e of the little dinies. But the
Republic of Eire on Earth would indignantly disown any colony that had
snakes in it. And the colony wasn't ready yet to be self-supporting.
The cabinet discussed the matter gloomily. They were too dispirited to
do more. But Moira--the darlin'--did research.

It was strictly college-freshman-biology-lab research. It didn't
promise much, even to her. But it gave her an excuse to talk anxiously
and hopefully to the president when he took the Dail Committee to
McGillicuddy Island to look at the big dinies there, while the populace
tried to get the snakes out of sight again.

* * * * *

Most of the island lay two miles off the continent named for County
Kerry back on Earth. At one point a promontory lessened the distance
greatly, and at one time there'd been a causeway there. It had been
built with great pains, and with pains destroyed.

The president explained as the boat bearing the committee neared the
island.

"The big dinies," he said sadly, "trampled the fences and houses and
ate up the roofs and tractors. It could not be borne. They could be
driven away with torches, but they came back. They could be killed, but
the people could only dispose of so many tons of carcasses. Remember,
the big males run sixty feet long, and the most girlish females run
forty. You wouldn't believe the new-hatched babies! They were a great
trial, in the early days!"

[Illustration]

Sean O'Donohue snorted. He bristled. He and the other two of the
committee had been dragged away from the city of Tara. He suspected
shenanigans going on behind his back. They did. His associates looked
bleary-eyed. They'd been treated cordially, and they were not
impassioned leaders of the Erse people, like the O'Donohue. One of them
was a ship builder and the other a manufacturer of precision machinery,
elected to the Dail for no special reason. They'd come on this junket
partly to get away from their troubles and their wives. The shortage of
high-precision tools was a trouble to both of them, but they were
forgetting it fully.

"So the causeway was built," explained President O'Hanrahan. "We drove
the big beasts over, and rounded up all we could find--drivin' them
with torches--and then we broke down the causeway. So there they are on
McGillicuddy Island. They don't swim."

The boat touched ground--a rocky, uninviting shore. The solicitor
general and the Chancellor of the Exch