"Squadron Leader Vexley!"

"Happy to know you, sir."

"Flight Lieutenant Marlowe," Peter Marlowe said as he also shook hands and sat down in the shade.

Vexley waited nervously till they were seated and absently pressed his thumb into the back of his hand, counting the seconds till the indentation in the skin slowly filled. Pellagra had its compensations, he thought. And thinking of skin and bone reminded him of whales and his pop-eye brightened. "Well, today I was going to talk about whales. Do you know about whales? Ah," he said ecstatically as the King brought out a pack of Kooas and offered him one. The King passed the pack around the whole class.

The four students accepted the cigarettes and moved to give the King and Peter Marlowe more space. They wondered what the hell the King was doing there, but they didn't really care - he'd given them a real tailor-made cigarette.

Vexley started to continue his lecture on whales. He loved whales. He loved them to distraction.

"Whales are without a doubt the highest form that nature has aspired to," he said, very pleased with the resonance of his voice. He noticed the King's frown. "Did you have a question?" he asked eagerly.

"Well, yes. Whales are interesting, but what about rats?"

"I beg your pardon," Vexley said politely.

"Very interesting what you were saying about whales, sir," the King said. "I was just wondering about rats, that's all."

"What about rats?"

"I was just wondering if you knew anything about them," the King said. He had a lot to do and didn't want to screw around.

"What he means," Peter Marlowe said quickly, "is that if whales are almost human in their reflexes, isn't that true of rats, too?"

Vexley shook his head and said distastefully, "Rodents are entirely different. Now about whales ..."

"How are they different?" asked the King.

"I cover the rodents in the spring seminar," Vexley said testily. "Disgusting beasts. Nothing about them to like. Nothing. Now you take the sulphur-bottom whale," Vexley hastily launched off again. "Ah, now there's the giant of all whales. Over a hundred feet long and it can weigh as much as a hundred and fifty tons. The biggest creature alive - that has ever lived - on earth. The most powerful animal in existence. And its mating habits," Vexley added quickly, for he knew that a discussion of the sex life always kept the class awake.

"Its mating is marvelous. The male begin his titillation by blowing glorious clouds of spray. He pounds the water with his tail near the female, who waits with patient lust on the ocean's surface. Then he will dive deep and soar up, out of the water, huge, vast, enormous, and crash back with thundering flukes, churning the water into foam, pounding at the surface." He dropped his voice sensuously. "Then he slides up to the female and starts tickling her with his flippers ..."

In spite of his anxiety about rats, even the King began to listen attentively.

"Then he will break off the seduction and dive again, leaving the female panting on the surface - leaving her perhaps for good." Vexley made a dramatic pause. "But no. He doesn't leave her. He disappears for perhaps an hour, into the depths of the ocean, gathering strength, and then he soars up once more and bursts clear of the water and falls like a clap of thunder in a monstrous cloud of spray. He whirls over and over on to his mate, hugging her tight with both flippers and has his mighty will of her to exhaustion."

Vexley was exhausted, too, at the magnificence of the spectacle of mating giants. Ah, to be so lucky as to witness it, to be there, an insignificant human ...

He rushed on: "Mating takes place about July, in warm waters. The baby weighs five tons at birth and is about thirty feet long." His laugh was practiced. "Think of that." There were polite smiles, and then Vexley came in with the clincher, always good for a deep chuckle. "And if you think of that and the size of the calf, just think about the whale's jolly old John Thomas, what?" Again there were courteous smiles - the regular members had heard the story many times.

Vexley went on to describe how the calf is nursed for seven months by the mother, who supplies the calf with milk from two monstrous teats towards the ass end of her underside. "As you can no doubt imagine," he said ecstatically, "prolonged suckling underwater has its problems."

"Do rats suckle their young?" The King jumped in quickly.

"Yes," the squadron leader said miserably. "Now about ambergris ..."

The King sighed, beaten, and listened to Vexley expound about ambergris and sperm whales and toothed whales and white whales and goose-beaked whales and pygmy whales and beaked whales and narwhales and killer whales and humpback whales and bottle-nosed whales and whalebone whales and gray whales and right whales and finally bowhead whales. By this time all the class except Peter Marlowe and the King had left. When Vexley had finished, the King said simply: "I want to know about rats."

Vexley groaned. "Rats?"

"Have a cigarette," said the King benignly.

Chapter 10.

"All right, you guys, sort yourselves out," the King said. He waited until there was quiet in the hut and the lookout at the doorway was in position. "We got problems."

"Grey?" asked Max.

"No. It's about our farm." The King turned to Peter Marlowe, who was sitting on the edge of a bed. "You tell 'em, Peter."

"Well," began Peter Marlowe, "it seems that rats -"

"Tell 'em it from the beginning."

"All of it?"

"Sure. Spread the knowledge, then we can all figure angles."

"All right. Well, we found Vexley. He told us, quote: 'The Rattus norvegicus, or Norwegian rat - sometimes called the Mus decumanus -' "

"What sort of talk is that?" Max asked.

"Latin, for Chrissake. Any fool knows that," Tex said.

"You know Latin, Tex?" Max gaped at him.

"Hell no, but those crazy names're always Latin -"

"For Chrissake, you guys," the King said. "You want to know or don't you?" Then he nodded for Peter Marlowe to continue.

"Well, anyway, Vexley described them in detail, hairy, no hair on the tail, weight up to four pounds, the usual is about two pounds in this part of the world. Rats mate promiscuously at any time -"

"What the hell does that mean?"

"The male'll screw any female irrespective," the King said impatiently, "and there ain't no season."

"Just like us, you mean?" Jones said agreeably.

"Yes. I suppose so," said Peter Marlowe. "Anyway, the male rat will mate at any season and the female can have up to twelve litters per year, around twelve per litter, but perhaps as many as fourteen. The young are born blind and helpless twenty-two days after contact." He picked the word delicately. "The young open their eyes after fourteen to seventeen days and become sexually mature in two months. They cease breeding at about two years and are old at three years."

"Holy cow!"' Max said delightedly in the awed silence. "We sure as hell've problems. Why, if the young'll breed in two months, and we get twelve - say for round figures ten a litter - figure it for yourself. Say we get ten young on Day One. Another ten on Day Thirty. By Day Sixty the first five pair've bred, and we get fifty. Day Ninety we got another five pairs breeding and another fifty. Day One-twenty, we got two-fifty plus another fifty and another fifty and a new batch of two-fifty. For Chrissake, that makes six-fifty in five months. The next month we got near six thousand five hundred -"

"Jesus, we got us a gold mine!" Miller said, scratching furiously.

"The hell we have," the King said. "Not without some figuring. Number one, we can't put 'em all together. They're cannibals. That means we got to separate the males and females except when we're mating them. Another thing they'll fight among themselves, all the time. So that means separating males from males and females from females."

"So we separate them. What's so tough about that?"

"Nothing, Max," said the King patiently. "But we got to have cages and get the thing organized. It isn't going to be easy."

"Hell," Tex said. "We can build a stock of cages, no sweat in that."

"You think, Tex, we can keep the farm quiet? While we're building up the stock?"

"Don't see why not!"

"Oh, another thing," the King said. He was feeling pleased with the men and more than pleased with the scheme. It was a business after his own heart - nothing to do except wait. "They'll eat anything, alive or dead. Anything. So we've no logistics problem."

"But they're filthy creatures and they'll stink to the skies," Byron Jones III said. "We've enough stench around here as it is without putting more under our own hut. And rats are also plague carriers!"

"Maybe that's a special type of rat, like a special mosquito carries malaria," Dino said hopefully, his dark eyes roving the men.

"Rats can carry plague, sure," the King said, shrugging. "And they carry a lot of human diseases. But that don't mean nothing. We got a fortune in the making and all you bastards do is figure negatives! It's un-American!"

"Well, Jesus, this plague bit. How do we know if they'll be clean or not?" Miller said queasily.

The King laughed. "We asked Vexley that an' he said, quote, 'You'd find out soon enough. You'd be dead.' Unquote. Hell, it's just like chickens. Keep 'em clean and feed 'em good and you got good stock! Nothing to worry about."

So they talked about the farm, its dangers and its potentials - and they could all appreciate the potentials - provided they didn't have to eat the produce - and they discussed the problems connected with such a large-scale operation. Then Kurt came into the hut and in his hands was a squirming blanket.

"I got another," he said sourly.

"You have?"

"Sure I have. While you bastards're talkin' I'm out doin'. It's a bitch." Kurt spat on the floor.

"How do you know?"

"I looked. I seed enough rats in the Merchant Marine to know. An' the other's a male. An' I looked too."

They all climbed under the hut and watched Kurt put Eve into the trench. Immediately the two rats stuck together viciously, and the men were hard put not to cheer. The first litter was on its way. The men voted that Kurt was to be in charge and Kurt was happy.

That way he knew he would get his share. Sure he'd look after the rats. Food was food. Kurt knew he was going to survive if any bastard did.

Chapter 11.

Twenty-two days later Eve gave birth. In the next cage, Adam tore at the wire netting to get at the living food and almost got through, but Tex spotted the rent just in time. Eve suckled the young. There were Cain and Abel and Grey and Alliluha; Beulah and Mabel and Junt and Princess and Little Princess and Big Mabel and Big Junt and Big Beulah. Naming the males was easy. But none of the men wanted their girls' names or their sisters' or their mothers' names attached to the females. Even mother-in-law names were some other man's passion or relation of the past. It had taken them three days to agree on Beulah and Mabel.

When the young were fifteen days old, they were put into separate cages. The King, Peter Marlowe, Tex and Max gave Eve until noon to recover, then put her back with Adam. The second litter was launched.

"Peter," the King said benignly as they climbed through the trapdoor into the hut, "our fortune's made."

The King had decided on the trapdoor because he knew that so many trips under the hut would excite curiosity. It was vital to the success of the farm that it should remain secret. Even Mac and Larkin knew nothing about it.

"Where's everyone today?" Peter Marlowe asked, closing the trapdoor. Only Max was in the hut, lying on his bunk.

"Poor slobs got caught for a work party. Tex's in hospital. The rest are out liberating."

"Think I'll go and liberate too. Give me something to think about."

The King lowered his voice. "I got something for you to think about. Tomorrow night we're going to the village." Then he yelled to Max, "Hey Max, you know Prouty? The Aussie major? Up in Hut Eleven?"

"The old guy? Sure."

"He's not old. Can't be more'n forty."

"From where I'm at forty's old as God. It'll take me eighteen years to get that old."

"You should be so lucky," the King said. "Go see Prouty. Tell him I sent you."

"And?"

"And nothing. Just go see him. And make sure Grey isn't around - or any of his eyes."

"On my way," Max said reluctantly and left them alone.

Peter Marlowe was looking over the wire, seeking to the coast. "I was beginning to wonder if you'd changed your mind."

"About taking you along?"

"Yes."

"No need for you to worry, Peter." The King got out the coffee and handed a mug to Peter Marlowe. "You want to have lunch with me?"

"I don't know how the hell you do it," Peter Marlowe grunted. "Everyone's starving and you invite me to lunch."

"I'm having some katchang idju."

The King unlocked his black chest and took out the sack of little green beans and handed them to Peter Marlowe. "You like to fix them?"

As Peter Marlowe took them out to the tap to begin washing them, the King opened a can of bully and carefully eased the contents onto a plate.

Peter Marlowe came back with the beans. They were well washed and no husks floated in the clean water. Good, the King thought. Don't have to tell Peter twice. And the aluminum container had exactly the right amount of water - six times the height of the beans.

He set it on the hot plate and added a large spoonful of sugar and two pinches of salt. Then he added half the can of bully. "Is it your birthday?" Peter Marlowe asked.