Page 137 - The Perpetrations of Captain Kaga

Sorting the Sexes on Dulup

Dulup was the first stop on Captain Kaga’s research tour. He set tled
into the acceleration couch and keyed the planet’s coordinates into his
ship’s navigation unit. Moments later the Eratosthenes lifted off the
PKU Academy’s landing pad and shimmered into hyperspace.
Disengaging himself from the hydraulic webbing, Kaga flipped on
the ComSet, smiling slightly. His study plan called for a random search
of life-bearing planets for evidence of directed panspermia, but it was
his own choice to begin with Dulup. For it was there that his long-
time associate, Li eutenant Lugo, had recently been posted as PKU
representative, ending a seri es of somewhat punitive appointments in
remote corners of the Known Universe.
Kaga sometimes wondered if other officers of his friend’s age and
station were as prone to get into mischief as was Lugo. Well, he would
soon find out: this time he would pay his friend a visit not initiated by
a frantic deepspace call for troubleshooting. If all were in order, he
would continue on his research happily and randomly.
The alternative to this pleasant prospect did not occur to Kaga as he
requested the files on Dulup to be presented for his review. He would
have to bone up on the evolutionary history of all the planets he
intended to visit; there hadn’t been time at the Academy with all the
administrative work he’d had to do in order to get leave from his
teaching duties. He was quite seriously interested in the subject to be
researched, intent on finding data strong enough to resolve the old
controversy, one way or the other.
It had been a Hracha exobiology student who re-awakened his
curiosity earlier in the term. “Captain Kaga,” the young macronasian
had belched through his bronchial bellows, “I have just come across
the theory that all life everywhere has a common origin. If this is so,
are we not distant brood-siblings, and could you not therefore lend me
5,000 nudollars?”
Kaga had been at a loss, first for words and then for currency. Later
he looked up every known reference in the Great Index to the theory
of directed panspermia. He found that the idea, first propounded in
the twentieth century, had been dropped from exobiologi cal curricula
except as a briefly-mentioned oddity, an obsolete notion whose
unverifiability removed it from serious scientific consideration.
The theory attempted to explain the similarities of basic genetic

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