* * * * * Once again Cole faced Garth Bidgrass across the round table in the library. This time he felt vastly different. "The piskies are really baby stompers," he said, watching the craggy old face for its reaction. It did not change. "I suspected it when I saw how the smaller eggs fused with the large egg, with continuous laminae," Cole went on. "There was the morphological resemblance, too. But when I dissected two mature stompers I found immature eggs. Even before entry into the oviduct what you call pisky eggs are filamented to the main body of cytoplasm." Disappointingly, Bidgrass did not marvel. He squinted and cocked his head. Finally he said, "Do you mean the piskies lay their eggs internally in the stompers?" "Impossible! I made a karyotype analysis of pisky and stomper tissue and they are _identical_, I tell you. My working hypothesis for now is that pisky eggs are fertilized polar bodies. It's not unknown. But that the main body should be sterile and serve as an external food source--that's new, I'm sure. That will get my name in the journals all through Carina sector." He could not help smiling happily. Bidgrass bit his lower lip and stared keenly, not speaking. Cole became nettled. "I hope you see the logic," he said. "What threatens your stompers is harvest pressure from your own egg hunters. Stop it for a few decades, or set aside breeding areas, and you can have a whole planetful again." The old man scowled and stood up. "We'll not stop," he said gruffly. "There are still plenty of stompers. Remember last month." He walked to the end window and back, then sat down again still looking grim. "Don't be too sure," Cole objected. "I haven't finished my report. I made a Harvey analysis on the tissues of one stomper. It involves culturing clones, measuring growth rates and zones of migration and working out a complex set of ratios--I won't go into details. But when I fitted my figures into Harvey's formula it indicated _unmistakably_ that the stompers have a critical biomass." "What does that mean?" "Think of a species as one great animal that never dies, of which each individual is only a part. Can you do that?" "Yes!" the old man exploded, sitting bolt upright. "Well, the weight of a cross-section of the greater animal at any moment in time is its biomass. Many species have a point or value of critical biomass such that, if it falls below that point, the greater animal dies. The species loses its will to live, decays, drills into extinction in spite of all efforts to save it. The stomper is such a species, no doubt whatever. Do you see how the slaughter a month ago may _already_ have extinguished them as a species?" Bidgrass nodded, smiling grimly. His eyes held a curious light. "Tell me, Mr. Cole, your Harvey formula--do _human beings_ have a critical biomass?"