Founding Father

I blinked. "I wouldn't do that," I said mildly. "What can we do with them? The two we have are bad enough. And if you stat them, we'll have to kill or condition them. We couldn'...

"Yes," I said. "But leave the probes in place until we test them." I dragged my weary body once again into the control room and tried the headgear and circuits. They functioned...

"Yet they show no sign of learning. If they can't even cooperate with their own species, how in Authority's name could they ever get along with the dissimilar races of this isla...

"We need data," I said as I manipulated the scanner and surveyed our little domain of rocks and vegetation. "The animate life we have collected so far is of a low order."

I must have made some mistake in revising the controllers--or feedback was stronger than I suspected--for the Va Krul syndrome came back along our lines of contact with explosiv...