The Voyage


 
 

    The voyage went underway in the spring of 1997.  The voyage itself to Illyria went as flawlessly as could be expected.  Everyone got along reasonably well, and if they didn’t, one of the psychiatrists prescribed them a drug of sorts for a short while.  In addition, the bull remained quite sedate and happy in his pen.  (It should probably be noted that the psychiatrists gave him pills, too, when appeared moody.)  The cows, though not on drugs, remained peaceful eating their hay.  Whether or not the hay contained mood-altering drugs was never questioned.

    When the ship landed, however, things went terribly wrong.  Although the gsroup discovered that Illyria was indeed perfectly suited to human and Earth-bound animal life, as they had hoped, they also discovered the shortage of medication in the doctors’ possession and how long it would take to acquire more.  Wanting to save as much as possible for themselves, the voyagers left the bull and the dairy cows behind.  The group figured the bull and cows would eventually die off from starvation and udder explosions resulting from lack of milking.*  Boy, did they ever have it wrong.  As it so happens, one of the dairy cows, soon after arriving in Illyria, calved a fine young bull.  Unfortunately for the farmer, he was all too interested in going home to Earth that he didn’t account for the impregnated cow.
 

*(On a dairy farm, a farmer will feed cows a certain amount of feed to get the cows to produce more milk.  If the farmer feeds the cows a lot of feed, the cows will produce more milk.  If not, the cow will only produce enough milk for its young.  In the event that the farmer does feed his cows a lot of feed to increase milk production, then the cow's udder will in fact explode from a lack of milking.  It all depends on how much the cows eat.)
 
 


A scientist examines a cow.


 

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