"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." * * * * * The stomper egg came to the officers' mess table as a heaped platter of bite-sized golden spheres, deep-fried in bittra oil. Their delicate, porous texture hardly required chewing. Their flavor was like--cinnamon? Peppery sandalwood? Yes, yes, and yet unique.... Cole realized in confusion that he had eaten half the platterful and the other six men had not had any. He groped for a lost feeling--was it that he and the others formed a connected biomass and that he could eat for all of them? Ridiculous! "I'm a pig," he laughed weakly. "Here, Mr. Daley, have some." Daley, a gingery, spry little man, said "By me" and slid the platter along. It rounded the table and returned to Cole untouched. "Fall to, Doc," Daley said, grinning. Cole was already reaching ... lying in his stateroom and he _was_ the bunk cradling a taut, messianic body flaming with imageless dreams. He dreamed himself asleep and slept himself into shamed wakefulness needing coffee. It was ship-night. Cole walked through dimmed lights to the galley and carried his cup of hot black coffee to main control, where he found Daley on watch, lounging against the gray enamel computer. "I feel like a fool," Cole said. "You're a martyr to science, Doc. Which reminds me, Cookie told me you got questions about Bidgrass Station." "Well yes, about stompers. What's wiping them out, what's their habitat and life pattern, oh anything."