Under the energetic leadership of Executive Hafner, the colonists start to assemble agricultural equipment and prepare for planting fast-growing crops that they will need to survive.
Biological controls have previously surveyed the planet, without actually landing, and cleared it as being benign, but very soon mice appear and attack the crops and food stocks.
The apparently harmless native lifeform, which he dubs the omnimal', has the ability to adapt to threats as they appear.
Hafner wants to shoot it, but Marin convinces him not to, knowing that a further mutated creature will be unstoppable.
"Student Body" was adapted as the sixty-third episode of the radio anthology series X Minus One, first broadcast July 31, 1956.