While studying the record-tapes in Joanna’s neat office, with its bright pots of flowering lichenheather, Lynne considered just how serious the problem was. Until E-power had been harnessed to give impetus to the restoration of Martian atmosphere, the planet’s human population had had to subsist largely on synthetic foods, plus the occasional lean, leather-tough meat from wild pigs which had somehow survived exportation from Earth and reverted to savagery. The small bits of grass and grain and vegetables that were painfully nurtured in the bone-dry Red Planet soil were far too precious and costly to be used for animal fodder. Not until the atomic transmuter had been installed at Woomera Station could any cattle be grazed at all. And here, the cost was way out of line with even experimental results. Until E-power, through controlled moisture production, enabled an ever-growing patch of Martian soil to become fertile, the effort to grow cattle on Mars was doomed. “Here’s the first case on record,” said Joanna, halting the tape unwinding its record of pictures, written matter and her own clear, precise accents on a vidarscreen. “It happened last May twenty-third, Earth-calendar. Old Bill, one of our prize musk-Brahmas, went on a rampage and tried to catwalk the drinking pool border and fell in. It was pretty unusual, but not alarming. No harm was done.” “Stay with it, Joanna,” said Lynne. * * * * * She was thinking of what failure of the husbandry program could mean at this stage. Since the Red Planet had no water surface--above all no salt water--the plankton which had become the staple diet of an overpopulated Earth was simply not available. Mars needed beef, and lamb, and good rich pork. No heat or energy tablets could make up for the real things--especially on a sub-Arctic pioneer planet. Other incidents of cattle aberration showed on the record with increasing frequency and severity. It was a senseless duel that had left two prime musk-oxen dripping their own insides. It was an utterly out-of-season misbreeding in which the bull seemed to have been helped to achieve his purpose in a sort of team operation--a senseless miniature stampede that had run off tons of good meat from the bones of its owners. “You know about the dance I saw yesterday,” said Joanna, her bright eyes falling away. “When I reported it, Martin went back with me to witness it. The cattle were all as mild as turtles. He ordered _me_ to report to Dr. Smetana.” “_Crehut_, I was there yesterday--remember?” Lynne said. She glanced at the biplanetary chronometer on her wrist--a trim and amazing simplification of complexities which Rolf had given her on her last birthday. She wondered if her brother or Tony Willis, back at Nampura Depot, had got through to Rolf yet.