It started out like that. Two weeks of hacking and digging, of specially prepared weed-killer and the aid of every trick known to science, and there was a strip of dark, rich ground all ready for planting. It looked like things were really beginning to roll. They did roll. Right up against a blank wall. A few days after the planting, Flaunders was looking at a handful of black spider-things and swearing under his breath. The shriveled spider-things were seeds brought from Earth. They were shot through with hairlike roots, and that was the strange thing. It was strange because the roots were not their own. It took several more days for Flaunders to understand. When he did he took on an attitude faintly remindful of a cornered rat. In a spot, but frustrated to fighting anger. The ship had contained enough food for only about two months to begin with, and more than two weeks had now come out of that. Starvation was becoming a very real possibility in his mind. "We're up against something big," he said, peeved with himself for having to admit it. "We're fighting millions of years of evolution." McBride sensed something disturbing in the other's voice. Maybe a trace of fear. "What do you mean?" he said. Flaunders enlarged. "A very long time ago a war started here on Venus. It was a war among plants. You find the same thing on Earth, too, but not on this scale. There must have been certain 'aggressive' plants which threatened to force out all others. The others, in order to survive, had to evolve into something even more deadly to other plants. Once started, it had to keep going. Now, after millions of years, they've evolved into things capable, of vicious little tricks you'd never be able to count. "What happened to our seeds is one of them. Some of the roots extend into microscopic threads hardly more than streaks of single molecules. You can't dig them out and they escape all the ordinary weed-fighting methods. One of their cute little tricks is to attach themselves to other plants and seeds and absorb them, strangely enough not harming their own species. Add to that the rapid growth, almost comparable to the motion of the minute hand of a clock, and planting anything from Earth among them is something like throwing a housecat into a den of wild lions." "A very pretty picture," McBride groaned. "We can't go back to Earth for a year, everything on Venus is poison and we have less than two months' supply of food. Now you as much as admit that there will be no garden. I'm suddenly getting a headache." "I didn't say we had failed," Flaunders said sharply. "I'm never going to. By thunder, we'll beat this hellhole if it takes every minute of our time!" That was a sane enough statement. They had the seeds and they had the soil. With good health and the will to work, what was to stop them? Only weeds. * * * * *