Loaves and Fishes
Haviland Tuf takes his newly acquired ship, the Ark, to the world of S'uthlam (an anagram for Malthus) for repairs. S'uthlam is a world on the verge of war with all of the nearby inhabited worlds. S'uthlam requires ever-increasing resources due to the world's ever-worsening population explosion, which is in turn due to the perverse and violently aggressive S'uthlamese religious belief in the godliness of unrestricted human reproduction regardless of the fact that it must lead — as it had in the recent past — to famine and/or S'uthlamese attempts at military conquest.
Due to this, the S'uthlam authorities want the Ark for themselves as both a resource to wring higher calorie production from their star system's biology and as a powerful weapon of war. In an attempt to secure it, Portmaster Tolly Mune kidnaps one of Tuf's cats. She makes a bet with Tuf - if he will solve S'uthlam's impending famine, she will return his cat and give him monetary credits for the ship's repairs. If he loses the bet, S'uthlam will keep the seedship.
Tuf at first reasonably proposes that the S'uthlamese simply restrict their incontinent reproductive practices, but because the S'uthlamese fixation is religious, it is impervious to reason. They will not control their population growth, and thus drive obsessively into a suicidal future of starvation and war.
Tuf works on the problem, and manages to find a solution whereby he uses the seedship's capabilities to provide exotic plants and animals which can provide sustenance for the population. The authorities, with striking proof of the Ark's capabilities, now begin scheming to bring it in their possession. Tolly Mune, disgusted with the politics of the situation, assists Tuf in escaping from S'uthlam, although he informs her that he will return to pay off his debt.
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