SOLVED. Sci-Fi - short story (?) about a space smuggler that transports rare powerful animals across galaxies, lands on a planet where they are constantly attacked by the animals residing there. [s]

[[deleted user]]

I read this when I was younger, maybe around 10 - 12 years ago when I was in middle school - as far as I can remember, this was within a collection of stories that followed a space smuggler who collected rare and exotic alien animals and traveled in an enormous ship. I'm not 100% sure if it was a short story or just a full fledged book.

They land on a planet, discover an unmanned? (possibly abandoned?) station and start getting attacked by the animals of the planet, seemingly randomly. The smuggler starts releasing some of his animals to fight back but they eventually find it futile as every species that gets released causes the planet to retaliate with stronger defensive species. The story ends with [SPOILER!] - they make contact with these 'pods' that reside deep within the ocean that are sentient creatures and have been controlling the animals to defend the oceans and planet for them.

That's about all I can remember unfortunately :(

[Andy]

This is one of the Haviland Tuf stories by George R. R. Martin; all the stories are collected in "Tuf Voyaging" Tuf Voyaging

I suspect the story you're talking about is "Guardians" which was published in a bunch of places http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cg...

From Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuf_Voy...

"Tuf finds himself at Namor, an oceanic world where sea monsters are attacking the local population. As always, he offers to assist for a fee. Before diving into creating the creatures needed to battle the monsters, Tuf begins to study the planet in order to determine why the monsters are attacking the people of Namor. However, during this study, the Namorians grow more desperate and impatient, especially as monsters able to walk on land begin to appear. Tuf's hand is forced, and he unleashes a barrage of other creatures to directly counteract the monsters.

This strategy, initially successful, soon fails as the monsters gain resistance to these otherworldly creatures. Tuf goes back to work, and manages to find a solution. Through his psionically-enhanced cat, he discovers a previously-unsuspected sapient species native to Namor: the mudpots. Sessile, aquatic bottom-dwellers (which had hitherto been considered dietary delicacies by the Namorian colonists), they are linked telepathically into a kind of hivemind, controlling the lesser species of life on the planet as skilled bio-engineers. "

[[deleted user]]

Yes! That's the one - thank you so much! I've been going insane searching the web using keywords. Been trying to remember the name of the stories for a few years now to no avail. Thank you!

[Andy]

Glad to help! I enjoyed those stories very much - maybe I should reread them.