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Then upon the spaceport of Eire a certain Captain Patrick Brannicut, of Boston, Earth, descended. It was his second visit to Eire. On the first he’d learned of the trouble. On his second he brought what still seemed the most probable solution. He landed eighteen hundred adult black snakes, two thousand teen-agers of the same species, and two crates of soft-shelled eggs he guaranteed to hatch into fauna of the same kind. He took away all the cash on the planet. The government was desperate.

But the snakes chased dinies with enthusiasm. They pounced upon dinies while the public watched. They lay in wait for dinies, they publicly digested dinies, and they went pouring down into any small hole in the ground from which a diny had appeared or into which one vanished. They were superior to traps. They did not have to be set or emptied. They did not need bait. They were self-maintaining and even self-reproducing–except that snakes when overfed tend to be less romantic than when hungry. In ten years a story began–encouraged by the Ministry of Information–to the effect that St. Patrick had brought the snakes to Eire, and it was certain that if they didn’t wipe out the dinies, they assuredly kept the dinies from wiping out the colony. And the one hope of making Eire into a splendid new center of Erse culture and tradition–including a reverence for St. Patrick–lay in the belief that some day the snakes would gain a permanent upper hand.

Out near the spaceport there was an imported monument to St. Patrick. It showed him pointing somewhere with his bishop’s staff, while looking down at a group of snakes near his feet. The sculptor intended to portray St. Patrick telling the snakes to get the hell out of Eire. But on Eire it was sentimentally regarded as St. Patrick telling the snakes to go increase and multiply.

But nobody dared tell that to Sean O’Donohue! It was past history, in a way, but also it was present fact. On the day of the emergency cabinet meeting it was appalling fact. Without snakes the planet Eire could not continue to be inhabited, because 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!”

There was a pause. The solicitor general said firmly:

“I mean it! They’ve a claim on us! A claim of the highest order! They can’t starve, it’s sure! But would you have them have to hold mass meetin’s and set up picket lines and the like, to get justice done them?”

“Ah,” said the chief justice. “Some way will turn up to handle the matter. Like Sean O’Donohue was sayin’ to me yesterday, at the very bottom of a bottle, we Erse can always depend on St. Patrick to take care of things!”