The Demon Breed by James H. Schmitz

The theoretical Tuvela, totally self-confident, certainly would be willing to talk to the aliens at this point, press the psychological advantage she'd gained.  On the other hand, the Tuvela presumably would know what to do if it turned out she'd stepped into a Parahuan trap.  Nile wasn't sure she would know what to do. 

Back in August of 2019, when it was still safe to walk the streets without a hazmat suit, I purchased the 1968 Ace Science Fiction Special edition of James H. Schmitz's The Demon Breed with its fun cover by Leo and Diane Dillon at Second Story Books.  Schmitz has some important fans; in the past I have linked to Mercedes Lackey's passionate praise of Schmitz and account of her own introduction to science fiction, and on the back of this book are blurbs from John W. Campbell, editor of Astounding and Analog, Jack Vance, author of the Cugel books, the Demon Princes novels, and many other entertaining works, and Andre Norton, who reminds us that she has done research on otters.  I've enjoyed several things by Schmitz myself, so I'm looking forward to The Demon Breed, which appeared in serialized form in Analog the same year the paperback edition came out, under the title The Tuvela.

The story starts en medias res.  In the first chapter we meet Ticos Cay, a scientist, who is being interrogated under torture by sinister amphibian aliens, the Parahuan.  The setting is the planet Nandy-Cline, a relatively lightly settled planet on the edge of the space empire so many of Schmitz's stories are set in, The Federation of the Hub.  The hostile aliens are well-drawn, Schmitz ably making them interesting with a minimum of verbiage.  We also meet Nile Etland, a young woman scientist born on Nandy-Cline who was one of Ticos Cay's students when she was at university on some other planet.  She is flying around in an aircar with a seven-foot-tall talking otter, looking for Ticos.

My copy, front...

In Chapter 2 in a flashback we learn all about what Nile and Ticos are doing on Nandy-Cline.  Nile has been working as a researcher on her home planet for some time, and is an expert on its odd flora and fauna.  Floating jungle islands follow the currents of the oceans of Nandy-Cline, tracing vast circles across the planet, drifting from one climatic zone to another and then back again.  These islands are home to complex, ever-changing ecosystems of vegetal and herbivorous and carnivorous animal life.  Ticos arrived one day to tell her he had quit his job as a professor and wanted a job with the pharmaceutical firm where she was employed.  Ticos, who at 200 years of age had just about reached the limit of the human lifespan, had been conducting research on longevity treatments.  He had exhausted all avenues that could be pursued in an academic setting, and was in fact now an expert on mental exercises that allow one to control many basic biological processes of one's own body, making them more efficient and thus extending lifespan.  To achieve maximum mental control of your own body, you must be far from any other human's psychic influence, and so Ticos wanted to live as a hermit on one of the floating jungles.  While alone on an island he planned to research the possibility of deriving from the many living things that make up the diverse ecosystem of the floating jungles all-natural organic supplements that would also increase human longevity.  Ticos is some kind of genius, and it is hard to get good staff this far away from the more civilized parts of the galaxy, so the pharmaceutical company was happy to hire him and give him carte blanche to work in his own eccentric fashion--after Nile had trained him for a few weeks in how to survive on the dangerous islands, of course.

Periodically over 18 months Nile has radioed Ticos to learn his location and then visited him to bring him supplies and collect his valuable research.  But he has stopped answering her calls and so as the story proper begins, she is searching for him.

...and back.

The alien invaders shoot down Nile's aircar, but she and the giant talking otter survive and set about sneaking around the island, looking for Ticos.  Schmitz gives us effective action and suspense scenes, with chases, woodcraft, ambushes, people getting shot with ray guns, many weird life forms, a horror scene in which Nile finds a Parahuan leader's trophies--mummified humans he has captured and murdered--and so on.  We also get all the background on why the amphibians have sent a squadron of space warships (now hidden underwater) to Nandy-Cline and are running this clandestine operation, and on Ticos's daring strategy to prevent an interstellar war between the Hub and the space empire of these evil amphibians.  Ticos, while under interrogation (his mental techniques help him to endure the pain of torture) is trying to convince the aliens that the human Federation is secretly ruled by a cabal of superhumans that can easily defeat the Parahuan.  There are two factions in the alien ruling class, a radical faction (the Voice of Action) that is determined to attack the Hub and a conservative faction (the Voice of Caution) that thinks war on the humans is too risky.  These opposing factions are equal in number, but there is a mass of undecided elites that could be swayed to either side, and if Ticos can convince the aliens that the superhumans, known as "The Tuvela," are real, the Caution party will win the debate, presumably preventing the attack.  Nile is forced to portray one of the superhuman Tuvela in order to bring off the bluff.

Nile negotiates with the Parahuan invaders, and achieves success--the undecided elites join the conservative faction in deciding to scotch the operation to conquer Nandy-Cline.  But the Voice of Action breaks all the rules and launches a mutiny, murdering many of the leaders of the expedition and taking it over.  Nile and the giant otter have to spring Ticos, fight their way out of the alien base, signal for help, and then, after a few more humans and otters arrive, they engage in sabotage that cripples the Parahuan space ships and convinces the amphibians to flee.  The novel ends with a somewhat superfluous scene on the Parahuan home world in which the elites of that cruel race discuss their next move and decide that Nile's success indicates that they should hold off on attacking the Federation of the Hub for the foreseeable future.

The Demon Breed is a pretty traditional SF story--human scientists defeat alien invaders via their superior knowledge of science and through quick thinking (and by shooting them with ray guns.)  Schmitz does a good job with all the traditional SF elements--the gadgets, the monsters (and there are many) the aliens, and the talk of various longevity treatments are quite good--and the thriller elements--the sneaking and fighting and chasing--are also entertaining.

When I write about SF stories I often talk about the work's political or social bent--lots of SF writers have a philosophical theory or a political and social program and use their work to describe the way they think the world works or the way they think it should work, to comment on relationships between men and women or parents and children or the state and the populace, or to trumpet the potential benefits or warn of the potential dangers of technology.  Beyond the subtle feminism of having a woman take the lead in the commando/guerrilla aspects of the story, and the story's casual science-and-technology-are-awesome vibe, there is relatively little social and political jazz going on in The Demon Breed.  An exception is a discussion between Nile and Ticos about the form and style of the Federation government, which is a federal system in which the central government is pretty hands off and lets the many local governments under it solve their own problems as they see fit--Ticos suggests that this level of diversity and freedom, and the resulting inter-human competition, keeps the human race strong and adaptable and thus ready to face any external non-human threat that may arise.

The Demon Breed is a very good action-adventure piece, and I recommend it, in particular to people who like an adventure story and find the political and social commentary of so much SF to be irritating or distracting.

1979 and 2001 depictions of Nile Etland and her giant otter comrades