Re: Rescuing livestock

From: "Mike Stanczyk" <stanczyk@pcisys.net>

> > As you can imagine, the Norstrillian defences were rather good.
> >
> As I can imagine, this place must have been only *slightly* less
depressing
> than your average Spoo ranch.

Quote from http://www.cordwainer-smith.com/stories.htm#nor

The place? That's Old North Australia. What other place could it be?
Where
else do farmers pay ten million credits for a handkerchief, five for a
bottle of beer? Where else do people lead peaceful lives, untouched by
militarism, on a world which is booby-trapped with death and things
worse
than death. Old North Australia has stroon-the santaclara drug-and more
than
a thousand other planets clamor for it. But you can get stroon only from
Norstrilia-that's what they call it, for short-because it is a virus
that
grows on enormous, gigantic misshapen sheep. The sheep were taken from
Earth
to start a pastoral system; they ended up as the greatest of imaginable
treasures. The simple farmers became simple billionaires, but they kept
their farming ways. They started tough and they got tougher. People get
pretty mean if you rob them and hurt them for almost three thousand
years.
They get obstinate. They avoid strangers, except for sending out spies
and a
very occasional tourist. They don't mess with other people, and they're
death, death, death inside out and turned over twice if you mess with
them.