Page 8 - The Perpetrations of Captain Kaga

Unloading the Warehouse of Nim

“Listen to me, Lugo,” said Kaga, in as calm a tone as he could
muster. “Just leave it alone. This is our last year in the Academy. You
don’t want to ruin your chances for a commission.”
“Oh, those robots won’t miss one old jukebox. Besides, if I wait
much longer, they’ll all be gone. Dumped in the crusher. I’ll never get
another chance. And I’m bored to death here: nothing ever happens
on Nim. So long! See you later.”
“But—” began Kaga, reaching out to restrain his friend. Lugo,
however, was out of his grasp and out of the room. Kaga sighed and
went back to his CompTutor. He had a lot of material yet to study
before the big examinations, but the orderly rows of statistics on
exobiology and intergalactic trade marching across the screen could
not hold his interest for long. He and his friend had already gotten in
enough trouble with the senior officers of the PKU Academy. If they
could only get through this final term without another incident!
Kaga switched off the lesson and paced around the small space of
his dormitory room. Perhaps it would be all right, as Lugo suggested.
Removing one Appliance from the cycle could hardly cause the
whole system to crash. Still, it was a violation of PKU rules: any
unauthorized interference in a planet’s economy was strictly
forbidden, Nim included.
When the group of officer-trainees first arrived on Nim from
Radnelac III, they had been briefed on local conditions and history.
The original colonists of this Earth-type world were a race of
functionally differentiated variopods, the Nworg. They consisted of
Rulers (one limb), Cultivators (three limbs), and Engineers (four to
six limbs). A population module containing optimal numbers of these
three Nworg types had been dropped onto the surface of N1m
centuries before by a colonizing mission. This much information had
been gleaned with difficulty by the PKU, for no other trace of these
beings had yet been discovered in the Known Universe. Nim was the
home of the last of the Nworg.
The Rulers of Nim were very secretive about the workings of their
society. They allowed the PKU to send students from the Academy
to get a taste of life on a backward planet, but the Nworg did not do
any other business with the aliens. Nim did possess a quantity of
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