Oxen

D: There was an animal that Tuin called “oxen.” Was that one of these?

B: Yes. That was the draft animal. They were not true oxen as you know them, but that was the closest word he could find in your language to relate to the animals. They were used like oxen and they vaguely resembled them, in that they did not look like horses and they did not look like elephants. And they did not look like water buffalo, which are other draft animals on your planet. But they vaguely resembled oxen so that was what he called them. They were built differently. (He paused as though trying to think how to describe them.) Their general framework, their skeletons, were different. Their joints were hinged somewhat differently so they had a different gait. And their skull was shaped differently. Some of them had horns and some did not; it depended on the genetics.

Their ears were set well back on the head and faced backward. The eyes tended to be gray in color and were set higher on the head than oxen’s eyes. And the dentition (teeth) was different.

D: I believe he said that the horns went straight out to the sides. Is that correct?

B: Yes. And they did not have cloven hooves. It appeared like bony toesthree in the back and four in the front. They were four toelike appendages that were very bony and ended in miniature hooves on each toe. (All this description was emphasized with appropriate hand motions.)

D: That would be different. But he said they never had many of these animals.

B: That’s true. The radiation of the sun made it difficult for them to propagate and many times the males tended to be sterile. So whenever there was a fertile male, he didn’t have to do any work. He was very pampered and was used strictly for breeding. It was hypothesized that because the testicles were more exposed than the ovaries, they received a larger dose of radiation and hence tended to be sterile.

D: And there was nothing they could interbreed with?

B: No, their genes were too different from the other animals on Earth. If they could have found some true oxen they could have developed socalled “mules ” hybrids that would have been sterile but would have been able to function. They considered using caribou but the bodily chemistries and structures were too different to develop viable crosses.

D: You said there were two other types of animals that they carried. Did these survive after the crash?

B: One did; one did not. The one that did survive was an animal remarkably similar to the domesticated goat.

The legend of Starcrash