My Library

problem, then with great interest. As the struggles ensued, the Mobiles were emanating Loosh! Not in fractional amounts, but in sizable, usable quantities and of a much higher purity. He quickly put the theory to the test. He removed another unit of First Crop from the liquid Garden area, redesigned it for the gaseous environment—but with one significant change. The new Mobile would be somewhat smaller, but would require the ingestion of other Mobiles for nourishment. This would solve the problem of overpopulation of Mobiles, and at the same time would create good quantities of usable Loosh during each conflict-struggle, plus a bonus if the new class of Mobile terminated the life span of the other. Someone would be able to transmit to Somewhere practical amounts of reasonably pure Loosh. Thus it was that the Rule of the Prime Catalyst came into being. Conflict among carbon-oxygen cycle units brings forth consistent emanations of Loosh. It was as simple as that. Satisfied that he had found the formula, Someone prepared the Fourth Crop. He knew now that the Third Crop Mobiles were too large and too long in life span to be ultimately practical. If grown in large numbers, the entire Garden would have to be expanded and enlarged. There was not space enough to grow such massive single units and the proportionate leafy Second Crops to support them. Also, he reasoned correctly that more rapid and increased mobility would expand the Conflict factor, with a resultant higher Loosh output. In one single motion, Someone terminated the life spans of all the lumbering Third Crop Mobiles. Going back to the First Crop in the liquid area, he modified and expanded them into a multitude of shapes and sizes, gave them complex multicellular structures of high mobility. He designed into them a pattern of balance. There were those that ingested a Second Crop type of carbon-cycle unit (basically immobile) as an energy source. There were others, very highly mobile, who required for energy the ingestion of other mobile Modified First Crop units. The completed circuit operated quite satisfactorily. The stationary Second Crop modification in the liquid environment flourished.