, Cole had never tasted stomper egg.

The cook slammed an oven door on the fresh bread smell.

"Just thought, Doc. I keep a can or two of stomper egg, squeeze it from cargo for when I got a passenger to feed. How'd you like a mess for chow tonight?"

"Why not?" Cole said, grinning suddenly. "Anything may be data for an ecologist, especially if it's good to eat."