The Stars Are Ours!

1. AWAKENING

IT WAS WARM and there was a light, striking redly through Dard’s closed eyelids. The warmth was good, but he wanted to twist his head away from the demands of that light. To move— but movement required an effort he had not yet the strength to make. It would be better to slip back into the pleasant darkness—to sleep…

A sharp stab of pain shook him out of that floating ease. Dard made a great effort and forced his eyelids up. Cloudy masses of color moved above him, sometimes changing position in quick jerks which removed them entirely from his area of vision. The cloudiness slowly disappeared and lines tightened, drew together. A face-vaguely familiar-hands which descended to his level of sight.

He became aware of the hands moving across his body and another prick of pain followed. There was sound-staccato bursts. Talking-talking-Dard willed his mouth to open, his tongue to move. But obedience came with agonizing slowness, as if those particular motions had not been made for a long, long time. How long? Long-? He began to remember, and his hands turned to feel for the confines of the coffin. But they met no barrier-he was no longer imprisoned in that box!

“Drink up, kid—”

The words sorted themselves into coherent speech as he sucked on the tube which had been placed in his mouth. The drink was hot, warmth tingling inside him as well as without, driving the chill which had immobilized his muscles. Strangely he was drowsy again and this time the hands did not work to keep him conscious.

“That’s right. Take it easy—we’ll be seeing you…”

That reassurance carried into sleep with him. It held through to his second awakening. This time he raised himself up and looked around. He had been stretched on a soft thick pad on the floor of the oddest room he had ever seen. Half lying in a cushioned chair swung on webbing was a dark-haired man, intent upon a wide screen set in the wall before him.

There were two more such seats, each before a board of controls. And Dard saw three more such floor mats as the one he rested upon, each equipped with a set of straps and buckles. He drew his feet up under him to sit cross-legged, while he studied the cabin and put together bits of recollection.

This could not be anything but the control cabin of the star ship. He was awake-had been aroused-which meant -! His hand went to his mouth in an involuntary gesture. Now he wanted to see what was on that screen his cabin companion watched. He must see!

But his body moved so slowly. Rusty joints-slack muscles. Why-he creaked! Hands and eyes told him that he was clothed. Though the cloth of the breeches and blouse was sleek and smooth, like no other fabric he had ever seen, colored in a mixture of brown and green. He put out the feet in their queer soft boots and inched forward to grab at the nearest swinging chair.

The watcher turned his head and smiled. It was Kimber -the same Kimber he had last seen on his way to this cabin on the night the voyage had begun. How long ago had that been?

“Greetings!” The pilot pointed to the chair beside his own. “Sit down—you haven’t got your ship’s legs yet. Did you have good dreams?”

Dard moved his tongue experimentally. “Can’t remember any,” the words came out easily now-at least his voice hadn’t rusted away, “Where are we?”

Kimber chuckled. “Space only knows. But we’re near enough to a reasonable goal for the old girl to awake Kordov and me. Then we added you to the company-and will probably bring around a couple more before we land. See?”

On the screen three specks of light dotted the dark glass.

“That’s it, a new solar system, m’boy! Luck-Lord, Luck’s ridden on our rockets most of the way. That"-Kimber pointed to the largest of the dots-"that is a yellow sun, approximate temperature 11,000 degrees, approximate size-same as Sol. In fact, it could be Sol’s twin brother. And being Sol’s twin we can hope that one of its three planets is enough like Terra to make us welcome.”

“Three planets-I only see two.”

“Other’s behind Sol II now. We’ve seen her-in fact Tas and I have had a week to chart this system since the ship controls roused us. Give us another day and we shall pick out the world we want and land the ship—”

Three worlds-and a yellow sun. Dard wished that he knew more, that his education was better than a collection of scraps and patches. Back on earth under Pax it was a feat to be able to read and write-he had entertained some pride in his learning. But now-he felt that to be nothing at all!

“Why did you waken me?” he asked. “I can’t help with the ship. You said that Kordov and you—” He was trying to remember. There had been a third man to be aroused early-

Kimber’s attention was again given to the screen. Now he answered quickly:

“You were available and you can help Kordov. Lui didn’t make it.”

Lui Skort-that young medico who had been so enthusiastic about Lars’ drug! He bad been that third man.

“What- what happened?”

“We can’t tell now. All of this-the ship, her course, the freeze boxes were constructed on hope alone. We had no way of testing anything properly. The ship awakened Kordov and me. But Lui—”

“How long have we been cruising in deep space?”

“At least three hundred years-maybe more. Time in space may be different from planet time. That is one of the points scientists have argued about. We have no accurate way of telling.”

“Was it only Lui’s box that failed?”

Kimber’s face was grim now as it had been on that night they fought their way back to the Cleft.

“Until we land and start to rouse the whole company we can not tell. The freeze boxes must not be opened until their occupants are ready for revival. And the ship is too small to do that before landing—”

Coffins! Coffins were what they resembled, and coffins they might he for the whole inert cargo the star ship carried! Perhaps the three of them were the only survivors.

“We can hope for a high percentage of survivals,” Kimber continued. “Lui’s box had the special controls-that may have been the trouble, But out of four, three ff us are all right. Kordov—”

“Yes- and what does Kordov do?” asked the hearty voice behind them.

The stocky First Scientist elbowed his way between the two swinging seats and handed the occupant of each a round plastic bulb from which a tube projected. He cradled a third in his own hand as he settled in the other chair.

“Kordov,” he answered his own question, “continues to see after your puny bodies, my friends. And you should be glad of his personal interest in them. You will now consume what you hold in your paws and be thankful!” He inserted the bulb tube in his mouth and took a smacking suck.

Dard discovered that he had to drink the same warm salty stuff that had been given to him on his first awakening. And it satisfied him completely. But he only took one.experimental drag before he demanded:

“I heard about Lui. How many others?”

Tas Kordov wiped his mouth with the back of his square hand.

“That we can not tell. We dare not investigate the boxes too closely until a landing has been made. Yes; all of us want an answer to that question, young man. How many-? We can hope that most came through. I propose to open two more from the crews’ quarters-there are men in them whose skills we need. But-for the rest-their slumbers must continue until we have the new world to offer them. And that too,” he waved at the visa-screen,” presents problems. We have found the proper sort of sun. But remember Sol had nine planets, on only one of which mankind could live at ease: Here are three planets-perhaps a Mars, a Venus, a Mercury, and no Terra. Which one do you think we should try, Sim?”

The pilot drank before he replied. “Judging by the charted orbits, I’ll settle for the middle one. It’s closer to Sol II than Terra was to Sol I, hut it has the nearest approach to a Terran orbit.”

“I don’t knew anything about astronomy,” Dard ventured.”You expect this sun to produce an earth-type planet because it is a ’yellow’ one, but if one of those three worlds is another Terra-what about intelligent life on it? Couldn’t the same general conditions have produced the same type of dominant life form?”

Kordov leaned forward, disturbing the precarious balance of his swinging seat.

“Intelligent life-maybe. Humanoid of Man-only perhaps. If on one planet the primate is the ruling form, on another it may be the insect or the carnivora.”

“Don’t forget this!” Kimber held up one hand and flexed its fingers in front of the screen. “Man’s hand helped to make him the ruling form. Suppose you had only-say, a cat’s paw. Even if intelligence went with it, and I defy anyone to tell me that a cat is not an intelligent creature; its brains may work in a different pattern, perhaps, but no one who has lived with one can deny that it can alter its environment to suit its convenience, in spite of the general stupidity of the human beings that it must deal with and through. But if we had been born with paws instead of hands-no matter what super brains we had, could we have produced tools, or other artifacts? Primates on Terra had hands. And they used them to pull themselves up to a material civilization, just as they used monkey chatter and worse than monkey manners to break up what they themselves had created. No, if we had not possessed hands we would have achieved nothing.”

“Very well,” Kordov returned, “I grant you the advantage of hands. But I still say that some ruling species other than primates might well have developed under slightly different conditions. All history, both man-made and physical, is conditioned by ’ifs’. Suppose your super cats have learned to use their paws and are awaiting us. But this is romancing,” he laughed. “Let us hope that what lies there is a world upon which intelligent life has never come into existence at all. If we are lucky—”

Kimber scowled at the screen. “Luck has ridden on our jets all the way. Sometimes I wonder if we have been a little too lucky and there’s a rather nasty pay-off waiting for us right at the end of this voyage. But we can at least choose our landing place and I intend to set us down as far from any signs of civilization-if there is a civilization-as I can. Say in a desert or—”

“We shall leave the selection of the spot to you, Sim. And now, Dard, if you have finished your meal, you will please come with me. There is work to be done.”

Dard’s attempt to get to his feet unbalanced him and he would have fallen had it not been for the First Scientist.

“These cabins have some gravity,” Kordov explained.”But not as much as we knew on Terra. Hold on and move slowly until you learn how to keep your feet.”

Dard did as he advised, clutching at the chairs and anything within reach until he came to the round opening of the door. Beyond that was a much smaller cabin with two built-in bunks and a series of supply cupboards.

“This is pilot’s quarters during an interplanetary run.” Kordov crossed to the center of the room where a well-shaped opening gave access to the ship below. “Come on down—”

Dard gingerly descended the steep stair, coming into the section where he had been stored away for the cold sleep. And Kordov was going into that very cabin. The three boxes on the far rack were open. On the other rack the coffins were solidly white as if they had been carved from virgin snow.

Kordov pressed a button and the topmost box came down to the floor. He freed it from the arms which had lowered it and trundled his prize to the door with Dard’s help. Together they brought the coffin into a second chamber which was a miniature laboratory. Kordov went down on his knees to read the dials. After a minute inspection he sighed with relief.

“It is well. Now we shall open—”

The lid resisted as if ages of time had applied a stiff glue.

But under continued pressure it gave at last with a faint swish of air. Crisp cold curled up about them, bringing with it chemical scents. The First Scientist examined the stiff body in the exposed hollow.

“Yes, yes! Now we must help him to live again. First-on the cot there—”

Dard helped lift the man onto the cot in the middle of the room. Under direction he rubbed the icy flesh with oils from a bottle Kordov thrust upon him, watching the First Scientist inject various fluids over the heart and in scattered veins. Warmth was coming back into the body as they worked. And when the man had fully roused, been fed, and had fallen into the sudden second sleep, Dard aided in dressing him and helped transport the body up to the control cabin to be laid out on the accelerator mat.

“Who- oh, Cully!” Kimber identified the newly revived crewman. “That’s good. Who else are you going to bring around?”

Kordov, puffing a little, took a moment to consider. “We have Santee, Rogan, and Macley there.”

“The ship’s not Santee’s sort of job, and Cully’s our engineer. Wait a minute Rogan! He’s had space training-as a tel-visor expert. We’ll need him—”

“Rogan it shall be then. But first we shall take a rest. We shall not need a tel-visor expert yet awhile, I believe?”

Kimber glanced at the timepiece set in the control board.

“Not for about five hours at least. And maybe eight-if you want to be lazy.”

“I am lazy when laziness is of advantage. Much of the troubles from which we have fled have been born of too much rushing about trying to keep busy. There is a time for working as hard as a man can work, yes. But there must also be hours to sit in the sun and think long thoughts anddo nothing at all. Too much rushing wears out the body- and maybe also the mind. We must make haste slowly if we would make it at all!”

Whether it was some lingering effect of the cold sleep they could not decide, but they all found themselves dropping off into sudden naps. Kordov believed that the condition would pass, but Kimber was uneasy as they approached the chosen planet and demanded a stimulant from the First Scientist.

“I want to be awake now,” Dard caught a scrap of conversation as he came back from a rest on one of the bunks in the other cabin. “To go off in a dream just when I take the ship into atmosphere-that’s not possible. We aren’t out of the woods yet-not by a long margin. Cully could take the controls in a pinch, so could Rogan, when you get him out of cold storage. But neither are trained pilots, and landing on unknown terrain is no job for a beginner!”

“Very well, Sim. You shall have your pill in plenty of time. But now you are to go in, lie down, and relax, not fight sleep. I promise that I shall rouse you in plenty of time. And meanwhile Cully will take your seat and watch the course—”

The tall thin engineer, who had said very little since his awakening, only nodded as he folded with loose-limbed ease into Kimber’s reluctantly vacated place. He made some small adjustment on the control board and dropped his head back on the chair rest to watch the screen.

During the past hours the points of light had altered. The ball of flame Kimber designated as Sol II had slipped away over the edge of their narrow slice of vision. But the world they had chosen filled most of the expanse now, growing larger by seconds.

Kordov sat down in one of the other chairs to watch with Dard. The sphere on the screen now had a bluish-green tinge, with patches of other color.

“Polar regions-snow.” Kordov commented.

Cully replied with a single, “Yeh!”

“And seas—”

To which Cully added the first long speech he had yet made.

“Got a lot of water. Should be picking up all land masses soon.”

“Unless it’s all water,” mused Kordov. “Then,” he grinned at Dard over his shoulder, “we shall be forced to leave it to the fish and try again.”

“One thing missing,” Culley adjusted the screen control for the second time. “No moon—”

No moon! Dard watched that enlarging sphere and for the first time since his awakening the dream-mood of passive acceptance of events cracked. To live under a sky where no silver globe ever hung. The moon gone! All the old songs men had sung, the old legends they had told and retold, the bit of history they cherished, that the moon was their first step into space, all gone. No moon-ever again!

“Then what will future poets find to rhyme with “June” in all their effusions?” rumbled Kordov. “And our nights to come-they will be dark ones. But one can not have everything-even another stepping stone to space. That was how our moon served us-a way station, a beckoning sign post which lured us on and out. If there is or ever was intelligent life down there-they lacked that.”

“No sign of space travel?” Cully wanted to know with a spark of interest.

“None. But of course, we can in no way be sure. Just because nothing has registered on our screens we can not say that it does not exist. If we were but a fraction off a well- traveled space lane we would not know it! And now, Dard, we have Rogan to rouse. I promised Sim that he would be on hand to share duty.”

Again they made that trip below, lifted out the proper box and brought back to life the man who slumbered in it.

“That is the last one ,” stated Kordov when they had established Rogan in the control cabin. “No more until after we land. Hah!”

He had turned to look at the screen and the exclamation was jolted out of him by what he saw there. Land masses, mottled green-blue-red against which seas of a brighter hue washed.

“So we do not join fish. Instead you, Dard, must go and shake Sim back to life. Now is the time for him to be on duty!”

Shortly afterward Dard crouched on one of the acceleration mats beside the unconscious Rogan while the others occupied the chairs before the controls. The atmosphere within the cabin was tense and yet Kimber alone was at ease.

“Rogan come to yet?” he asked without turning his head.

Dard gently shook the shoulder of the man on the next mat. He stirred, muttered. Then his eyes opened and he scowled up at the roof of the cabin. A second later he sat up.

“We made it!” he shouted.

“That we did!” Kordov answered cheerfully. “And now—”

“Now there’s a job waiting for you, fella,” broke in Kimber. “Come up and tell us what you think of this.”

Kordov spilled out of the third chair and helped Rogan into it. Holding tightly to the arms of the seat, as if be feared any moment to be tossed out of it, Rogan gave his full attention to the screen. He drew a deep breath of pure wonder.

“It’s- it’s beautiful!”

Dard agreed with that. The mingling of color was working on him-just as sunsets back on Terra had been able to do. There were no words he knew to describe what he now saw. But be didn’t have a chance to watch long.

“Better strap down,” came the suggestion from the pilot.”We’re going in ”

Kordov plumped down on one of the acceleration mats, pulling the harness which flanked it up over his body, and Dard did the same. He was flat on his back against the spongy stuff of the pad with his head at an angle from which he could not see the screen. They bored into atmosphere and he must have blacked out, for he never afterward remembered the last part of the furious descent.

The ship shuddered, pushing up-or was it down-upon him. He had a misty idea that this must be full gravity returning. Then there was a shock which tore at the webs holding his body and he gasped, fighting for breath. But his hands were already at the buckles which fastened him down as he heard a voice say:

“End of the line! All out!”

And another replied-in Cully’s dry tone: “Neat, Sim, nice and neat.”

2. NEW WORLD

The tel- visor expert had spun his seat around and was facing another section of the control panel, his fingers flying across the buttons there. Needles spun on dials, indicators moved, and Rogan’s lips shaped words silently. When he had done Kimber flicked the control of the visa-screen which had gone dead at their landing.

Slowly pictures of the immediate surroundings of the ship unrolled before their fascinated eyes.

“Late afternoon,” Rogan commented, “by the length of the shadows.”

The ship had planeted in the middle of an expanse of gray-blue gravel or sand-backed at a distance by perpendicular cliffs of reddish rock layered by strata of blue, yellow and white. As the scene changed, those in the control room saw the cliffs give way to the mouth of a long valley down the center of which curved a stream.

’That water’s red!” Dard’s surprise jolted the words out of him.

The red river was hemmed in by blue-green, low-growing vegetation which cloaked the ground within the valley itself and ran in tongues along the water into the semi-arid stretch of sand. Their viewing device was across the river, picking up more cliffs and sand. Then they were fronted by ocean shore and vivid aquamarine waves tipped with white lacy foam. Into this emptied the river, staining the sea red for some distance. Sea, air, cliffs, river-but no living creature!

“Wait!” Kimber’s order sent Rogan’s finger down on a button and the picture on the screen became fixed. “Thought I saw something-flying in the air. But guess I was wrong.”

The scene changed until they were looking at the same spot where it had begun. Kimber stretched.

“This part of the country appears unoccupied. And, Tas, we didn’t sight any signs of civilization when we came in either. Maybe our luck’s held and we have an empty world.”

“Hmm. But is it one we can venture into?” The First Scientist squeezed over to Cully’s side of the cabin. “Atmosphere, temperature-within a fraction of Terra’s. Yes, we can live and breathe here.”

Kimber freed himself from the pilot’s straps. “Suppose we have a look-see in person then.”

Dard was the last to leave the cabin. He was still a little drunk with that riot of color on the visa-screen. After the remembered drabness of his home section of Terra this was overpowering. He was halfway down the ladder when he heard that clang which announced the opening of tile hatch and the emergence of the ramp that would carry them safely over ground super-heated by their jets.

When he came out the others were strung along the ramp, breathing the warm air, air that was pungent with a fresh tang. The breeze pulled at Dard’s hair, whipping a lock across his forehead, singing in his ears. Clean air- with none of the chemical taint which clung in the ship. Around the fins of their ship the sand had been fused into a curdled milky glass which they avoided by leaping from the end of the ramp to the dunes.

Kimber and Kordov plowed straight ahead to the wave-smoothed shore. Cully merely dropped in the soft grit of the beach, lying full length, his hands pressed tight to the earth, staring bemusedly up at the sky, while Rogan was pivoting slowly, as if to verify the scene tile visa-screen had shown them.

Dard made his way to the sand. The redness of the river occupied him. Red water-why? The sea was normal enough except where it was colored by the river. He wanted to know what painted the stream and he started off determinedly to its bank.

The sand was softer, more powdery than any he had known on Terra. It shifted into his boot packs, arose in puffs and covered all but the faintest outline where he had stepped. He stooped and sifted the stuff through his fingers, knowing a strange tingle as the earth of this new world drifted away from his palm-blue sand-red river-red, yellow and white striped cliffs-color everywhere about him! Overhead that arch of cloud studded blue-or was it blue at all? Didn’t it have just the faintest shading of green? Turquoise rather than true blue! Now that he was becoming accustomed to the color he could distinguish more subtle shades among the glows of brighter tones-shades he could not name-like that pale violet which streaked the sand.

Dard went on until he was in the stone-and-pebble strewn border of the river. It was not a large stream, four strides might take him across it. There was a ripple of current but the water was opaque, dull rusty red, and it left a reddish rim about every stone it lipped in passage. He went down on one knee and was about to dip in a cautious exploratory finger when a voice called a warning:

“Don’t try that, kid. Might not be healthy.” Rogan came down the stony bank to join him. “Better be safe than sorry. Learned that myself on Venus-the hard way. See a piece of drift wood anywhere about?”

Dard searched among the rocks and found what appeared to be a very ordinary stick. But Rogan inspected it carefully before he picked it up. The stick was lowered into the flood and as cautiously withdrawn, an inch or so of it now dyed red. Together they held it close for examination.

“It’s alive!” If he had been holding that test branch, Dard thought later, he might have dropped it at the realization of what the red stain was. But Rogan kept a tight grip.

“Lively little beggars, aren’t they?” he asked. “Look like spiders. Do they float-or swim? And why so thick in the water. Now let’s just see.” He knelt and using the stick along the surface of the water skimmed off a good portion of what Dard secretly considered the extremely repulsive travelers. With the layer of “spiders” removed the water changed color becoming a clearer brownish fluid.

“So they can be scraped off,” Rogan observed cheerfully.

“With a strainer we may be able to get a drink-if this stuff is drinkable.”

Dard swallowed hastily as Rogan tapped off on a convenient boulder the greater number of creatures he had fished out of the stream; and then together they followed the water to the sea. Several times they detoured, quite widely on Dard’s part, to escape contact with patches of red marooned on shore. Not that the “spiders” appeared uncomfortable on the firmer element for they made no attempt to move away from the spots where some sudden eddy had deposited them.

A stiff breeze came in over the waves. It was heavy with the tang Rogan now identified for Dard.

“Natural sea-that’s salt air!” What he might have added was drowned out by a hideous screech.

Close on its dying echo came a very human shout. Kimber and Kordov were running along the beech just beyond the water’s edge. And above their beads twisted and darted a nightmare, a small nightmare to be sure, but still one horrible enough to have winged out of an evil dream.

If a Terran snake had been equipped with bat wings, two clawed legs, a barbed tail, and a wide fanged mouth, it might have approached in general this horror. The whole thing could not have been more than eighteen or twenty inches long, but its snapping fury was several times larger than its body and it was making power dives at the running men.

Rogan dropped his spider stick as Dard’s hand flew inside his blouse to claim the only possession he had brought from Terra. He threw the hunting knife and by some incredible luck clipped a wing, not only breaking the dragon’s dive but sending it fluttering down, end over end, screeching. It flapped and beat with the good wing, squirming across the sand until Kimber and Kordov pinned it to the shingle with hastily flung stones.

Its eyes gleamed with red hate as they gathered in a circle around it, avoiding the snapping jaws and the flipping of the barbed tail which now dripped oily yellow drops.

“Bet that’s poison,” suggested Rogan. “Nice critter- hope they don’t grow any bigger.”

“What’s the matter?” Cully came tearing down the slope, one of the green ray guns in his band. “What’s making all that racket?”

Rogan moved aside to display the injured dragon. “Native telling us off.”

“Usually,” Kimber broke in, “I don’t believe in shooting first and investigating afterward. But this thing certainly hasn’t any better nature to appeal to-nearly stripped the ear off my head before I knew he was around. Can you shoot it, Jorge, without messing it up too much? Tas, here, probably will want to take it apart later to see what makes it tick.”

The biologist was squatting at a safe distance watching the convulsive struggles of the dragon with fascinated eyes.

“Yes, please do not destroy it utterly. A snake-a flying snake! But that is not

possible!”

“Maybe not on Terra,” Kimber reminded him. “What can we say is possible or impossible here? Jorge, put it out of its misery!”

The green ray clipped the top of the creature’s head and it went limp on the sand. Tas approached it gingerly, keeping as far as he could from the tail barb still exuding the yellow venom. Rogan went back down the beach to retrieve his spider collection, and Dard picked up and wiped his knife clean.

“Flying snakes and swimming spiders,” the communications techneer held out his stick for their appraisal. “I’m going to be afraid to sit down out here-anything may pop up now,”

Tas was plainly torn between the now tractable dragon and the water dwellers Rogan had brought him. “All this"- his pudgy hands indicated the world of cliffs, sand and sea -"new, unclassified.”

Gully holstered his gun. He was frowning at the ceaseless waves.

“What do you make of those, Sim?” he demanded of the pilot, pointing to a low bank of clouds slowly expanding up the rim of the sky.

“On earth, I’d say a storm.”

“Might be a bad one, too,” Rogan commented. “And we have no shelter but the ship. At least this is summer- we’re warm enough.”

“You think so?” asked Dard with some reason. The sea wind was rising, to become a wet lash with an icy bite in its flail. The temperature was dropping fast.

Kimber studied the clouds. “I’d say we better get back.”

But when he turned inland his gasp brought them all around.

They had left the star ship on an even keel. Now it listed so that its nose pointed down the valley away from the sea.

A good half hour later Kimber got to his feet, relief mirrored on his face. One of the fins had broken through the fused coating the jet heat had put on the beach. But beneath the splintered glass crust it had found rock support -it would slip no farther. The scarred sides towering above them were no longer mirror bright as they had been in the Cleft, she had too many years, too long a voyage behind her. But she was not going to fail them.

“Rock all right,” Kimber repeated the statement he had made so joyfully a few minutes before. “The ledge slants a little, which is why she canted that way. But she’ll stand. And,” he did not need to draw their attention to the darkness closing in, “maybe it’s some more luck at work again. With her nose pointing away from this breeze, she’s less likely to come a cropper, even if it turns out to be a full-sized blow.”

Dard held on to the rail of the ramp. The wind screamed around them, stirring up devils born of the powdery sand, which filled unwary eyes and any mouth that bad the misfortune to be open. The dust had already driven Kordov inside, his precious dragon in a pair of forceps. He was more interested in that and Rogan’s spiders than he now was in the ship.

“Full- sized blow?” drawled Rogan. “This has the makings of a hurricane if I’m any judge. And unless you fellas want to be buried alive in these marching sand dunes, you’d better run for cover. As long as you’re sure we’re not going to land bottom side up, I think it’s time to adjourn.”

Dard followed him up the ramp just in time to escape a miniature sandstorm through which the other two had to fight their way. There was a brushing-off party in the air lock, but, as they climbed back to the crew’s quarters Dard could still taste grit in his mouth and hear it crunch under his feet.

Kordov was not to be found in the control cabin or bunk room when Kimber and the other two sat on the bunks and Dard dropped down cross-legged on the floor. The ship was vibrating under him. Could the wind have risen to that pitch already? It was Rogan who answered that.

“Like to see what’s happening out there?” He got up and went into the control cabin.

Kimber and Dard got up to follow, but cully shook his head.

“What you don’t know, doesn’t hurt you much,” he remarked. “And I don’t see anything exciting about a sandstorm.”

It was true that when Rogan adjusted the visa-screen there was little for them to see. The storm had brought night and obscurity. With an exclamation of annoyance, the techneer clicked off the viewer and they drifted back to find Cully asleep and Kordov climbing up to join them.

“Your ’spiders,’ ” he burst out as soon as he sighted Rogan, “are plants!”

“But they moved!” protested Dard. “They had legs.”

Kordov shook his head. “Roots, not legs. And plants they are in spite of being mobile. Some form of aquatic fungi.”

“Toadstools with legs yet!” Rogan laughed. “Next, trees with arms, I suppose. What about the dragon-was he a flying cabbage?”

Kordov did not need any urging to discuss the dragon.

“Poisonous reptile-and carnivorous. We shall have to beware of them. But it was full grown, we need not worry.”

“About their coming in larger sizes?” asked the relaxed Kimber in a lazy voice. “Let us be thankful for small favors and hope that they do a lot of that screeching when they go ahunting. But now-let us think about tomorrow.”

“And tomorrow-and tomorrow—” Rogan repeated sleepily hut Cully sat up thoroughly aroused.

“When do we wake up the others?” he wanted to know.

“And are we going to stay right here?”

Kordov locked his fingers behind his head and leaned back against the wall of the cabin. “I will revive Dr. Skort - Carlee-in the morning. She can help me with the others. Do you intend to explore the immediate terrain then? We should decide soon whether to stay here or try to find semi-permanent headquarters elsewhere.”

“There is just one thing,” said Kimber, “I can lift ship again, yes. But I can’t guarantee another safe landing. The fuel—” he shrugged. “I don’t know how long our voyage here lasted, but if we hadn’t made this landfall when we did, we might not have been able to come in at all.”

“So?” Kordov’s lips shaped a soundless whistle. “Then we had better be very sure before we think of a move. What about taking out the ’sled’?”

“I’ll break it out first thing tomorrow. That is, I will if this storm blows itself out by then. I don’t propose to take that contraption up in a high wind-the bugs aren’t out of it yet,” Kimber retorted.

“And how about food?” Cully asked. “Specifically here and now for us, and objectively for the rest when they wake up.”

“Specifically,” Kordov opened one of the storage cabinets and took out five small packages which he tossed around to the company. “Concentrates. But, you’re right, supplies are not going to last forever. We shall not be able to awaken all our company until we are reasonably sure of food and shelter. But-we’ll get Harmon out of storage and have him investigate the soil up river where the vegetation is so thick. The exploration party might also hunt.”

“Not dragons, I hope,” Rogan mumbled through a mouthful of the dry concentrate cake. “I have a distinct feeling dragons will not agree with my internal arrangements! Or traveling fungi either—”

For the first time Dard ventured to break in upon his elders. “Some fungi-mushrooms-are good.” He had no desire to lunch off red spiders, but he knew what real hunger meant and if it were a question of being hungry or eating swimming mushrooms, he could close his eyes and eat.

“Just so,” Kordov beamed at him. “And we shall investigate the food value of these. I shall get the hamsters out of cold storage and try the local products on them.”

So if they don’t curl up and go blue in the face we feast,” Kimber stretched and yawned. “Since we have quite a full day before us tomorrow, suppose we hit the sack now. Toss for the bunks and the acceleration pads.”

They solemnly tossed a coin-one with a hole in it which Kimber wore on a chain about his neck as a lucky piece. Dard found that Fortune relegated him to one of the acceleration pads and did not care. To his mind the soft sponge of that support was infinitely more comfortable than any bed he could remember.

But when he curled up on it he found that he could not sleep. All the wonders of the new world whirled through his mind in a mad dance. And behind them lurked fear. Lui Skort had been a strong young man but he had not survived the passage. How many more of the boxes housed below in the star ship held death instead of life? What about Dessie?

Now that there was nothing to distract him, nothing he could give attention to, he remembered only her-the tight yellow braids sticking out at sharp angles, how she had been able to sit so quietly in the grass that birds and little animals accepted her as part of their world and had been entirely unafraid-how good and patient she had always been. Dessie!

He sat up. To lie there and sleep when Dessie might never wake to see this new land! He couldn’t!

On his hands and knees Dard crawled out of the control cabin and between the bunks. Kimber was curled in a ball on one, but the other, which had fallen to Kordov, was empty. Dard started down the stair.

The deck below showed a patch of strong light and he could hear someone moving. He ventured to the door of the laboratory where he had helped to revive Cully and Rogan The First Scientist was busy there, setting out instruments and bottles. He looked up as Dard’s shadow fell into the room.

“What is it?”

“Dessie!” the boy blurted out. “I’ve got to know about Dessie!”

“Ah, so? But it is for their own comfort and protection that our companions must continue to sleep. Until we are sure of food and shelter.”

“I know that.” But the desperation in Dard could not be so sensibly silenced. “But-isn’t there any way at all of telling? I have to know about Dessie-I just have to!”

Tas Kordov pulled out his lower lip with thumb and forefinger and allowed it to snap back hate place with a soft smacking sound.

“That is a thought, my, boy. We can tell whether the mechanism has in any way failed. And perhaps-just perhaps we can have other assurance. I must open that particular compartment in the morning anyway to bring out Carlee Skort. Carlee—” his face puckered with the misery of an unhappy child. “And then I must be the one to tell her about Lui. That will be a very hard thing to do. Well, we do not escape the hard things in this life. Come along.”

They went down five levels in the ship. Here the few lights were very dim, and the force of the wind against the hull could be more strongly felt. Kordov verified markings on the sealed door and at last released the fastening of a portal which came open with a faint sigh of displaced air. The chill of the room fed Dard’s unease. He edged along after Kordov, between doubled racks of the coffin boxes to the final set. The First Scientist dropped to his knees and snapped on a hand torch to read dials.

“Dessie and Lara Skort are in this one together, they were so small they could share a compartment.” The light in Kordov’s hand flashed from one dial to the next, and the next. Then he smiled up at Dard.

“These are all as they should be, son. There has been no organic or chemical change inside since this was sealed. To my honest belief they are alive and well. Soon they will be out to run about as little girls should. They shall be free-as they never could have been on Terra. Do not worry. Your Dessie shall share this world with you!”

Dard had himself under control now and he was able to answer quite levelly:

“Thanks- thanks a lot, sir.”

But Kordov had moved to another box and was reading more dials. He gave that case a slap of approbation as he straightened to his full height again.

“Carlee, too-we have been so very lucky.”

3. STORM WRACK

The tone rather than the words of that horrified exclamation awoke Dard and brought him up on the acceleration pad. Kimber, Rogan, and Cully were crowded together before the visa-screen. The hour might have been in the middle of the night, or late in the morning, for inside the ship day and night had no division. But on the screen it was day.

A gray sky was patched by ragged drifts of cloud. And as Dard leaned over the back of the pilot’s seat, he saw what had so startled the others.

Where the day before there had stretched that smooth sweep of blue sand, forming a carpet clear to the base of the colorful cliffs, there was now only water, a sheet of it. Rogan set the viewer to turning so that they could see the flood completely surrounded the ship. Even the river had been swallowed up without any red stain left to betray its flow.

As the scene reached the seaside Rogan pushed the button which held it there. The beach was gone, it was the sea which had come in to enclose them.

“Surprise, surprise!” that was Rogan. “Do we now swim ashore?”

“I don’t think that it is that deep,” answered Kimber.

“The water may come in this way during every hard storm. Switch over to the cliffs again, Les.”

The picture whizzed with a dizzy speed back to the cliff. Kimber was right, already there was a stretch of sand showing at the base of that rock escarpment. The water was draining away.

They clattered down through the quiet ship, sending out the ramp so that they could venture to the water’s swirl. A weak current swilled around the fins and the bare sand at the cliff grew wider as they watched.

The flood was not clear, and caught around the fins of the ship were huge loops of weed. Some variety of fish had been beached close to the foot of the ramp, and a scaled tail beat waves as the stranded monster fought for life. Other debris showed tantalizingly now and again as the water was sullenly sucked away from the sand.

“What the-I” Cully’s start was near to a jump. Over-over to the right! What is that?”

Something was venturing out on the still-wet sand, following the retreating line of the sea. But, what it was, none of them dared guess. Kimber ran back into the ship while the rest tried vainly to see it better. The color was queer, a pale green, hardly to be distinguished from the sea water as it scurried along on four thin legs. But the outline of its head!

“Here!” Kimber skidded down the ramp, keeping himself out of the sea by a quick grab for the rail. He carried a pair of field glasses. “Is it still there-yes, I see it!” He focused the lenses in the right direction. “Great guns!”

“What is it?” demanded Rogan, plainly doing his best to keep from snatching the glasses away from the pilot.

“Yeah,” Cully, too, was shaken out of his usual calm, “pass those along, fella! We all want a look-see!”

Dard squinted, trying to make natural sight serve as well as the lenses Kimber was now passing to Rogan. At least the thing on the sand did not appear to be alarmed either by the ship or the men watching it. Maybe it would stay in sight until he, as the very junior member of the party, had the right to use the lenses too.

It stayed, digging in the wet sand, until Cully did pass the glasses. Dard adjusted them feverishly. Having met the fungi spiders and a flying dragon, he could hardly be surprised by the weird beast he saw now. Its pale green skin was entirely hairless, nor was that skin scaled-instead it resembled to a marked degree his own smooth flesh. The creature’s head was pear-shaped with ears which were hardly more than holes and large eyes set far apart so that the range of vision was probably wider than that of any Terran animal. But that pear head ended in what could only be described as a broad, duck’s bill or hard blackish substance. And just as Dard trained the glasses upon it, it folded its hind legs neatly under it, to sit up in a doglike stance and gaze mildly across the dwindling tongue of sea straight at the star ship. Sand clung to its bill and it absent-mindedly brushed that off with a foreleg.

“Duck- dog,” Kimber named it. “Doesn’t look dangerous, does it? I’ll be-! Just look at that!”

“ ’That’ was a short procession of more duck-dogs emerging from a dark crevice in the cliff to join the first. One of them, about three-quarters the size of the first, was the same pale green, but the three others were yellow, the exact yellow, Dart noted, of the strata in the diff. In fact, as they marched by a projection of that particular stratum, they faded from sight. Two of the yellow beasts were full grown but the third was very small. And halfway along the path it sat down, refusing to move on until one of the larger animals returned to butt it ahead.

“Family party,” suggested Dard, not daring to hold the glasses away from Kimber’s impatient reach any longer.

“But harmless,” the pilot suggested for the second time.

“Do you suppose they’d let us near them? The water’s gone down a lot.”

“Nothing like trying. Just let Jorge be ready with that ray gun, then if they do turn out to be first-class menaces, we’ll be prepared.” The communications techneer lowered himself cautiously into the flood, which was at knee level.

He detoured to avoid the floating weed and paused when be reached the fish still beating the air with a frenzied tail. Dard caught up with him at that point.

Save for a curiously flattened head and a huge, paunchy middle, the stranded fish was the first living thing they had seen here which did resemble a Terran product. It was a good five feet long and displayed murderous teeth. The powerful tail beat the receding water into froth but it was beyond hope of escape. Dard spoke impulsively:

“Can’t- can’t you shoot it? It won’t be able to get away and I think it knows that.”

“Unhuh.” That was Cully and as usual he wasted no words. He snapped the ray at that writhing head. With a last convulsion the fish flopped completely out of the water, to float with its huge belly up when it fell back.

“Maybe breakfast?” Rogan asked. “Looks a little bit like a tuna-might even taste like one. We’ll let Kordov get it and see if it’s fit for us to bury the teeth in. I could do with a steak-maybe two of them! Hello-the fireworks didn’t send our duck-dogs running. I’d say they were enjoying the show.”

Rogan was right. The duck-dog family party sat in a line along the crest of the fast drying sand ridge, appreciably closer to the ship, their attention all for the men and the now limp fish.

But, as Dard tentatively splashed another step in the direction of that sand bank, the yellow members of the clan retreated, one of them nudging the smallest one in front of it. The green ones continued to stand their ground, the half-grown one running along the water’s edge hissing. Dard stopped, the flood swishing about his legs.

Cully looped a cord about the tail of the dead fish and fastened it to the ramp rail. Perhaps overcome by the sight of so much meat, the smallest duck-dog gave a tiny whimpering cry and ran between the legs of its guardian to the water. Resignedly the larger yellow beast followed the cub, turning over the loose sand with large blunt claws of a forepaw to dig out a squirming red creature which the baby pounced upon to swallow greedily. But the green boss of the party hissed angrily at the hunter and sent both scuttling back.

Then he withdrew also, with his head turned toward the men, facing the danger represented by the Terrans bravely, hissing a stern warning. When the last of the smaller duck-dogs had dodged into the break in the cliff, he disappeared there also leaving only scuffed tracks in the sand to mark their trail. But Dard sighted the tip of a dark hill still protruding from the crack.

“It’s still watching us.”

“Wary,” mused the pilot. “Which suggests that it has enemies-enemies which may look like us. But it’s curious, too. If we ignore it-maybe—”

He was interrupted by a shout from the ship Kordov had come out on the ramp and was waving vigorously to the explorer. As the others sloshed back he pulled on the cord, reeling in the fish.

“What’s your verdict?” Hogan wanted to know when they joined him bending over their capture. “Do we eat that, or don’t we?”

“Give me but a few minutes and some aid in the laboratory and I shall have an answer to that. But this is close to Terran life. So it may be edible. And what were you watching by the cliffs-more dragons?”

“Just passing the time of day with another, breakfasting party,” Hogan told him, and went on to explain about the duck-dogs.

It was worth waiting for Kordov’s verdict, Dard thought later, as he savored the white flakes of meat, grilled under Kordov’s supervision, and portioned out to the hungry and none-too-patient crew.

“At least we can chalk old pot-belly up on our bill of fare,” observed Rogan.

“But finding this one may only be a fluke. It’s a deep-water fish and we won’t have storms to drive such ashore every day,” Kimber pointed out.

He explored his lips with his tongue and then studied the empty plastic plate he held wistfully. “We can, however, look around for another stranded one.

Cully unfolded long legs. “We’ll take out the sled now?”

“The wind has died down-I’d say it was safe. And,” the pilot turned to Kordov, “how about rousing Santee and Harmon-we’re going to need them.”

The First Scientist agreed. “But first Carlee, as a doctor. And then we shall bring out the others. You are leaving soon?”

“We’ll tell you before we go. And we don’t intend to go far. Maybe a turn into that valley up ahead, and then along the shore for a mile or so. We may have landed in a wilderness-indications point to that-but I want to be sure.

Until a sun breaking through the clouds overhead said it was noon they were hard at work. The sled, Dard discovered, was just what its name implied, a flat vehicle possessing two seats each wide enough for two passengers, with a space behind for supplies. He helped to assemble the larger sections while Kimber and Gully sweated and swore over the business of installing the engine.

It was a flying craft Dard realized, but totally unlike a ’copter or rocket, and he did not see what would make it air borne without blades or tubes. When he said as much to Rogan the techneer leaned back against a convenient sand dune to combine rest and explanation.

“I can’t tell you how it works, kid. The principle’s something really new. They whipped that engine together during the last months we were in the Cleft. But it’s some sort of anti-gravity. Takes you up and keeps you there until you shut it off. Broadcasts a beam which sends you along by pushing against the earth. If they had had the time they might have powered the ship with it. But there was only this one experimental sled built and we had to depend upon power we knew more about. How about it, Sim? Getting her together?”

The pilot smiled through a streak of grease which turned his brown skin black.

“Tighten that one bolt, Cully,” he pointed out the necessary adjustment, “and, she’s ready to lift! Or at least she should be. We’ll try her.”

He boarded the shallow craft and settled himself behind the controls, buckling a safety belt around his hips before he triggered the motor. The sled zoomed straight up with a speed which sent the spectators sprawling and tore an exclamation from the pilot. Then, under Kimber’s expert hand, it leveled off and swung in a wide circle about the star ship. Finishing off the test flight with a figure eight, Kimber brought the sled back to a slow and studied landing on the now dry sand at the foot of the ramp.

“Bravo!”

That encouraging cheer came from the open hatch.

Kordov beamed down at them and with him, one hand on the rail, her head lifted so that the sun made a red-glory of the braids wreathing it, was a woman. Dard stared up at her with no thought of rudeness. This was the Carlee who had taken care of Dessie.

But she was younger than he had expected, younger and somehow fragile. There were dark shadows beneath her eyes, and when she smiled at them, it was with a patient acceptance, which hurt. Kimber broke the silence as she joined the party below.

“What do you think, Carlee?” he asked matter-of-factly, as if they had parted only the hour before and no tragedy lay between. “Would you trust yourself to this crazy flyer?”

“With the right pilot at the controls, yes.” And then looking at each one she spoke their names slowly as if reassuring herself that they were really there. “Les Rogan, Jorge Cully and"-She reached Dard, hesitated, before her smile brightened-"why, you must be Dessie’s Dard, Dard Nordis! Oh, this is good-so good—” She looked beyond the men at the cliffs, the sea, the blue-green sky arching over them.

“Now- before you start off, explorers,” Kordov announced, “there is food to be eaten.”

The food was fish again, together with quarter portions of the concentrate cakes and some capsules Kordov insisted they take. When they were finished the First Scientist turned to Kimber.

“Now that you have that sky-buggy of yours put together you will be off?”

“Yes. There are four, maybe five hours of daylight left. I think that a survey from the air would show us more in that length of time than a trip on foot.”

“You say “us.” Whom do you take with you?” asked Carlee.

“Rogan- he’s had experience on Venus. And ”

Dard held his tongue. He could not beg to go; Kimber would choose Cully, of course. The pilot didn’t want a green hand. He was so sure of that choice that he could hardly believe it when he heard Kimber say;

“And the kid-he’s light weight. We don’t want to overload if we haul back game or specimens, too. Cully’s a crack shot and I’ll feel safer to leave him on guard here.”

“Good enough!” Kordov agreed. “Just do not voyage too far, and do not fall off that silly ship of yours-to land on your heads. We have no time to waste patching up explorers who do not know enough to keep themselves right side up!”

Thus Dard found himself sharing the pilot’s seat on the sled with Rogan crawling in behind. Kimber insisted that they buckle their safety belts under his supervision and he tested their fastenings before they took off. The rise of the light craft was not so abrupt as the first time and Kimber did not try to get much above the level of the cliff tops.

They skimmed along only a few feet above the rock as they flashed north, the curving shoreline as their guide.

From this height he had a good view to the west, seeing most of the wide valley through which the red river flowed. The low vegetation they sighted from the ship thickened into clumps of good-sized trees. And among these were flying things which did not appear to be dragons.

Along the edge of the sea the cliff rose in an unbroken, perpendicular wall. Apparently the star ship had earthed in the only opening in it. For from the elevation of the sled they could sight nothing but that barrier of brilliantly hued stone dividing vegetation and low land from the heating sea.

Rogan cried out and a moment later Dard, too, cringed as a ray of light struck painfully into his eyes. It flashed up from sea level, as if a mirror had been used to direct the sunlight straight at them. Kimber brought the sled around and ventured out over the water in a sweep designed to bring them to the source of that light.

There was a scrap of beach, a few feet of sand across which the weed, driven up by the storm, lay. Kimber, with infinite caution, maneuvered to set them down there.

When the sled jolted to earth its occupants stared in open amazement at the source of the mirrored ray.

Protruding from the face of the cliff, as if from a pocket or hollow especially fashioned to contain it, was a cone-shaped section of metal. And not metal in a crude, unworked state, but of a finely fashioned and refined alloy!

Dard split a fingernail on the buckle which fastened his belt in his haste to get to the find. But Kimber was already halfway across the sand before he gained his feet. The three, not quite daring to touch, studied the peculiar object.

Kimber squatted down to peer under it. There was a thin ring of similar metal encircling the widest part of the cone, as if it rested within a tube.

“A bullet in a rifle barrel!” Rogan found a comparison which was none too reassuring. “This a shell?”

“I don’t think so.” Kimber pulled gently at the tip.

“Let’s see if we can work it out.” From the sled he brought an assortment of tools.

“Take it easy,” Rogan eyed these preparations askance.”If it is an explosive, and we do the wrong thing-we’re apt to finish up in pieces.”

“It isn’t a shell,” Kimber repeated stubbornly. “And it’s been here a long time. See that?” He pointed to fresh scars on the cliff face. “That’s a recent break. Maybe the storm tore that down and uncovered this. Now-a little probing.”

They worked gingerly at first, and then, when nothing happened, with more confidence-until they had it out far enough to see that the cone was only the tip of a long cylinder. Finally they hooked a chain to it and used the power of the sled to draw it completely free of the tube.

Six feet long, it lay half in, half out of the water, a sealed opening showing midway in its length. Kimber knelt down before the tube and flashed his hand-light inside. As far as they could see ran a tunnel lined with seamless metal.

“What in the name of Space is it, anyway?” Hogan wondered.

“Some form of transportation, I would say.” Kimber still held the light inside as if by wishing alone he could deduce the destination of their discovery.

Hogan prodded the cylinder with his foot and it rolled slightly. The techneer stooped and tugged at the end in the sand. To his astonishment he was able to lift it several inches above the beach.

“A whole lot lighter than you’d think! I believe we could take it back on the sled!”

“Hmm…” Kimber took Rogan’s place and hoisted.

“We might at that. No harm in trying.”

The three of them manhandled the cylinder on board the sled and lashed it into place-though both ends projected over the sides of the craft.

Kimber was doubly careful in his take-off. He brought them up with much room to spare away from the cliff side and circled back toward the valley.

“This answers one question,” Hogan leaned forward.

“We aren’t the first intelligent life here.”

“Yes.” The pilot added nothing to that bare assent. He was intent on reaching the star ship.

Dard squirmed in his seat. He did not need to turn to see that smooth piece of metal, he could feel its presence and what its presence meant to all of them.

Only intelligence, a high standard of intelligence could have fashioned it. And where was that intelligent life now? Watching and waiting for the Terrans to make the first fatal move?

4: THOSE OTHERS!

“EASY DOES IT NOW.” Cully laid down the chisel he had been using delicately and applied pressure with the flat of his hand.

The others weren’t really breathing down his neck. But they did struggle against the curiosity which made them crowd about the engineer as he worked to open the cylinder.

“It’s too light for an explosive,” Hogan repeated for about the fiftieth time since they had unloaded their find before the star ship.

At a good vantage point up on the ramp Carlee Skort and Trude Harmon sat together while the men below tried to hand Cully tools he didn’t need and generally got in each other’s way. But now they had come to the last moment of suspense. After more than an hour’s work the engineer had been able to force open the small seal hatch.

Cully bumped heads with Kimber and Kordov as he flashed a torch beam into the interior. Then, with infinite care, he began to hand out to eager assistants a series of boxes, small round containers and a larger, ornamented chest. All these were fashioned of the same lightweight alloy as the large carrier and they appeared unmarked by time.

“Cargo carrier,” Kimber decided. “What can be in these?” He held one of the smallest boxes to his ear and shook it cautiously, but there was no answering rattle.

Kordov picked up the chest, examining its fastening carefully. At last he shook his head and brought out a pocket knife, working the blade into the crevice between lid and side, using it to lever up the cover.

Soft creamy stuff puffed up as the pressure of the lid was removed, fluffing over the rim. The First Scientist plucked it carefully away in strips. As the late afternoon sun struck full on the contents which had been protected by that packing, there was a concerted gasp from the Terrans.

“What are they?” someone demanded.

Kordov picked up a fine intwisted strand, dangling its length in the light.

“Opals?” he suggested. “No, these are too hard, cut in facets. Diamonds? I don’t think so. I confess I have never seen anything like them before.”

“A world’s ransom,” Dard did not know he had spoken aloud. The wild beauty swinging from Kordov’s hand drew him as no man-fashioned thing had done before.

“Any more in there?” asked Kimber. “That’s a large box to hold only one item.”

“We shall see. Girls,” Kordov held out the rope of strange jewels to the two women, “hang on to that.”

Another layer of the packing was pulled out to display a pair of bracelets. This time red stones which Santee identified.

“Them’s rubies! I prospected in the Lunar mountains and found some just like ’em. Good color. What else you. got there, Tas?”

A third layer of packing led to the last and greatest wonder of all-a belt, five inches wide, with a clasp so set in gems as to be just an oval glitter-the belt itself fashioned of rows of tiny crystalline chains.

Trude Harmon tried to clasp it about her waist to discover it would not meet by inches. Nor was Carlee able to wear it either.

“Must have bin mighty slim, the girl what wore that!” Harmon commented.

“Maybe she wasn’t a girl at all,” Carlee said.

And there was something daunting in that thought.

Carlee had been the first to put into words their lurking fear, that those who had packed the carrier had been nonhuman.

“Well, bracelets argue arms,” Rogan pointed out. “And that necklace went around a neck. A belt suggests a waist-even if it is smaller than yours, girls. I think we can believe that the lady those were meant for wasn’t too far removed from our norm.”

Santee pawed another box away from the pile. “Let’s see the rest.”

The boxes were sealed with a strip of softer metal which had to be peeled from around the edge. And the first three they forced contained unidentifiable contents. Two held packages of dried twigs and leaves, the third vials filled with various powders and a dark scum which might have been the remains of liquid. These were turned over to Kordov for further investigation.

Of the remaining boxes three were larger and heavier. Dard broke the end of the sealing strip on one and rolled it away. Under the lid was a square of coarse woven stuff folded over several times to serve as protective padding. Since this was like the jewel case the others stopped their almost delving and gathered around as he pulled the stuff loose. What he found beneath was almost as precious in its way as the gems.

He dared not put his lingers on it, but worked it out of the container gently by the end of the metal rod on which it was wound in a bolt. For here was a length of fabric. But none of them-not even those who could remember the wonders of the pre-Burn cities-had ever seen anything such as this. It was opalescent, fiery color rippled along every crease and fold as Dard turned it around in the sunlight. It might have been spun from the substance of those same jewels which formed the necklace.

Carlee almost snatched it from him and Trude Harmon inserted a timid finger under the edge.

“It’s a veil!” she cried. “How wonderful!”

“Open the rest of those!” Carlee pointed to the two similar boxes. “Maybe there’s more of this.”

There was more fabric, not so sheer and not opalescent, but woven of changing colors in delicate subtle shades the Terrans could not put names to. Inspired by this find they plunged into a frenzy of opening until Kordov called them to order.

“These,” he indicated the wealth from the plundered boxes, “can’t be anything but luxury goods, luxury goods of a civilization far more advanced than ours. I’m inclined to believe that this was a shipment which never reached its destination.”

“That tube we found the carrier in,” mused Kimber.

“Suppose they shot such containers through tubes for long distances. Even across the sea. We didn’t transport goods that way, but we can’t judge this world by Terra. And they have no high tides here.”

“Tas, Sim,” Carlee turned one of the bracelets around in hands which bore the scars of the hardworking Cleft life, “could they-are they still here? Those Others-?”

Kimber got to his feet, brushing the sand from his breeches.

“That’s what we’ll have to find out-and soon!” He squinted at the sun. “Too late to do anything more today. But tomorrow—”

“Hey!” Rogan balanced on his palm a tiny roll of black stuff he had just pried out of a pencil-slim container. “I think that this is some kind of microfilm. Maybe we can check on that-if we can rig up a viewer which will take it.”

Kordov was instantly alert. “How many of those things in there?”

Rogan took them one at a time from the box he had opened. “I see twenty.”

“Can you rig a viewer?” was Kordov’s next question.

The techneer shrugged. “I can try. But I’11 have to get at machines we packed in the bottom storeroom-and that will take some doing.”

“And"- Cully had been poking about in the interior of the now empty carrier-"there’s an engine in here must have supplied the motive power. I’d like to dig it out and see what makes it tick.”

Kimber ran his hands over the tight cap of his hair. “And you’ll need a machine shop to do that in, I suppose?” He was very close to sarcasm. “There’s the problem of those still in the ship-what will we do?”

Carlee broke in. “You haven’t found any signs of civilization yet-except this. And you don’t know how long this could have lain where you discovered it. We can’t hold off settlement until we are sure. The cities, or centers of civilization-if there are any-may he hundreds of miles away. Suppose a space ship had landed on Terra in a center section of the Canadian northwest, on the steppes of Central Asia, or in the middle of Australia-any thinly populated district. It would have been months, perhaps years, before its arrival became known-especially since Pax forbade travel. There may exist a similar situation here. Our landing may go undiscovered for a long time-if we do share this world.”

“And that, you know,” Kordov added, “is common sense. Let us explore the valley-if it is promising, make a place there for our people. But at the same time an exploring team can operate to map the district. Only, let us not make contact with any race we find, until we know its attitude.”

“Or what manner of creature,” Carlee said softly to herself.

"What manner of creature.” Dard had caught that. Carlee most likely believed that the intelligence which might share this world was nonhuman. Man’s old fear of the unknown, the not-understood, would again haunt them. This was an alien world, could they ever make it home?

“These- these are beautiful!” Trude Harmon had knelt beside him in the sand to see the small carvings he was mechanically unwrapping.

The one he held represented an animal which was a weird cross between horse and deer-possessing flowing mane, tail and horns. Presented as rearing, with snorting nostrils, it was a miniature of savage fury. Tiny gems were set in the eye sockets and the hooves were plated with a contrasting metal. Some master-craftsman had endowed it with life.

“All these things-they are so wonderful!”

“They loved beauty,” Dard answered her. “But I think that these"-he picked up a second carving, representing quite a different creature-a manikin with webbed feet, a monkey face and hands lacking a thumb-"are all pieces to be used in a game. See, here’s another horned horse, but made of a different color, and another webfooted monkey. Chessmen?”

“And a little tree!” She freed a third piece from its wrappings. “A tree of golden apples!”

True enough, on the branches of the tone shaped tree there were round gems of a glowing yellow. Golden apples! That story Lars used to tell Dessie about the apples of the sun!

“Huh?” Harmon squatted down by his wife to see what held her attention. “Apples? What’s that about apples, Trude?”

She held out her hand with the small tree standing on its flattened palm. “Golden apples! See, Tim?”

“Looks more like some kind of a pine to me.” But he took the tree gently. “Fruit-that’s what those are supposed to be all right.” His eyes went past the star ship to the open mouth of the valley where the blue-green of growing things beckoned. “Might find us a pine growin’ apples at that, Trude. After them there flyin’ snakes, and floatin’ spider-plants, and them green and yellow duck-dogs what keep peekin’ at us from holes yonder-well, I can believe that we’re gonna pick us apples offa pine trees, too. Only we’d better get about the business of goin’ to hunt them trees pretty soon.”

The business of hunting their future settlement began the next morning. Kimber with Rogan and Santee took off in the sled to make a circuit of the inner valley. When they signaled that they viewed nothing disturbing there, a second exploring party set off on foot. Gully, Harmon and Dard, with packets of supplies, stun rifles and water-filled canteens progressed slowly up the river.

At the entrance to the inner valley the sand was broken by patches of soil shading from red-yellow to a dark brown. In this earth grew tufts and clumps of thin-bladed, very tough-stemmed grass which in its turn gave way to small bushes, clothed with ragged blue-green leaves.

All three of the explorers stopped short as the grass before them swayed, masking the progress of some living thing. Dard was the first to move forward with his silent woodsman’s tread. Cautiously he parted the tall stalks to see below him a real path, as well marked as a Terran game trail, but in miniature. As the swaying still continued he stood waiting, hardly daring to breathe.

Around the roots of a low bush a small red-brown head, almost indistinguishable from the bare earth of the trail, showed. Dard waited. With a hop the traveler came into plain sight.

Close to the size of a Terran rat it hopped on large, over-developed hind legs, between which bobbed a fluff of tail. Small handlike paws hung down across its darker belly fur. The ears were large, fan shaped, and fringed with the same fluff as the tail. Black buttons of eyes showed neither pupil nor iris, and a rounded muzzle ended in a rodent’s prominent teeth. But Dard did not have long to catalogue such physical points. It sighted him. Then it gave a wild bound, making an about-face turn while in the air-disappearing in a second. Dard was left to pick up from the center of the trail the object it had just dropped in its flight.

“Rabbit?” Harmon wondered, “or squirrel, or rat? How’re we gonna know? What did that critter drop, boy?”

Dard held a pod about three inches long, dark blue and shiny. He surrendered it to Harmon who slit the outer covering with thumbnail and shook out a dozen dark-blue seeds.

“Pears, beans, wheat?” Harmon’s bewilderment showed signs of irritation. “It grows, ripens this way, and it may be good to eat. But,” he turned to his companions and ended with an explosive, “how’re we ever gonna know?”

“Take ’em back and try ’em on the hamsters,” Cully returned laconically. “But that hopper sure could go, couldn’t he?” Thus he unconsciously christened the third type of fauna they had discovered in the new world.

Harmon stowed seeds and pod away in a zipper closed pocket, before they moved on through grass which arose waist high about them. Here and there in it they spotted more of the seed pods.

In fact shortly the pod-headed plants were so thick around them that they might have been swishing through a field of ripened grain. Harmon broke silence:

“This remind you of anything?”

They regarded the expanse of blue doubtfully and shook their heads.

“Well, it does me. This here looks jus’ like a wheatfield all ready t’ be reaped! I tell you I’m athinkin’ we’re walkin’ over somebody’s farm!”

“But there’s no fences,” protested Dard.

“No, but you take a farm that’s not been touched for a good long time-this stuff coulda jus’ kept seedin’ itself and spread out a lot. I gotta feelin’ this is part of a farm!”

With that Harmon took the lead, cutting across the narrowest section of the ripe crop to a line of bushes. Now that his attention had been stimulated by Harmon’s theory Dard thought that that clump of taller vegetation was strung out as if it might provide a barrier for the grain, a fence for the field.

They worked their way around this line of brush to discover Harmon’s instinct right. For there was no disguising the artificiality of the large dome flanked by several smaller ones which stood surmounted and surrounded by rank vines, tall grass and long unpruned shrubbery.

But it was not those domes which held the explorers’ attention. A constant murmur of sound and a flash of flying things drew them to a tree standing in what once must have been the front yard-if Those Others cultivated front yards.

“The golden apples!” Dard identified the tree from the carved piece he had seen the night before.

Its symmetrical cone shape of blue-green provided the right background for the yellow globes which dragged down branches with their weight. And the air and grass about the tree were alive with feasters.

The Terrans watched the wheeling birds-or were they oversized butterflies-that settled and squabbled for a chance to sink beaks into those ripened orbs. While, on the ground, there was a steady coming and going of hoppers harvesting the soft fallen fruit. And from that scene of activity the breeze wafted a scent which set the watchers’ mouths watering-semi-intoxicating with its promise of juicy delights.

As the men advanced, the busy feeders displayed no signs of alarm. One hopper ran straight between Cully’s feet, a quarter section of dripping fruit clasped in its arms. And a bird-butterfly skimmed Dard’s head on its way to the banquet.

“Well- for-!” Cully caught himself in midstride to avoid stepping on a furry red-brown mass. He picked up one of the hoppers in a completely comatose state. Harmon gave a bark of laughter.

“Dead drunk,” he commented. “Seen chickens-pigs, too-get that way on cider leavin’s. Lookit here-this bird can’t fly straight neither!”

He was right. A lavender creature, whose wings were banded with pale green and gray, flapped an erratic course to a nearby bush and clung there as if it did not trust its powers for a farther flight.

Cully laid down the limp hopper and picked one of the golden apples. It snapped away easily, and he held it out for their closer examination. The skin was firm over the pulp, and radiating out from the stem were tiny rosy freckles. And the enticing scent was a temptation hard to withstand. Dard wanted to snatch the fruit from the engineer, to sink his teeth in that smooth skin and prove to himself that it tasted as good as it smelled.

“Pity we ain’t got a hamster with us to try it on. But we can take some back. Iffen they’re good,” Harmon swallowed visibly, “we can have us some real eatin’! Needn’t let the critters take ’em all. The fella what lived here, I bet he set a store by them there things. Golden apples, yeah, that’s jus’ what they be. But they ain’t gonna run away, and me, I’d kinda like to see the house and barns.”

The house and barns, if those were the correct designations for the domes, were half buried in twisting vines and rank growth. When they broke their way through to what must have been the front door of the largest dome, Cully let out his breath in a low whistle.

“Fight here. This door was smashed in from the outside.”

Dard, accustomed to the violence of the raiding parties of Pax, noted the broken scraps of metal on the portal and agreed. They edged into a scene of desolation. The place had been looted long ago, tough grass grew through a crack in the wall, and the litter underfoot went to powder when their boots touched it. Dard picked up a shred of golden glass which held a fairy tracery of white pattern. Rut there was nothing whole left.

“Raiding party, all right,” Harmon agreed, conditioned by his Terran past. “Could be that they had them some Peacemen here too. But it was a long time ago. We’d better let Kordov and the brains prospect around in here. Maybe they can learn what really happened. Wonder if the barn took a beatin’.”

But what they did discover in the larger of the two remaining domes brought a steady stream of curses from Harmon and made Dard’s skin crawl with its suggestion of wanton and horrible rapine. A line of white skeletons lay along the wall, each in what seemed a stall. Harmon tried to pick up an oddly shaped skull which went to dust in his fingers.

“Left ’em to die of thirst and starvation!” gritted the farmer. “Knocked off the people and jus’ left the rest. They-they were worse’n Peacemen-them what did this!”

“And they must have been the winners, too,” observed Cully. “Not too pleasant to think about.”

All three started at a shout, and Dard swung his stun rifle around at the entrance of that tragic barn. What if"they” were returning? Then he forced imagination under control. This horror had occurred years ago-its perpetrators were long since dead. But had they left descendants- with the same characteristics?

Kimber came into the dome. “What’re you doing in here?” he wanted to know. “We’ve been watching you from the sled. What-what in blue blazes is this?”

“Warning left by some very nasty people,” Dard spoke up. “This farm was raided and whoever did it left the animals penned up to starve to death!”

Kimber waned slowly along that pitiful line of hones. His face was very sober indeed.

“It’s been a long time since this happened.” It appeared to Dard that the pilot was reassuring himself by that statement.

“Yeah,” Harmon agreed. “A good long time. And they ain’t bin back since. Guess we can move down here and take over, Sire. This was a good farm once, no reason why it can’t be one agin.”

5: WAR RUIN

FOR THE NEXT five days they were well occupied. An extensive exploration of the inner valley, on foot and in the air, revealed no other evidences of the former civilization. And the Terrans decided against inhabiting the farm. About those domes there dung the shreds of ancient fear and disaster, and Dard was not the only one to feel uneasy within their walls.

The tree of golden apples was one of their best finds. The hamsters relished the fruit and, so encouraged, the humans raided along with the valley’s furred and feathered inhabitants, because the globes were as good as they looked and smelled-though their intoxicating effect did not hold with the Terrans. The grain also proved to be useful, and Harmon took the risk of rousing one of the two heifer calves, carried in the ship, and feeding it in the forsaken fields where it lived and grew fat.

On the other hand a bright green berry with a purplish blush was almost fatal to a hamster and had to be shunned by the Terrans, although the hoppers and the birds gorged upon it.

Quarters were established, not outside the cliffs which walled the valley, but within them. The second day’s exploration had located a cave which led in turn to an inner system of galleries, through one of which the rivers wove a way. Habituated to such a dwelling from their years in the Cleft, they seized upon this discovery eagerly. More of the adult passengers were awakened and put to work assembling machines, laboring to make the caves into a new home which could not be easily detected. For the threat kept before them by the ruined farm was always in their minds.

Three more bodies were carried from the star ship to be interred beside Lui Skort, still encased in the boxes which had held them during the voyage. But Kordov continued to insist that they had been very lucky. There were fifteen men at work now, and ten women added their strength to harvesting the strange grain and making habitable the cave dwelling.

“Blast it!” Kimber drew out of the motor section of the sled and made a grab at thin air.

“What’s the matter?” Dard began. Then he caught sight of what had brought the pilot to the exploding point.

A hopper bounded toward the tall grass, something shiny between its front paws. Stealing again!

Dard dived, and his fingers closed about the small, frantically kicking body, while a squeak which approached a scream rent the quiet of their outdoor workshop. The boy freed his captive to nurse a bitten hand, but the hopper had also dropped the bolt it had stolen. Now it retired empty pawed into the bushes uttering impolite remarks concerning Dard’s destination and ancestry.

“Better go and have that bite looked after,” Kimber ordered with resignation as he accepted the rescued bolt.

“I don’t know what we are going to do about those little beasts. They’d carry off everything they could lug if we didn’t watch them all the time. Regular pack rats.”

Dard cradled the bitten hand in the other. “I’d like to find one of their burrows, or nests, or whatever they build to keep their loot in. It should be a regular curiosity shop.”

“If any one can-you will,” Cully spoke from the cylinder he was dismantling. “Ever notice, Sim,” he continued, “how this kid gets around? I’ll wager he could walk through the grain field and not make a sound or leave a trail another could follow. How’d you ever learn that useful trick, fella?”

Dard was sober. “The hard way, living as an outlaw. You know, those hoppers are awful pests, but I can’t help admiring them.”

Kimber snorted. “Why? Because they know what they want and go after it? They are single-minded, aren’t they? Only I wish they were a little more timid. They should be more like the duck-dogs, willing to watch us, but keeping their distance. Cut along, kid, and get that finger seen to right away. Working hours aren’t over yet.”

Dard traced Carlee Skort to where she was busy fitting up the small dispensary, a niche in the wall of the second cave, and had his bite sterilized and bandaged with plasta-skin.

“Hoppers!” She shook her head. “I don’t know what we’re going to do to discourage them. They stole Trude’s little paring knife yesterday and three spools of thread.”

He could understand her dismay over these losses. Little things, yes-but articles which could not be replaced.

“Luckily they appear to be afraid to come into the caves. So far we haven’t caught any of them inside. But they are the most persistent and accomplished thieves I have ever seen. Dard, when you go out, stop in the kitchen and pick up a lunch for your working crew. Trude should have the packets made up by now.

He obediently made his way past work gangs into the other small cave room where Trude Harmon with an assistant was setting out stacks of plastic containers. The rich scent which filled the air tickled Dard’s nose and made him very aware of hunger. It had been hours and hours since breakfast!

“Oh, it’s you,” Trude greeted him. “How many in your gang?”

“Three.”

Her lips moved, counting silently, as she apportioned the containers and set them in a carrier.

“Mind you bring those back. And don’t, don’t you dare leave them where any hoppers can put paw on them!”

“No, ma’am. Something sure smells good.”

She smiled proudly. “Those golden apples. We stewed some up into a kind of pudding. Just you wait ’til you taste it, young man. Which reminds me-where is that queer leaf, Petra?”

The dark- haired girl who had been stirring the largest pot on the stove pulled a glossy green leaf from one of her pockets. It was an almost perfect triangle in shape-green, threaded by bright red and yellow veins.

“Ever see one like that before, Dard?” Trude asked.

He took it and examined it curiously before he answered with a shake of his head.

“Pinch it and give a sniff!” Trude suggested.

He did and the good odor of cooking was nullified by another aromatic, clean fragrance, a mixture of herb and flower-of all the pleasant scents he had ever known.

“You can rub it on skin or hair and the scent lingers,” Petra told him eagerly.

“And you’ll never guess where we got that one,” Trude broke in. “Tell him.”

“I saw a hopper carrying it out in the grain field when I was gleaning yesterday. I thought it had been stealing from our food and chased it. Then when it wriggled through a hole in the brush fence it dropped the leaf. I picked it up and at first we thought it might be good to eat because the hopper wanted it. But it is just nice perfume.”

“Sure, and if you want to get on the good side of the kitchen detail,” Trude twinkled at him “you just find out where you can get about a peck of those, Dard. We ain’t got the smell of that ship off: us yet-nasty chemicals. And we’d admire a chance to get some perfume. You do a little looking around when you’re off on this jaunt of yours and see what you can find us. Now-clear out. Take your lunch.”

Dard gave the leaf back to Petra and picked up the carrier. But he went out of the kitchen puzzled. What had Trude meant by “this jaunt of yours?” As far as he knew he was not intending to leave the valley. Had some other plans been made?

He started back to Kimber, determined to have an explanation.

“Lunch, huh?” Cully crawled out from under the cylinder as Dard sat the carrier on the ground.

The engineer wiped his hands on the grass and then on a piece of waste. “What do they have for us this time?”

“Stew of apples for one thing,” Dard returned impatiently. “Listen, Kimber, Mrs. Harmon said something about my going on an expedition.”

Sim Kimber pried the lid off a container of stew and poked into the depths of the savory mixture before he replied.

“We have to earn our keep, kid. And not being specialists in anything but woodcraft and transportation, it’s up to us to do what we can along those lines. You knew the woods and mountains back on earth, and you have a feeling for animals. So Kordov assigned you to the exploration department.”

Dard sat very still, afraid to answer, afraid to burst out with the wild exultation which surged in him now. He had tried, tried so hard these past few days to follow Harmon’s overpowering interest in the land, to be another, if unskilled, pair of hands in the work about the cave. But the machines they were assembling at top speed were totally unknown to him. The men who worked on them lapsed into a jargon of functions he knew nothing about, until it seemed that they jabbered a foreign tongue.

For so long he had been responsible for others-for Lars and Dessie, for their food, their shelter, even their safety. And now he was not even responsible for himself. He was beginning to feel useless, for here he knew so little that was of any account.

All his training had been slanted toward keeping alive, at a minimum level of existence, in a hostile world. With that pressure removed he believed he had nothing to offer the colonists.

What he had dreamed and longed to do was to leave this compact group where he was the outsider, to go on into this new world, searching out its wonders, whether that meant trailing a hopper to its mysterious lair or flying above the cliffs into the unknown country beyond. Exploration was what he wanted, wanted so badly that sometimes just thinking about it hurt.

And here was Kimber offering him that very thing! Dard could not say anything. But maybe his eyes, his rapturous face answered for him, as the pilot glanced up, met Dard’s wide happy eyes; and quickly looked away. Then the boy’s feelings were under control again, and he was able to say, in what he believed was a level and unmoved voice:

“But what are you planning?”

“Go up and over.” It was Cully who answered that before Kimber could swallow his mouthful of stew. “We load up this old bus,” the engineer patted the sled affectionately, “and take off to see what lies on the other side of the cliffs. Mainly to discover whether we need expect any visitors.”

“We- who?”

Kimber named those who would share in the adventure.

“I’ll pilot. Cully goes along to keep the sled ticking. And Santee is to provide the strong right arm.”

” To fight-?” But Dard didn’t complete that question before Kimber had an answer.

“Killing,” he said, staring thoughtfully down at the full spoon he balanced on its way to his mouth, “is not on the program if we can help it. Even such pests as-Cully! behind you!”

The engineer slowed around just in time to snatch up a small wrench and so baffle the furry thief that tried to seize it.

“Even those pests are safe from us,” Kimber continued before he added to the swearing engineer, “Why don’t you sit on everything, Jorge? That’s what I am doing.” He moved to let them see that all the smaller tools he had been using were now covered by his body. “It may not be comfortable, but they’ll still be here when I need them!

“No,” he returned to his earlier theme, “we’re not going to kill anything if we can help it. To save our lives-for food, if it is absolutely necessary. But not for sport-or because we are unsure!” His lips twisted in a sneer. “Sport! The greatest sport of all is the hunting of man! As man finally discovered, having terrorized all of the rest of the living earth. Our species killed wantonly-now we have a second choice and chance. Maybe we can be saner this time. So-Santee is a crack shot-but that does not mean he is going to use the rifle.”

Dard had only one more question. “When do we go?”

“Tomorrow morning, early. On our last swing around the cliffs two days ago we sighted indications of a road leading eastward from the other side. It could be the guide we want.”

They finished their work upon the sled in mid-afternoon and spent the remaining hours of work time stowing away supplies and equipment. Kimber made preparations for five days’ absence from the valley-flying east to the interior of the land mass on which the star ship had earthed.

“That tube we found pointed in that direction. If it was a freight carrier for some city-and I am of the opinion that it was-that’s where we may find the remains of civilization.” Kimber’s voice came muffled as he checked dials behind the wind screen of the aircraft.

“Yeah.” Santee added a small bag of his own to the supplies. “But-after what we seen at that there farmhouse-they played rough around here once upon a time. Better watch out that we don’t get shot down before we make peace signs.”

“It’s been a long time since the farm was looted,” Dard ventured to point out. “And why didn’t the looters return-if they were the winners in some war. Harmon says this land is rich, that any farmer would settle here.”

“Soldiers ain’t farmers,” said Santee. “Me, I’d say this was looting’ done by an army or somebody like them blasted Peacemen. They was out to smash and grab and run. Land don’t mean nothin’, to them kinda guys. But I see what Harmon means. If the war ended why didn’t somebody come back here to rebuild? Yeah, that’s sense.”

“Maybe there was no one left,” Dard said.

“Blew themselves up?” Kimber’s expressive eyebrows rose as he considered that. “Kind of wholesale, even for a big-time war. The burn-off took most of Terra’s cities and the purge killed off the people who could rebuild them. But there were still plenty of men kicking around afterward. Of course, they were ahead of us technically here-those things in the carrier point to that. Which argues that-if they were like us-they were way ahead in the production of bigger and more lethal weapons, too. Well, I have a feeling that tomorrow or the next day we’re going to learn about it.”

The light was that gray wash which preceded sunrise when Dard sat up in his bedroll to answer the shadowy figure who roused him. He shivered, more with excitement than the morning chill, as he rolled his bag together and stole after Cully out of the cave to the sled.

There the four explorers made a hasty breakfast on cold scraps while Kimber talked disjointedly with Kordov, Harmon and Rogan.

“We’ll say five days,” he said. “But it may be longer. Give us a good margin for error. And don’t send out after us if we don’t make it back. Just take precautions.”

Kordov shook his head. “No man is expendable here, Sim, not any more. But why should we borrow trouble in such large handfuls? I will not believe that you won’t return! You have the list of plants, of things you are to look for?”

Simba Kimber touched a breast pocket in answer. Cully took his place in the second seat of the sled and beckoned Dard to join him. When Kimber was behind the control Santee scrambled in, a stun rifle across his big knees.

“I’ll listen for any broadcast,” Rogan promised. And Harmon mouthed something which might have been either reminder or farewell as Kimber took them up into the crisp air of the dawn.

Dard was too excited to waste any time waving goodbye or looking back into the safety of the valley. Instead he was leaning forward, his body tense, as if by the sheer power of his will be could speed their flight into the unknown.

They kept to a speed about equal to that of a running man as they followed the cliffs along to the narrow upper end of the valley. Close packed below to the edge of those stone wails was the woods the exploring parties had located earlier, only to be kept from penetration by the density of the growth.

“Queer stuff,” Cully remarked now as they soared over the tree tops. “A limb grows long, bends over to the ground, touches, then takes root and another tree starts to grow out right there. That whole mass down there may have started with just one tree. And you can’t break or hack through it!”

The sky before them was bannered with pink streamers. A flight of the delicately hued butterfly-birds circled them and then flew as escort until they were just beyond the valley wall. What the explorers saw beneath them now was a somber earth-covering blanket of blue-green, vaguely dismal and depressing with its unchanging darkness. An- other collection of the self-planting trees made an effective border along the eastern side of the cliffs, and this was not a small wood but a far-stretching forest.

“There!” Santee pointed downward. “That there’s it! Them trees cover it some, but I say it’s a road!”

A narrow ribbon of a light-colored substance, hidden for long distances by the invading trees ran due east. Kimber brought the sled into line over it.

But it was a full hour before they reached the end of the forest and saw clearly the cracked and broken highway which was their guide. It threaded across open plains where now and again they sighted more of the dome dwellings standing alone and deserted, wreathed with masses of greenery.

” No people-the land is empty,” Dard commented as the sled crossed the fourth of these.

“War,” Kimber wondered, “or diseases… Must have made a clean sweep in this section. And a long time ago-by the growth of the bushes and the appearance of the road.”

It was more than two hours after they left the valley that they came upon what had been a village. And here was the first clue to the type of disaster which had struck the land. One vast pit was the center of the clustered domes. Crushed and shattered buildings ringed it, bearing the stains and melted smears of intense heat.

“Air raid?” Cully asked of the silence. “They got it good -and for keeps; it was war then.”

Kimber did not circle the damage. Instead he stepped up the speed of the sled, driven by the same desire that possessed them all, the longing to know what lay beyond the broken horizon.

A second town, larger, brutally treated, its remaining structures half melted, its heart a crater, passed under them. Then again open country, beaded by deserted farms. The road ended at last in a city, shattered, smashed. A city planted on the shore of a bay, for here the sea curved in from the northwest to meet them once more.

There were towers, snapped, torn, twisted, until those in the sled could not be sure of their original shape, looming beside dark sores of craters. And at the waterside there was literally nothing but a slick expanse of crystalline slag reflecting the sun’s rays.

Sea waves lipped that slag, but its edges remained unworn by the touch of water and time alike. And beyond, in the bay, the waves also curled restlessly about other wreckage-ships? Or parts of the buildings blown there?

Kimber cruised slowly across the spiderweb map of the ancient streets. But the wreckage was so complete they could only guess at the use or meaning of what they saw. Mounds of disintegrating metal might mark the residue of ground transportation devices, their weathered erosion testifying in part to the age of the disaster. And from the sled the explorers sighted nothing at all which might mark the remains of those who had lived there.

They landed on a patch of grassy ground before a huge pile of masonry which had three walls still standing. The ruined farmhouse had pictured for them tragedy, fear and cruelty. But this whole city-it was impersonal, too much,. Such complete wreckage was closer to a dream.

“Atom bomb, H-bomb, Null-bomb,” Cully recited the list of the worst Terra had known. “They must have had them here-all of them!”

“And they were certainly men-for they used them!” Kimber added savagely. He climbed out of the sled and faced the building. Its walls reflected the sun as if they were of some metallic substance but softly, with a glow of green-blue-as if the blocks used in building had been quarried of sea water. A flight of twelve steps, as wide as a Terran city block, led up to a mighty portal through which they could see the sun glow bright in the roofless interior.

Around that portal ran a band of colors, blending and contrasting in a queer way which might have had meaning and yet did net-for Terran eyes. As he studied the hues Dard thought he had a half-hint. Perhaps those colors did have a deliberate sequence-perhaps they were more than just decoration.

6: DISASTER

THEIR ATTEMPTS to explore on foot were frustrated by the mounds of debris and danger from falling rubble. Cully jumped to safety from the top of a mound which caved in under his weight, and so escaped a dangerous slide into one of the pits. Those pits were everywhere, dug so deeply into the foundations of the city that the Terrans, huddling on the rims, could look down past several underground levels to a darkness uncut by the sun.

A little shaken by the engineer’s narrow escape, they retired to the sled and made an unappetizing meal on concentrates.

“No birds,” Dard suddenly realized that fact. Nothing alive.”

“Unhuh.” Santee dug his heel into the grass and earth.

“No bugs either. And there’re enough of them back in the valley!”

“No birds, no insects,” Kimber said slowly. “The place is dead. I don’t know how the rest of you feel, but I’ve had just about enough.”

They did agree with that. The brooding stillness, broken only when debris crashed or rolled, rasped their nerves.

Dard swallowed his last bite of concentrate and turned to the pilot.

“Do we have any microfilm we can use?”

“For what-a lot of broken buildings?” Cully wanted to know.

“I’d like one of those bands of color around that doorway,” Dard answered. His idea that the bands had a meaning was perhaps silly but he could not push it away.

“All right, kid.” Kimber unpacked the small recorder and focused it on a place where the sun was strong. “No pattern I can see. But, it just might mean something at that.”

That was the only picture they took when on the ground. But once again in the air Cully ran the machine for a bird’s-eye view of as much of the ruined area as could be recorded.

They were approaching the outer reaches of the city to the east when Santee gave an exclamation and touched Kimber’s arm. They were over a street less cumbered with rubble than any they had yet crossed, and there was a flicker of movement there.

As the sled coasted down they disturbed a pack of grayish, four-footed things that streaked away into the ruins leaving their meal behind them on the blood-smeared pavement.

“Whew!” Cully coughed and Dard gagged at the stench the wind carried in their direction. They left the sled to gather around the tangle of stripped bones and rotting flesh.

“That wasn’t killed today,” Kimber observed unnecessarily.

Dard rounded the stained area. The dead thing had been large, perhaps the size of a Terran draft horse, and the skeleton-tumbled as the bones now were-suggested that it was four-footed and hooved. But that skull, to which ragged and blood-clotted hair still dung, was what he had moved to see. He had been right-two horns sprouted above the eye sockets. This was the horned horse of the game set!

“A duocorn?” mused the pilot.

“A what?” Santee wanted to know.

“There was a fabled animal mentioned in some of the old books on Terra. Had a single horn in the middle of the forehead, but the rest was all horse. Well, here’s a horse with two horns-a duocorn instead of a unicorn. But those things we saw feeding here-they were pretty small to bring down an animal of this size.”

“Unless they carry a burper, they didn’t!” Dard, in spite of the odor, leaned down to inspect that stretch of spine beyond the loose skull. A section of vertebra had been smashed just as if a giant vise had been applied to the nape of the duocorn’s neck!

“Crushed!” Kimber agreed. “But whatever could do that?”

Cully studied the body. “Mighty big for a horse.”

“There were breeds on earth which were seventeen to twenty hands high at the shoulder and weighed close to a ton,” returned Kimber. “This fellow must have been about that size.”

“And what is big enough to crunch through a spine supporting a ton of meat?” Santee wanted to know. He went back to the sled and picked up the rifle.

Dard back-trailed from the evil-smelling bones. Several paces farther on he discovered what he was looking for, marks which proved that the body had been dragged and worried for almost half of a city block. And also, plain to read in a drift of soil across the street, prints. The marks cut deeply by the hooves of the duocorn were half blotted out in places by another spoor-three long-clawed toes, with faint scuffed spaces between, as if they were united by a webbed membrane. Dard went down on one knee and flexed his own hand over the clearest of those prints. With his fingers spread to the fullest extent he could just span it.

“Looks like a chicken track.” Santee had come up behind him.

“More likely a reptile. I’ve seen a field lizard leave a spoor such as this-except for the size.”

“Another dragon-large size?” Cully suggested.

Dard shook his head as he got to his feet and started along that back trail. “This one runs, not flies. But I’m sure it’s a nasty customer.”

There was a scuttling to their left. Santee whirled, rifle ready. A small stone rolled from the top of the nearest pile of rubbish and thudded home against the yellow teeth of the skull:

“Somebody’s getting impatient over an interrupted dinner.” Cully ended with a laugh which sounded unnaturally loud in those surroundings.

Kimber went back to the sled. “We might as well let him-or her-or it-come back to the table. There are,” he glanced around at the ruins, “altogether too many good lurking places here. I’ll feel safer out in open country where I can see any lizard that big before it sees me!”

But when they were air borne Kimber did not turn inland, instead he followed the curve of the bay on to the northwest. The ruins beneath them dwindled to isolated houses-domed or towered-in better repair than those situated in the heart of the city. Beneath them now were brilliant patches of flowers long since returned to the wild. Little streams made graceful curves through what Dard was sure had been pleasure gardens. Fairy towers, which appeared too delicate to withstand the pull of the planet’s gravity, pointed useless fingers up at the cruising sled.

Once they flew for almost half a mile above a palace. But here again a curdled crystalline blotch cut the building in two. None of what they saw gave them any desire to descend and explore. Here the trees grew too high, there were too many shadows. The tangled pleasure gardens and wild grounds were good lurking places for terror to stalk the unwary.

The broken city faded into the green of the rolling country and the aquamarine of the sea. Fewer and fewer domed houses broke the green-and those were probably farms. Here were birds as if the haunted horror of the city was gone. The seashore curved again but Kimber did not follow it west. He veered to the east, to cross fields of which the old regular patterns were marked by bushy hedgerows. It was in one of these that they sighted the first living duocorns, four adults and two colts, but all four well under the size of the monster whose skeleton had attracted their attention in the city.

These animals were uniform in color, showing none of the variations in marking possessed by Terran horses. Their coats were a slaty blue-gray, their unkempt manes and tails black, and their bellies and the under portions of their legs silver. The horns were silver with the real sheen of the precious metal.

As the sled droned over them, the largest flung up its head to issue a trumpeting scream. Then, herding its companions before it, it settled into a rocking gallop up the sloping field to the hedge at the far side beyond which was a grove of trees. With graceful ease all of the fleeing animals leaped the hedge and disappeared under those trees, nor did they come out on the other side of the grove.

“Good runners,” Cully gave credit. “Do you suppose they were always wild-or the descendants of domestic stock? Bet Harmon’d like to have a couple of them. He was pretty fed up when he found we couldn’t bring those two colts he had picked out.”

“The big one was a fighter! D’yuh see him shake them horns?” demanded Santee. “I wouldn’t want him to catch me out in the open walkin’.”

“Odd.” Dard had been watching the far end of the grove and was now puzzled. “You’d think they’d keep on running. But they’re staying in there.”

“Under cover. Safe from any menace from the air,” Kimber said. “Which suggests some unpleasant possibilities.”

“A large flying danger!” Dard whistled as he caught Kimber’s idea. “A thing maybe as big as this sled. But it would be too big to fly on its own power!”

“Bigger things than this have flown in Terra’s past,” the pilot reminded him. “And it may not be a living thing they fear-but a machine. Either way-we’d better watch out.”

“But those flying things were far back in our history,” protested the boy. “Could such primitive things exist along with man-or whatever built that city?”

“How can we say what may or may not have survived here? Or-if that city was destroyed by radioactive missiles- -what may have mutated? Or what may fly machines?”

Since the duocorns remained stubbornly in hiding, the sled gave up investigation and flew east, the setting sun behind them and long afternoon shadows stretching to point their path.

“Where we gonna camp?”.Santee wanted to know. “Out here somewheres?”

“I’d say yes,” Kimber said. “There’s a river over there. Might find a good place somewhere along it.”

The river was shallow and its waters were clear enough for them to be able to sight from the air the rough stones which paved its bed. An uneven fringe of water plants cloaked the shore line until climbing ground provided bluffs. The sparkle of sun on ripples flashed up from a wider expanse as the sled reached a place where the graveled bed flattened out into a round lake. The stream spattered down from heights to feed this, forming a miniature waterfall, and there was a level stretch of sand unencumbered by rocks which made a good landing for the sled.

Cully stretched and grinned. “Good enough. You know how to pick ’em, Sim. Even a cave to sleep in!”

The space he pointed to was not a real cave, rather a semiprotected hollow beneath an overhang of rock. But it gave them a vague sense of security when they unrolled their sleeping bags against its back wall.

This was the first night Dard had spent in the open under a moonless sky and lie found the darkness discomforting-though stars made new crystal patterns across the heavens. They had a fire of river drift, but beyond that the darkness was thick enough to be smooth between thumb and forefinger.

The fire had died down to gleaming coals when Dard was shocked awake by a howling wail. The sound was repeated, to be either echoed or answered from down river. Above the rumble of the fall he was sure he caught the clink of disturbed gravel. Another ear-splitting shriek made his heart jump as Kimber flashed on the beam of a pocket torch without moving from beside him.

Pinned in that beam hunched a weird biped. About four feet tall, its body was completely covered with fine silky hair which arose in a fluff along its back and limbs, roughened by its astonished fright. The face was three-quarters eyes, round, staring, with no discernible lids. There was no apparent nose above an animal’s sharply fanged muzzle. Four-digit hands went up to shield those eyes and the thing gave a moan which arose to a howl. But it made no attempt to flee, as if the strange light held it prisoner.

“Monkey!” that was Santee. “A night runnin’ monkey!

Into that beam from the torch, insects began to gather-great feathery-winged moth things, some as large as birds. And, at their appearance, the night howler came to life. With a feline’s lithe grace it leaped and captured two of the moths and then scurried into the darkness where a low snarl suggested that it was now disputing possession of these prizes with another. Kimber held the torch steady and the moths came in, a drifting cloud, coasting along that ray toward the explorers. Round eyeballs of phosphorescence glittered just on the border of that light. And furry paws clawed through it at the flying things. Triumphant squeaks heralded captures and the howling arose in a triumphant chorus as if others were being summoned to this lucky hunting. Kimber snapped off the light just before the first wave of moths reached the Terrans.

The whisper of wings was drowned out by several shrill cries. But when the light was not turned on again the four heard the rattle of gravel and a fading wailing as the"monkeys” withdrew down river.

“Show’s over for this night-I hope,” Cully grunted sleepily. “Bet some wise guy could make a fortune selling torches to those boys as moth lures.”

Dard allowed his head to drop back on the padded end of the sleeping bag. Suppose those “monkeys” were intelligent enough to enable the Terrans to establish trade relations. Could one make contact with them? To the human eye their manlike stance and the way they used their hands made them appear more approachable than any other native creatures of this world which the Terrans had so far sighted. Surely these creatures had not built the city. But they walked erect and had been quick enough to evaluate the use of light for attracting their food supply. If they were wholly night creatures, as their large eyes and ease in traveling through the dark suggested, would the Terrans ever see them again?

Dard was still puzzling that out when he slipped into a dream in which he again stood before the ruined building within the city and studied those baffling lines of color. But this time those bands held a meaning, and he had almost grasped it when he heard a sound behind him. Not daring to turn his head-for he knew that death sniffed his trail-he began to run with dragging, leaden feet. And, behind him, death pounded relentlessly. With bursting lungs he turned the corner into another cluttered, half-blocked street and saw before him blood and bones from which gray things ran. He slipped, went down… He awoke, his heart pounding wildly, his body slippery with a dank, chill sweat. It was gray light. He could see the moving water, the remains of the previous night’s fire. Stealthily he wriggled out of his sleeping bag and crawled in to the open.

Then he went to the water and splashed it over head and forearms, until its clear chill washed out of him the fear the nightmare had left. Gasping a little from the chill he tramped along to the rising cliffs beside the falls.

Vines ran down the shiny black of this stone, clinging to its uneven surface with tiny sucker feet. The lianas themselves were a gray-white and bare of leaves except for a few which grew in tight bunches near the top of the cliff. Clusters of ropy creepers dangled in a limp fringe-along each main stem.

In a pocket formed by the crossing of several lianas he sighted a find. Surely that brighter green marked one of the perfume plants Trude Harmon wanted! The triangular leaves, glossy and colorful against such a drab background, bobbed from scarlet stems. And there were seed pods also! They hung, red and yellow, pulled down by the weight of their contents, within his reach. He snapped off three and stretched to reach a fourth.

It was just then he caught sight of the twitching close to the ground, where something struggled hopelessly. Two of the creepers, about the size of his little finger, were holding in a throttling grip the writhing body of a hopper. The small animal’s eyes protruded agonizingly and a bloody froth ringed its gasping mouth. Dard drew his knife and slashed at the white cords. But the steel did not cut through them. It rebounded as if he had tried to sever rubber with a dull edge. Before he could raise it for a second blow, a larger creeper flicked out and encircled his wrist, pulling him off balance against the cliff. With lightning speed the ropy fringe dangling there came to life, those near enough whipping over his body, those too far away straining toward the struggle until they were stretched in straight lines. And, as each tie fell about him, he discovered that it was equipped with small thorns which tore his skin in red-hot torment. He shouted and fought, but all his struggles seemed to carry him closer to other suckers and they were fast winding him helpless when he heard the excited cries of the others and saw them racing for him.

Before they were close enough to help he was able to tear his knife arm free, to slash and score the mass of waving tendrils which enclosed him. Then he paused-the things were failing away of their own accord. Within another minute the last and largest sullenly relinquished its hold.

“What happened?” yelled Santee. “What did you do to make those things let go?”

Wherever the plants had met his flesh they had left their brand in pin-point dots of oozing blood which trickled down his arms, throat and one cheek. But those lianas which had fallen away from him-they were turning black, shriveling, rotting away in pieces! The thing had tasted his blood and it was poisoned!

“Poisoned! I poisoned it!”

“Be glad that you did,” snapped Kimber. “You’re in luck. These weren’t!” He kicked up the gravel below the vines with the toe of his boot and plowed up brittle bones and small skulls.

The pilot as he treated Dard’s slight wounds was emphatic:

“Hereafter we stay together. It worked out all right this time. But again it might not. Stick together and distrust everything unless you have already seen it in action!”

But they were all together and apparently in no danger when disaster struck them a back-handed blow that same day. They had been using the sleepy stream as a guide back into a range of hills and by midmorning had sighted in the northeast what could only be a chain of mountains, purple-blue against the sky. These ran from north to south as far as those in the sled could see.

Perhaps if the Terrans had not been so intent upon those distant peaks they might have seen something below which would have warned them. Probably not. Man, when he goes to war, displays the deepest depths of cunning.

Their first intimation of danger arrived simultaneously with the blow that smashed them out of the sky. A sharp burst of sound and the sled bucked-as if batted by a giant club. The craft fluttered into a falling twirl while Kimber fought the controls, trying to pull out of the spin. If the passengers had not been strapped in they would have plunged earthward in the first three seconds of that wild descent.

While Dard was trying to understand what had happened a burst of brilliant light temporarily blinded him. More sound, bracketing them, and someone cried out in pain. Then he knew that they were failing out of control, and by some instinct he flung up his arms to shield his head just before they struck and he blacked out.

He couldn’t have been unconscious long, because when he raised his head Cully was still dazedly fumbling to flee himself from the safety straps. Dard spat to clear a full month and saw a blob of blood and a tooth strike the ground. He loosened the belt and lurched out of the sled after Cully. In front Santee bent over a limp Kimber on whose face blood trickled from a cut just below the hair line.

“What happened?” Dard wiped his chin and took away a bloody hand. His lips hurt and his jaw ached.

Kimber’s dark eyes opened and stared up at them bemusedly. Then comprehension came back and he demanded:

“Who shot us down?”

Santee had his rifle in his hands.

“That’s what I’m gonna see, right now!’

Before the rest could protest, he darted away, back down the valley where they had landed, zigzagging into cover as he neared its mouth. There was a final boom of an exploding shell from that direction and then silence.

Dard and Cully got Kimber free of the sled. The pilot’s right arm was bleeding from a ragged wound near the shoulder. They broke open the medical kit and the engineer went competently to work so that Dard had nothing to do. When Kimber was stretched out on a bedroll Cully returned to examine the sled itself. He took up the cover of the motor and squirmed half into the space which enclosed it, ordering Dard to hold the torch for him. When he crawled back his face was very sober.

“How bad?” asked Kimber. There was more color in his dark face and be levered himself up on an elbow.

“Not the worst-but about as near to that as we can get.” Cully was interrupted by a shout from the trees where Santee had disappeared.

The big man returned walking in the open, his rifle cradled in the crook of his arm-as if they had nothing to fear.

“Fellas, this here’s plain crazy! There’s a nest of guns down there all hidden away. Little stuff-light field pieces. But there’s not a livin’ critter in the place. Them there guns fired at us their ownselves!”

“A robot control triggered when we flew over a certain point!” exploded Cully. “Some kind of radar, I’ll bet. Rogan ought to be here.”

“First,” Kimber reminded him grimly, “we’ve got to get back to tell him about them.”

A broken sled with which to cross several hundred miles of unknown country. They were going to have quite a hike, thought Dard. But he did not comment upon that aloud.

7: RETURN JOURNEY

“WONDER HOW MANY more booby traps such as that are

hidden around?” Cully glanced down the valley with open suspicion.

“Not many, I’d say,” Kimber answered weakly. “It must have been only a fluke that those guns were still able to fire—”

His voice was swallowed by an explosion severe enough to rock the ground under them. Dard saw earth, trees and debris rise into the air far down the valley as an acrid white-yellow smoke fouled the air in drifting wisps.

“That,” Kimber said into the ensuing silence, “was probably the end of the guns. They’ve blown themselves up.”

“Shoulda done that sooner!” growled Santee. “A lot sooner! How about us gettin’ away from here?” He turned to Cully who had been blasted loose from his work on the sled.

“That’s going to be a problem. She’ll get into the air again, yes. But not with a full load. Stripped down she may be able to carry two-flying with a list.”

Santee grinned at his fellow castaways. “All fight. Two of us’ll hike and pack some stuff. The other two’ll ride.”

Kimber frowned as he agreed reluctantly: “I suppose well have to do that. Those in the sled can make a camp a half day’s march ahead and wait for the others to catch up. We mustn’t lose contact. Do you think you can raise Rogan in the valley?”

Cully brought out the small vedio. And Kimber, using his left hand awkwardly, made the proper adjustment. But there was no answering spark. The engineer raised the box and shook it gently. They all heard that faint answering rattle which put an end to their hopes of a message to those they had left by the sea.

Camp was made that night just where the fortunes of that long ago war had marooned them. Santee and Dard undertook another visit to the hidden emplacement. Two of the strange guns were tilted at a crazy angle, their loading mechanism ripped wide open, behind them a pit, newly hollowed and still cloudy with fumes.

Keeping away from that the two Terrans prowled about the installation. If man or any other intelligent life had been there before them, it had been many years in the past.

But Dard, knowing very little of mechanics, believed that it had been robot controlled. Perhaps lack of man-power had made the last war a purely push-button affair.

“Now here’s somethin’!”

Santee’s shout brought him to an opening in the ground. The cover had been wrenched loose by the explosion and its clever camouflage no longer hid the steps leading down into the dark. Santee flashed a beam ahead and started to descend. The steps were very narrow and shallow as if those who had used them had had feet not quite the same shape or size of a Terran’s. But once down, the explorers found themselves in a square box of a metal-walled chamber. Along one entire wall was a control panel and facing it a small table and a single backless bench. Otherwise the room was empty.

“Musta jus’ set them robots goin’ and left. This metal ain’t rusted none. But it was left a long time ago…

As Santee swept the light across that control board Dard saw an object lying on the table. He picked up his find just as the big man started up the stairs to the outer and fresher air.

What he held was four sheets of a crystalline substance, fastened together at the upper left-hand corner. Running through each sheet, as if they had been embedded when the stuff was made, were lines of shaded colors in combinations not unlike those he had seen about the city door. Instruction book? Orders? Did Those Others express their thoughts in color patterns? He thrust the find into his safest pocket, determined to compare it with the microfilm of the doorway.

The next morning they followed Santee’s plan. The pilot, handicapped by a stiff shoulder, went in the sled along with Cully who was able to take the controls. Their supplies pared to the minimum were shared between the sled and two packs for Dard and Santee.

When the sled took off, due south, it cruised just above tree-top level. It would fly at lowest speed on that same course until noon when its crew would camp, waiting for the two on foot to join them.

Dard shouldered his pack, setting it into place with a wriggle, and picked up their compass. Santee followed with pack and rifle, and they went forward at a ground-eating pace Dard had learned in the woods of Terra, as the sled vanished over the rise.

For the most part they found the going through this rolling country easy. There were no wooded stretches to form impassable barriers, and they soon struck an old road running in the right direction to provide footing good enough to allow a faster pace. Insects spun out of the tall grass to blunder past them and hoppers spied them constantly.

Shortly before noon the road made a sharp curve west toward the distant sea, and the Terrans had to strike away across fields again. They had the good luck to stumble on a farm where not only one but two of the golden apple trees bent under the weight of ripe fruit. Pushing through the mob of semidrunk birds, insects, and hoppers, including a new and larger variety of the latter, they secured fruit which was not only food but drink, filling an improvised bag for the sake of the sled riders.

Santee bit into the fragrant pulp with a sigh of pleasure.

“D’yuh know—I wonder a lot-where did all the people go? They had a bad war—sure. But there must have been some survivors. Everybody couldn’t have been killed!”

“What if they used gas, or a germ-certain kinds of infective radiation?” questioned Dard. “There are no traces of any survivors, in the city ruins, around farms.”

“It looks to me jus’ as if"-the big rifleman licked his fingers carefully-"they all packed up and got out together, the way we left the Cleft.”

When they left the farm the character of the country began to change. Here the soil was spotted with patches of sandy gravel which grew larger. The clumps of trees dwindled to thickets of wiry thorn bushes, and there were outcroppings of the same shiny black rock which had nursed the killing vines by the river. Santee shot a long survey about as they halted on the top of a steep hill.

“This’s kinda like a desert. Glad we brought them apples-we might not hit water here.”

It was hot, hotter than it had seemed back when they were in the blue-green fields, for this sun-baked red-brown earth and blue sand reflected the heat. Dard’s skin, chafed by the pack straps, smarted when moisture trickled down between his shoulder blades. He licked his lips and tasted salt. Santee’s comment concerning lack of water had aroused his thirst.

Below them was a gorge. Dard blinked and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. No, that was no trick of shimmering heat-there was a bright gleaming line straight across the floor of the valley. He called it to Santee’s attention and the other focused the field glasses on it.

“A rail! But why only one?”

“We can get down over there,” Dard pointed. “Let’s see what it is.”

They made the hard climb down to verify the fact that a single metal rail did reach from one tunnel hole in the gorge wall to another tunnel directly across. Unable to discover anything else, they pulled themselves up the opposite cliff to continue the southward march.

It was midafternoon when they saw, rising into a cloudless sky, the smoke signal of the sled. And their strides became a trot until they panted up the side of a small mesa- plateau to the camp.

“How long,” Santee wanted to know later as they sucked appreciatively on golden apples, “is this trip gonna last?”

“Another full day’s journey for you two, and maybe half the next. At this speed we can’t expect to cut it any shorter,” Kimber replied. “Jorge’s been working on the engine again. But there isn’t much he can do without other tools.”

The big man grinned. “Well, these here plasta-boots of our’n are holdin’ up pretty well. We can keep sloggin’ a while longer. And there’s nothin’ to be afraid of.”

“Don’t be too sure of that,” cautioned the pilot. “Keep your eyes open, you two. There may have been other booby traps scattered around. Since we were shot down, I don’t trust even a clear sky!”

The second day’s routine followed the first. Except, in the arid desert land, it was tougher going and they did not make time.

Dard’s head went up and his nostrils expanded as he started to pick his way down a series of ledges into a sandy- floored ravine. There was a musky, highly repellent stench arising from below. And he had sniffed something very much like it before! The putrescent remains of the duocorn! Below an organic thing was very dead! Santee worked along to join him.

“What’re you stoppin’ for?”

“Smell that?”

Santee’s bearded face wrinkled. “Yah, a big stink! Somthin’ dead!”

Dard studied the ground before them carefully. If they tried to double back on their trail through this up and down country they were going to lose hours of time, After all, what had made that kill below-if it were a kill-might have been gone for days. He decided to leave it up to Santee.

“Shall we go down?”

“We’ll lose a lotta time back trailin’ from here. I’d say keep on.”

But they continued the descent cautiously and when Dard disturbed a small stone, which dropped noisily over the edge, he stiffened for several listening seconds. There was no sound from below-nothing but that terrible stomach-disturbing odor.

Santee unslung the rifle, and Dard’s hand went to his own belt. That morning Cully had given him the ray gun, suggesting that it could be of more use to the foot travelers. Now, as his hand closed around the butt, Dard was very glad that he held it. There was something about this ill-omened place-something in the very silence which brooded there-that hinted of danger.

A screen of stubby thorn bushes masked the far end of the narrow ravine, hinting at the presence of moisture, although the prickly leaves had a grayish, unhealthy cast.

The two worked their way through these as carefully and noiselessly as possible and found a seeping spring. Minerals salted the lip of the water-filled depression, and a greenish powder was dry along the banks of the rivulet which trickled on down the valley.

Chemical fumes from the water scented the air, but not heavy enough to cover the other sickish effluvium.

They should have beaten their way through the brush to the other side of the valley and climbed out of that tainted hole. But no broken ledges hung over there to furnish climbing aids, and they followed the stream along in the search for an easier path.

The contaminated water spilled out into a shallow stinking pool with a broad rim of the poisonous green.

Grouped around the far perimeter of the pool, half buried in the sand, were such things as nightmares are made of! Their dingy yellowish-green skins were scaled with the stigmata of the reptile. But the creatures drowsing in the sun were not even as wholesome as the snakes most humans shrink from with age-old inbred horror. These were true monsters-evil. Gorged, they had fallen in a stupor among the grisly fragments of their feasting, and from those fragments and the smeared sand came a stench foul enough to suggest that this was a long used lair.

Dard estimated that they were from seven to ten feet long. The hind legs, ending in huge webbed feet, mere stems of bone laced with powerful driving muscles. Short, horribly stained forearms had terrible travesties of human hands which curved over their protruding bellies, each finger a ten-inch claw. But their heads were the worst, too small for the bodies, flat of skull, they were mounted on unusually long and slender necks, giving the impression of a cobra on the shoulders of a lizard.

As the two humans halted, a flap of loose skin on the belly of the nearest nightmare was pushed aside and a small replica of the monster drew itself out of a sac and wobbled weakly down to the water, curling its neck over to suck up the liquid. After it swallowed the first mouthful, some instinct drew its attention to the watchers. With a shrill hiss it scrambled back to its parent. The head of the larger thing snapped up, swaying back and forth, a snake preparing to strike!

Dard threw himself back, carrying Santee with, him. They were brought up short by the cliff wall, but they dared not turn their backs upon the aroused monster long enough to find hand and foot holds there.

The thing across the pool was on its feet, towering far over them. With a cuff of one paw it sent the infant sprawling to safety before it slewed around kicking up blood-clotted sand. The flat serpent’s head went down to a level with the lizardlike shoulders, and from its fanged jaws came a hiss which gathered volume until it rivaled the piercing whistle of a steam-powered engine.

That battle cry aroused its fellow sleepers. But they arose sluggishly, too torpid from their feasting to respond.

Santee shot. The nerve-paralyzing projectile of the stun rifle struck fair between those murderous yellow, unwinding eyes. The skull shattered with a spatter of green ooze. But the thing waded the pool to rush, them, tearing claws outstretched. It should have been dead. But with a broken, empty skull, blinded, it came on!

“No brain in the head!” Dard shouted. “Jump!”

They jumped apart. The advancing horror struck hard against the cliff to cling there stubbornly clawing at the rock. It continued to scream senselessly, bringing the others of its kind into full alertness.

One gave a bound, clearing the pool, to fall upon its wounded companion with tearing jaws and claws. The other three appeared undecided. Their snake heads rose and fell as they hissed. One made to join the battle on the other side of the pool and then retreated.

Daring to hesitate no longer, Dard took careful aim with the ray gun and sent a green beam straight into the distended middle of the creature that rocked from one splayed foot to another on his right. The Terrans had to clear a path past the pool, for to return near the fighters was sure death.

Screaming madly, Dard’s quarry clapped both hands over the frightful gaping emptiness the ray had left and wilted forward into the water, sending up a slimy spray of blood and poisonous liquid. With the attention of its two fellows attracted to its struggles Dard darted to join Santee.

Together the humans edged along the cliff wall, their goal the valley beyond the pool. For a few minutes it seemed that they might be able to gain it undetected by the monsters. For one of the unhurt creatures had gone to work on the body in the pool. But when its smaller companion made to join it, fangs and talons threatened, forcing that other to withdraw, hissing fury. As its head swung back and forth it sighted the Terrans. An arching leap brought it after them. Both the length and speed of that bound panicked the cornered men. They scrambled into the meager protection offered by the boulders and fallen rock. Santee’s second bullet tore a hole in the sealed breast of the pursuer without slowing its charge. Dard pressed the firing stud on the ray gun. But the responding beam was weak. It clipped the side of thee weaving head, shearing off part of the skull and one eye, and cutting neck muscles so badly that the battered head flopped erratically.

Dard fired again-with no result. The clip left in the weapon must have been exhausted! His ears roared as Santee shot from beside him. But the bullet only nicked the shoulder of the writhing body. Despairing they scuttled and backed away, keeping in among the rough footing. But they were past the pool, in the middle of the valley, on a course which paralleled a path worn deep and smooth by the feet of the monsters.

The scream of the hunter behind them was cut by a trumpeting squeal. A second was bearing down to join in the chase.

“Ahead— three-four yards”—Dard got out the words between tearing breaths—“hole—too—small—”

He concentrated on reaching that haven, and Santee ran beside him. The hole was a perfectly round one, and from it ran the monorail of the ancient transport system. They threw themselves into the dark, scrambling on until Dard brought up against a heavy object which gave under his weight, slipping on so suddenly that he sprawled face down, the wind driven out of him.

When he caught his breath again he sat up, still groggy. The crack of the rifle filled the tunnel with a blast of sound.

“Got one at last! And it’ll block up that hole-for a while anyways. But it ain’t healthy in here-they can get in -squeeze themselves altogether and do it. What the-!” The big man ended his report with an exclamation of both outrage and fear.

Dard had breath enough to ask: “What’s the matter?”

“That was the last round, I just fired. You got another clip for the ray gun?”

“No.”

“Then we’d better make tracks for the other end of this here tunnel. From the sound back there they’re taking the dead one out-in pieces! When they’ve got that done they’ll be after us agin—”

“Let’s have the flash. There’s something ahead here. It moves ”

Dard put a tentative hand out-to encounter the smoothness of metal. And when Santee snapped on the torch beam he discovered that he was fronting a cylinder, not unlike the one they had pulled out of the seaside tube. But this one was mounted on a grooved fin made to run along the monorail. There was no way of getting past it, since its sides were within inches of the tunnel walls. They would have to push it before them if they were going to get out the other end.

That worked properly for about five minutes and then an extra hard push sent the carrier ahead to stop with a clang. All their shoving force could force it along no farther. Dard flattened himself against the wall and flashed the torch down the side of the cylinder.

“There’s a cave-in!”

Santee massaged his bearded chin with a dirt-streaked hand. “Kinda bottles us up, don’t it? Give us the light and let’s have a look along these walls.”

Several paces back he found a niche, not too roomy and still accommodating some oddly shaped tools which Santee kicked aside.

“Repairman’s safety hole,” he explained. “Thought maybe we might happen on one of these here. Now, suppose we work that there truck past here and get ahead to look at the damage.”

Pushing the carrier before them had been an easy task. But getting it back again was another matter altogether, especially when there were no proper handholds on its smooth surface. As they worked at it, hampered by their necessarily cramped position, they broke nails and tore fingers raw. The stubborn thing moved with frustrating slowness. While, to rasp the nerves, sounds from the entrance told them that the body which had obstructed passage there was being rapidly disposed of.

At last the car was pushed far enough along so that they could get out of the niche behind it. Without waiting to take up their packs, they ran to the cave-in, only to be met by a hard mound of earth and rock. Santee dug the barrel of his rifle into it, disturbing only a scattered clod or two. To dig a way through that they needed tools, and time-and they had neither as the big man was forced to acknowledge.

“There’re two of them critters left. And if either one gets in here now it’s gonna push that car right back on us. But-if there’s any smashin’ done-I’m gonna be the one to do it!”

He padded purposefully back to the carrier. Dard hurried after him. The picture Santee had evoked, of the lizard things pushing that ear down upon them, was one he didn’t want to think about. He had no idea of what Santee had in mind, but any action now was better than just waiting for such an end.

“All right,” Santee put his hands on the back of the carrier, “put away that torch and start pushin’! Here’s where we give them lizards a big surprise-a nasty one, too, I hope!”

Dard dropped the torch and put his hands beside Santee’s. Together they set their strength against the immobility of the carrier. It moved, much more easily than it had before. There was a low hum which became a steady purr. It gathered speed-moving away from them.

“We’ve started it to workin’!” Santee’s exultant cry arose to explain. He caught Dard and held him away from the entrance as the carrier sped on.

There was a shock of impact followed by a hissing scream. Then they saw the clear circle of daylight marking the entrance, carrier and besiegers were both gone!

8. DESSIE’S MERMAN

WHEN NOTHING moved across that circle of light, they dared to retrieve their packs and go out.

The carrier had plunged full speed ahead, leaving the curve of the monorail. Under it, but crushed legs pinned to the sand and rock of the valley floor, threshed one of the monsters, writhing over the torn remains of the one Santee had shot earlier. Leaping out of the reach of the prisoned creature’s darting head the Terrans rounded its body and made for the opposite wall of the canyon.

Here the rock afforded holds and they pulled themselves up. But the lizard crushed beneath the car appeared to be alone and nothing menaced their retreat. Panting they reached the top and dared to look back.

Below the monster still fought insanely against the carrier which held it down. But if there were others of its fellows alive they had not joined it. Santee wiped his steaming face with the back of a hand.

“I still don’t know how we got outa that one, kid. It was sure a close call.”

“Too close. I want to catch up to the sled before we run into any more of those murdering devils.”

“Yeah,” Santee pulled ruefully at the sling of the rifle.

“Next time I go walkin’ I’m gonna have a lotta ammo! This here country’s got too many surprises.”

They set out at a sober pace, too exhausted by their exertions of the past hour to hurry. It was dusk growing into night before they found their way down a rise into another grassy plain. In the distance was a massed shadow of what could only be a wood.

Would they have to fight their way through or around that, Dard asked himself drearily. But a light reassured him. There was a campfire down there. Cully had landed the sled this side of the barrier.

As Santee and Dard dragged themselves wearily into the circle of firelight they were met with a flood of questions. Dard was too tired to try to answer. He ate and drank and crawled into his bedroll before all the tale of their adventure of the afternoon had been told. Kimber was very sober when it was complete.

“That was too close. We’ll have to go better armed when we explore. But now that we know there is no civilized threat to our colony it may be some time before we return this way. Tomorrow the sled will ferry us over the forest and the cliffs and we shall be home. Those are our cliffs there.”

“Home,” Dard repeated that word in his mind, trying to associate it with the sea valley, with the cave house of the star voyagers. A long, long time ago “home” had had a good meaning. Before the burning, before the purge. But his memory of that halcyon time was so dim. Then “home” had meant the farm, and cold, hunger, the constant threat of danger. Now “home” would be a cell hollowed out of a colored cliff on a weird world generations of time away from Terra.

In the morning he lazed about the camp with Santee while Cully, after a last tune-up of the limping engine, lifted the sled toward the sea with Kimber as the first passenger. It was an hour before the sled returned and the engineer ordered Dard into the listing craft. They flew slowly, skimming the barrier, and Cully did not take him all the way down the sea valley to the cliff house, but dropped him with his pack at the edge of the ancient fields.

Dard swished through the tall grass. He could see people moving in the distant fields, more of them than had been about when he had left. More of tthee sleepers had probably been aroused.

Then a clear, lilting whistle announced the boy, some years younger than himself, who came driving before him three calves. He stopped short when he caught sight of the battered explorer and smiled.

“Hi! You’re Dard Nordis, ain’t you? Say, you musta had yourself a time-seein’ them ruined cities and the lizards and all! I’m gonna go out and see ’em, too-when I can get Dad to let me. I’m Lanny Harmon. Can you wait ’til I stake out these critters? I’d like to go back with you.”

“Sure.” Dard eased his pack to the ground and watched Lanny tether the calves in the pasture.

“They sure do like this kinda grass,” the farm boy explained as he came back. “Hey, let me carry that there pack for you. Mr. Kimber said you had a big fight with some giant lizards. Are they worse’n those flyin’ dragons?”

“They sure are,” Dard replied feelingly. “Say, is everybody awake now?”

“Everybody’s that’s goin’ to.” A shadow darkened the boy’s face for a moment. “Six didn’t come through. Dr. Skort-but you knew ’bout him, and Miz Winson, and Miz Grene, Looie Denton and a coupla men I didn’t know. But the rest, they’re all right. We were awful lucky. Whee- look out!”

Dard overbalanced as he tied to stop in mid-step and landed on the ground beside Lanny who had squatted down to sweep away the grass and display a dome of mud- plastered leaves and grass.

“What in the world?”

Lanny chuckled, “That there’s a hopper house! Dessie, she found one yesterday and showed me where to look, Watch!” He rapped smartly with his knuckles on the top of the dome.

A second later a hopper’s head popped out of the ground level door and the indignant beast let them know very plainly its opinion of such a disturbance of the peace.

“Dessie, she got a hopper to stand still and let her pet him, My sister Marya-now she wants a hopper-says they’re like kittens. But Ma says they steal too much and we ain’t gonna bring any in the cave, I’d like to try to tame one, though.”

They detoured around a field of the blue-pod grain, meeting the harvesters working there. Dard shook hands with strangers, bewildered by all the new faces. As he went on he asked Lanny:

“How many are there of us now?”

Lanny’s lips moved as he counted. “Twenty-five men- counting you explorers-and twenty-three women. Then there’re the girls, my sisters, Marya and Martie, and Dessie and Lara Skort-they’re all little. And Don Winson, he’s just a baby. That’s all. Most of the men are down rippin’ up the ship.”

“Ripping up the ship?” Why did that dismay him so?

“Sure. We ain’t gonna fly again-not enough fuel. And she was made to take apart so we can use parts of her for machine shops and things like that. Well-here we are!”

They came out on what was now a well-defined path running up to the main entrance of the cave. Three men were working on a swinging platform suspended from the top of the cliff, fitting clear glass into a hole ready to receive it as a window:

“Dardie! Dardie! Dardie!”

A whirlwind swept down upon him, wrapping thin arms about his waist, burrowing a face against him. He went down on his knees and took Dessie into a tight hug.

“Dardie,” she was sniffling a little. “They said you would come an’ I’ve been watching all the time! Dardie,” she smiled at him blissfully, “I do like this place! I do! There are lots of animals in the grass and some of them have houses just like us-and they like me! Now that you’ve come home, Dardie, everything is wonderful-truly it is!”

“It sure is, honey.”

“So there you are, son,” Trude Harmon bore down upon him. “Hungry, too, I’ll wager. You come right in and rest and eat. Heard tell that you had yourselves some excitin’ times.”

With Dessie holding his hand tightly and Lanny bringing up the rear still carrying his pack, Dard came into a room where there was a long table flanked by benches. Kimber was already sitting there, empty plates before him, talking to an excited Kordov.

“But where did they go-those city dwellers?” the little biologist sputtered as Dard waded into the food Trude Harmon spread before him. “They could not just vanish- pouff!” He snapped his fingers. “As if they were but puffs of smoke!”

Kimber gave the same answer to that question as Dard had made. “Say an epidemic following war-germ warfare-or radiation sickness-who can tell now? By the weathering of the city they have been gone a long time. We found no traces of anything but animal life. And nothing to fear but the lizards…

“A whole world deserted!” Kordov shook his head. “It is enough to frighten one! Those Others took the wrong turning somewhere.”

“It is up to us to see that we don’t follow their example,” Kimber cut in.

That evening the voyagers gathered about a giant campfire in the open space before the cliff house, while Kimber and the others in turn recited the saga of their journey into the interior. The city, the robot-controlled battery, the battle with the lizards, held their listeners enthralled. But when they had done the question came again:

“But where did they go?”

Kordov gave the suggested answers, but then he added:

“It would be better if we asked ourselves now why did they go and be governed by the reply to that. They have left us a deserted land in which to make a new beginning. Though we must not forget that in other continents of this world some remnants of that race may still exist. Wisdom suggests alertness in the future.”

Dessie, sitting in Dard’s lap, leaned her head back against his shoulder and whispered:

“I like hearing about the night monkeys, Dardie. Do you suppose they will ever come here so I can see them too? Knowing them would be fun.”

“Yes, it would,” he whispered back.

Maybe someday when they were sure of safety beyond the cliffs, all the Terrans could venture out and he could show Dessie the night monkeys. But not until the last of that scaled death had been found and exterminated!

Since Kimber could not use his arm until the shoulder wound healed, Dard became hands for the pilot, working with Cully on the damaged sled. Seeing that he could and did follow instructions, Cully went back to his own pet project of dismantling the engine of the carrier they had rescued from the sea tube. He intended some day, he insisted, to hunt out that second car from the lizard valley and compare the two.

Dessie kept near them as they worked. She was Dard’s shadow in the waking hours, as she had always been since taking her first uncertain steps. The other children were objects to be watched with sober interest, but as yet she preferred company she knew. And, since she was perfectly content to sit quietly, absorbed in the antics of the hoppers, insects, and the butterfly-birds; they often forgot she was with them.

“No- ”

Dard was startled into turning by her sudden cry. She was having a tug of war with the largest hopper he had yet seen, a grandfather of a clan at least. But Dessie’s strength was superior, and she wrenched away the prize the animal had just stolen from the blouse Dard had discarded in the heat.

“He opened your pocket,” she told the boy indignantly,”and he took this out, just as if it were his own! What is it? Pretty—” She crooned the word as she fingered the sheets in which colors ran in waving bands.

“Why- I’d forgotten all about that. It’s a book-or I think it is, Dessie. It belonged to Those Others.”

"A what!” Kimber reached for it. “Where did you get it., kid?”

Dard explained how he had found it in the hidden room of the gun emplacement and of his theory that Those Others might have used the bands of color as a means of communication.

“I was going to compare it with those shots you took on microfilm of that doorway in the city. And then so much happened I forgot all about it.”

“You do have a feeling for word patterns-I remember.”

“Dard makes pictures out of words.” Dessie answered for him. “Show how, Dardie.”

Under Kimber’s interested eyes Dard sketched out the pattern of a line of verse. The pilot nodded.

“Patterns for words. And that must be how you understood the importance of this. All right. Remember those rolls of some kind of recording tape we found in the first carrier? Rogan believes that they can be read by the help of our machines. You’re going down to the ship right now and tell him to get out that equipment, We didn’t see any use for it yet and it’s been left down there. But I want to know

- Yes, go right now!”

So Dard, with Dessie still in tow, set off down river to the seashore where the remains of the star ship was being dismantled as fast as they could use its materials at the cliffs. The red spider plants were again floating in wide patches on the water, but not cloaking all the river as they had on the day the ship landed.

“I haven’t been down here yet,” Dessie confided. “Mrs. Harmon says that there are bad dragons.”

Dard was quick to underline that warning. Dessie might just try to make friends with one of the things!

“Yes, there are, Dessie. And they are not like the animals at all. Promise me that if you see one you will can me right away!”

She was apparently impressed by his gravity for she agreed at once.

“Yes, Dardie. Mr. Rogan brought me a pretty shell from the sea. Might I just go down and see if I can find another?” Dessie asked.

“Stay in sight of the ship and don’t wander away,” he told her, seeing no reason why she should not hunt for treasures along the water’s edge.

The ship which had been so solid and secure against the dangers of outer space was but a shell of her former self. In some places she had been stripped down to the inner framework. Dard squeezed through open partitions to a storeroom where he found the techneer checking the markings on a pile of boxes. When he explained his errand Rogan was enthusiastic.

“Sure we can try reading those tapes. We’ll need this, and this, and"-he pushed aside a larger container to free a third- “this. I’ll go to work assembling as soon as we get this back to the cliff. Might be able to try running off one roll tonight or early tomorrow. Want to give me a hand?”

Dard took one of the boxes under his arm and hooked his fingers in the carrying handle of another before tramping back over the ramp to the sand.

“Dessie came down with me. She wanted some more sea shells. I’ll have to round her up.”

“Sure thing.” Rogan set down his large box and came along. They were almost at the shore when the scream sent them into a run.

“Dardie! Dardie! Quick!”

Dard’s hand went to the ray gun Cully had given him after the adventure with the lizards. It had a full charge in it now. But they had seen no trace of the monsters here!

“There she is! By those rocks!”

But he didn’t need Rogan’s direction. Dard had already sighted Dessie, her back to some sea-washed rocks, shying stones at one of the flying dragons, while she continued to shout for help. To Dard’s surprise she made no move to join her rescuers but stood her ground valiantly until he used the ray to slice the head of the dragon and send its body flopping into the sea.

“Come here!” he called but she shook her head. He saw tears on her cheeks.

“It’s the sea baby, Dardie, the little baby out of the sea. It’s so afraid! We must help it—”

Dard stopped, catching at Rogan to bring him to a halt also. He trusted Dessie’s instincts. She had been protecting another creature, not herself, and he had a feeling now that her act was of vast importance to them an. He schooled his voice to a low, even level as he said:

“All right, Dessie. The dragon is dead. Can you get the sea baby to come out now-or shall I come to help you?”

She smeared her hand across her wet face. “I can do it, Dard. It’s so frightened and it might be more afraid of somebody as big as you.”

She squatted down before a small opening between two rocks and made soft coaxing sounds. At last she turned her head.

“It’s coming out. But you must stay away-please—”

Dard nodded. Dessie held out her hand to the hollow between the rocks. He was sure he saw something hesitatingly touch that small palm. Then she wriggled back, still coaxing.

What followed her brought a gasp from Dard, even inured as he now was to the surprises this world had to offer. Some twenty slender inches tall, it walked upright, the four tiny digits of one hand confidently hooked about Dessie’s fingers. In color the creature was a soft silvery gray, but when a shaft of sunlight touched the fluff of thick fur which completely covered it, rainbow lights twinkled from each hair tip.

Its head was round, with no vestige of ears, the eyes very large, turning from Dessie to the two men. When it caught sight of them it stopped short and, with a gesture which won Dard completely, put the other band to its wide, fanged mouth, chewing on its finger tips shyly. The small feet were webbed and sealed with rainbow tints, as were the hands. He continued to examine it, puzzled. It was akin to the night-howling monkeys, but it was much smaller and plainly amphibian. And it appeared to be able to see perfectly well in the daylight.

“Where did it come from, Dessie?” he asked quietly, trying hard not to alarm the engaging little thing.

“Out of the sea,” she waved her flee hand at the waves.

“I was hunting shells and I found a pretty one. When I went down to wash the sand off it there he was, coming out of the water to watch me. He was sleeked down with the wet then-he’s a lot prettier now—” She broke off and stopped to address her companion with a series of chirrups such as Dard had heard her use with the wild things of lost Terra.

“Then,” she continued, “that bad dragon came and chased him into the rocks and I called you-like you, told me to, Dardie, if I saw a dragon. They are bad. The sea baby was so frightened.”

“Did it tell you so?” asked Rogan eagerly.

Perhaps it was the vibration of his deeper voice in the air which sent the sea creature crowding against Dessie, half hiding its face against her.

“Please, Mr. Rogan,” she shook her head reprovingly.”He’s afraid when you talk. No, I don’t think he talks like us. I just know what he feels-here,” she touched a forefinger to her head. “He wanted to play with me so he came ashore. He’s a nice baby-the nicest I ever, ever knew! Better than a fox or a bunny or even the big owl.”

“Great Space! Look there—off the rocks!”

Dard’s eyes followed the line of Rogan’s pointing finger. Two sleek round heads bobbed out of the water, great unblinking orbs were turned to the party on the beach. Dard’s grasp on Rogan’s arm tightened.

“Keep quiet! This is important!”

Dessie beamed at their interruption.

“More sea people! Look, baby!” She directed the mar-child’s attention seaward.

Instantly it slipped its hand free and ran to the edge of the water. But, just as it was about to plunge into the waves, it stopped and looked back at Dessie. While it teetered there, toes in the lapping waves, the two others of its race swam into the shallows and arose to their feet to wade in. The merchild made up its mind and splashed out to meet the shorter of the two advancing figures and was gathered up in eager arms. The largest of the three-an inch or two above four feet Dard judged-moved in between its mate and child and those on shore.

“See what it’s carrying!” Rogan schooled his voice with an effort,

But Dard needed no one to point out that discovery. The merman was armed with a spear, a spear with a mean looking many barbed head. And about his loins was a belt sup- porting a small, fastened case and a long dagger of pointed bone. This was no animal!

The merchild struggled to free itself, slipped under the reaching hand of its father, and darted back to Dessie. Grabbing again at her hand, it tugged her toward the couple in the water. Dard moved up, he didn’t like the look of that spear.

But before he could get to Dessie the merman thrust that weapon at something washing along the rocks. When he raised the spear its point impaled the headless body of the dragon. With a gesture of fury the merman smashed the battered corpse down on the stone, ripping it off the barbs. Then he splashed up to Dessie and caught the merchild, giving it a smart slap across its buttocks with a very human expression of exasperation. Dard chuckled and forgot his momentary fears.

The merpeople were unhuman in appearance but they appeared to share certain emotions with the Terrans. Dard stepped cautiously into the water. The merman was instantly alert, his spear on guard, backing toward his mate and the child he had pushed out to her.

Dard held out empty hands in the gesture of good will as old as time. The merman’s big eyes searched his. Then slowly that spear was lowered, to be laid on wet sand, with webbed toes curled over it to hold it safe, and the rainbow scaled paws were raised in the right answer.

9. TREATY AND ALLIANCE

“WHEN’S BLAST-OFF?” Cully was boring holes in the sand with one finger, restless away from his machines.

Dard glanced along the line of the six men who had accompanied him down to the shore. They sat cross-legged in the sand with strict orders to keep quiet and wait. The first meeting between the Terrans and the representatives of the merpeople had been scheduled for this afternoon-if he had been able to get the idea across in gestures alone.

Spread out on the shore several feet above the water level were those gifts the Terrans believed might please sea dwellers. Some nested plastic bowls made a bright-colored spot, a collection of empty bottles of various sizes, hastily assembled from laboratory supplies, golden apples, native grain, all there together. Objects which could be used under water had been hard to find.

“They’re coming!” Dessie had been waiting impatiently by the waves’ sweep, and now, heedless of the water curling about her legs, she ran forward, holding out her hands to the merchild who threshed up a fountain of spray in its eagerness to meet her. Hand in hand they pattered to dry land where the merchild shrank shyly against the little girl when it saw the men.

But Dessie was smiling, and said importantly, “Ssssat and Ssssutu are coming now.”

Dard hid his surprise. How could Dessie so confidently mouth those queer names-how did she know? From all his questioning and Kimber’s and Kordov’s and Carlee’s-last night, they had only been able to elicit that the “sea people thought into her head.” They had been forced to accept the concept of telepathy-which could be possible with an undersea race.

So, deciding that Dessie’s interpretation might be needed that day, they had schooled her in her part.

Ssssat and Ssssutu-if those were the proper designations of the mermen who were borne in with the next wave came ashore. They both carried the barbed spears and wore long bone daggers at the belts which were their only articles of clothing. Without a sound they seated themselves on the seaside of the gifts, facing Dard, regarding him and the other Terrans with owlish solemnity.

“Dessie!” Dard called, and she came trotting to him.

“Do I give the presents now, Dard?”

“Yes. Try to make them understand that we want to be friends.”

She picked out two of the bowls, put an apple and a handful of grain into each, and carried them over to set down before the envoys.

The one on Dard’s right held out his hand and Dessie, without hesitation, laid hers, palm down, upon it. For a long moment they made contact. Then both mermen relaxed their tense watchfulness. They put their spears behind them and one ran his hands through the fur on his head and shoulders where it was fast drying into rainbow dotted fluff.

“They want to be friends, too,” Dessie reported. “Dardie, if you put your hand on theirs, then they can talk to you. They don’t talk with their mouths at all. This is Ssssat—”

Dard got to his feet slowly so as not to alarm the mermen and crossed the strip of shore until he could sit face to face. Then he held out his hand. Cool and damp the scaled digits and palm of the other lay upon his warmer flesh. And, Dard almost broke the contact in his surprise and awe, for the other was talking to him! Words, ideas, swept into his mind-some concepts so alien he could not understand. But bit by bit he pieced together much of what the other was striving to tell him.

“Big ones, land dwellers, we have watched you-with fear. Fear that you have come to lead us once more into the pens of darkness—”

“Pens of darkness?” Dard echoed aloud and then shaped a mental query.

“Those who once walked the land here-they kept the pens of darkness where our fathers’ fathers’ fathers’ ” … -the concept of a long stretch of past time trailed through the Terran’s receptive mind-"were hatched. The days of fire came and we broke forth and now we shall never return.” There was stern warning, an implied threat, in that.

“We know nothing of the pens, nor do we threaten you,” Dard thought slowly. “We, too, have broken out of pens of darkness, he added with sudden inspiration.

“It is true that you are not the color or shape of those who made the pens. And you have shown only friendship. Also you killed the flying death which would have slain my cub. I believe that you are good. Will you stay here?”

Dard pointed inland. “We build there.”

“Do you wish the fruits of the river?” came next.

“The fruits of the river?” Dard was puzzled until a dear picture of one of the red spider plants formed in his mind. Then he shook his head to reinforce his unspoken denial.

“We may then come and harvest as we have always done? And,” there was a shrewd bargaining note in this, “perhaps you will see that the flying death does not attack us, since your slaying powers are greater than ours?”

“We like the dragons no better than you do. Let me speak with the others now—” Dard broke contact and reported to the Terran committee.

“Sure!” Santee’s jovial boom could not be kept to a whisper and at the sound, or its vibration, both mermen started. “Let ’em come in and get their spiders. I’ll watch for dragons.”

“Fair enough,” Kimber agreed. “We don’t care for the dragons any more than they do.”

Before the hour had passed cordial relations had been established, and the mermen promised to return early the next morning with their harvest crew. Carrying the gifts they waded out into the sea, Ssssat’s cub riding on his father’s shoulder. The little one waved back at Dessie until all three disappeared under water.

“Those pens they spoke of,” Kordov mused later that night when they discussed the meeting in an open convocation of all the voyagers. “They must have been imprisoned at one time by the city builders and escaped during or after the war. But surely they weren’t domestic animals.”

“More likely slaves,” suggested Carlee Skort. “Perhaps they were forced to do undersea work where landsmen could not venture. They are coming tomorrow? Well, why can’t we all go down and meet them? Maybe we can help in the harvesting and prove our good will.”

The clamor which interrupted and supported her was indicative of the enthusiasm of the rest. Dessie’s merpeople had caught the imaginations of all. And Dard believed that the Terrans would have gone to meet them in any case.

Early as the colonists came down to the river bank the next morning, the merpeople were there before them, wading along the shallows of the slowly flowing stream, sweeping between them woven basket nets, as fine as sieves, to skim up the red fungi. Merchildren paddled in and out, and a line of spear-bearing males patrolled the shoreline with attention for the cliff perches of the dragons.

They stopped all these activities as the Terrans came into sight, and when they began again it was with a certain self-consciousness. Dard and the others who had been on the seashore the day before went up to meet the sea people, their hands outstretched.

A party of the armed males split off to face them. In the center of their group was one portly individual who, though there was no way save by size for the humans to guess at merman ages, gave the impression of dignity and authority.

Dard touched palms with the leading warrior.

“This is Aaaatak, our ‘Friend of Many.’ He would communicate with your ‘Giver of Law.’”

“Giver of Law.” Kordov came the nearest to being the leader of the colonists. Dard beckoned to the First Scientist.

“This is their chieftain, sir. He wants to speak to our leader.”

“So? I can not call myself leader,” Kordov met the hands of the older merman, “but I am honored to speak to him.” As Kordov and the merchief clasped hands the rest of the colonists came up, timidly. But an hour later merpeople and humans mingled with freedom. And when the Terran party set out food, the mermen brought in their own supplies, flat baskets of fish and aquatic plants, kept in water until time to eat. They accepted the golden apples eagerly, but kept away from the fires where their hosts cooked the fish they offered in return. Although each fire had a ring of amazed spectators, standing at a safe distance to gaze at the wonder.

Three dragons that dared to invade were brought down with rays, to the savage exultation of the merpeople. They asked to inspect the weapons and returned them regretfully when they understood that such arms would not last in their water world.

“Though,” Cully said thoughtfully, when this had been explained, “I don’t see why they couldn’t use some of the metal forged by Those Others. It seems to resist rust and erosion on land-it might in the water.”

“Nordis!”

The urgency in that call brought Dard away from the engineer to the small group of Kimber, Kordov, the mer-chief and several others. Harmon was there, as well as Santee, and some techneers.

“Yes, sir?”

“You’ve seen the lizards, ask Oaaatak if those are what he is trying to tall us about. We can’t get the right impression of what he means and it seems to be vitally important.” Kordov edged back for the boy to take his place. Dard clasped the readily extended claws of the merchief.

“Do you wish to tell us about—” He shut his eyes in order to concentrate better upon a mental image of the huge reptiles,

“No!” The answer was a decided negative. “Those we have seen, yes-hunting down other land dwellers. They were once subordinate to those we speak of now. These—”

Another picture indeed-a biped-humanoid in outline-but somehow all wrong. Dard had seen nothing like it. And the image was fuzzy, indistinct as if he observed it from a distance-or through water!

Through water! That was caught up eagerly by Aaaatak.

“Now you are thinking straight. We do not come out of hiding when those are about! So we see them in that fashion—”

“They live on land then? Near here?” Dard demanded. The emotion of fear colored so strongly all the impressions he received from the merchief.

“They live on land, yes. Near here, no, or we should not be here. We hunt out shores where they do not come. Once they were very, very many, living everywhere-here-across the sea. They were the builders of those pens where creatures of my kind were imprisoned for them to work their will upon. Then something happened. There came fire raining from the sky, and a sickness which struck them. They died, some quickly, some much more slowly, when my people burst from the pens.” There was a cold and deadly satisfaction in that flash of memory. “After that we fled into the wilds of the sea where they could not find us. Even when I was but a new-hatched cub we lived in the depths. But through the years our young warriors went out to search for food and for a safer place to live-there are monsters in the deeps as horrible as the lizards of the land. And these parties discovered that those”—again Dard saw the queer biped—“were gone from long stretches among the reefs, as we had always longed to do. There are none of those left in this land now but—” The chief hesitated before suddenly withdrawing his hand from Dard’s and turning to his followers as if consulting them. Dad took the opportunity to translate to the others what he had learned.

“Survivors of Those Others,” Kimber caught him up. “But not here?”

“No. Aaaatak says that his people will not come where they are. Wait-he has more to tell.”

For Aaaatak was holding out his hand and Dard met it readily.

“My people now believe that you are not like those. You do not seem in body quite the same, your skin is of a different color,” he drew his claw finger across the back of Dard’s hand to emphasize his meaning, “and you have received us as one free people greets another. This those others do not-there is much hate and bitterness between us from the far past-and they always delight in killing.

“We have watched you ever since you first came out of the sky. Those others once traveled in the sky-though of late we have not seen their bird ships-and so we thought you of the same breed. Now we know that that is untrue. But we must tell you-be on your guard! For on the other side of the sea those others still live, even if their numbers are few, and there is a blackness in their minds which leads them to raise spears against all living things!

“Now,” Dard had a strong impression that the merchief was coming to the main point, “we are a people who know much about the sea, but little of the land. We have learned that you are not native to this world, having fallen from the sky-but, did you not also say that you came from a place where you, too, were penned by enemies?”

Dard assented, remembering his statement to the first envoys.

“If you are wise you will not seek out those who would lay such bonds upon you again. For that is what those others will do. In this world they recognize no other rights or desires than are born of their own wills. We have warriors of our race who keep watch upon them secretly and bring news of their coming and going. Against their might-though they have lost much of their ancient knowledge-we have only our own cunning and knowledge of the sea. And what good is a spear against that which may kill at a distance? But you have mightier weapons. And should we two peoples join skills and hearts against them- But do you now say this to your Giver of Laws and other Elder Ones so that they may understand.” He withdrew his hand again and left Dard in interpret.

“An alliance!” Tas Kordov caught the meaning of that offer. Hmm,” he plucked his lower lip. “Better tell him- No, let me. I’ll explain that we shall talk it over.”

“What’s all this ’bout Those Others?” Harmon demanded.

“Did they,” he indicated the merpeople, “say that they’re still here-the ones who lived in that city?”

“Not here-across the sea,” Dard was beginning when Rogan broke in.

“That chieftain doesn’t think much of them, does he?”

“He says they’re enemies.”

“They aren’t his kind,” Harmon pointed out. “And his people were their slaves once.”

“We,” Kimber said slowly, “have had some experience with slavery ourselves, haven’t we? On Terra we’d have been in labor camps, if we hadn’t been lucky-that is if we weren’t shot down in cold blood. I have a pretty good memory of the last few years there.”

Harmon sifted a palmful of sand from one hand to an- other. “Yeah, I know. Only we don’t want to get into no local war.”

That echoed after his voice died away. No entangling alliances to drag them into any war! Dard sensed the electric agreement which ran through them at that thought. Only Kimber, Santee, and maybe Kordov, did not wholly agree with Harmon.

Dard gazed down to the river bank. The merpeople had almost completed the harvest and were gathering up their possessions and slipping in family groups back to the sea. He wondered what Kordov would tell the chief.

Suddenly he could not stand the uncertainty any longer. He wanted to get away-to escape from the thought that perhaps it was going to start all over again-the insecurity- the constant guard duty against a hostile force.

According to the merchief Those Others were now across the sea-but would they remain there? Wouldn’t this fertile, deserted land where they had once ruled draw them back again? And they would not accept new settlers kindly.

If the Terrans only knew more about them! Those Others had blasted their world. Dard remembered the callous cruelty of that barn in the valley. Raids, looting, the blasted city, the robot-controlled guns to shoot anything passing out of the air, the warnings of the merpeople.

He plodded across the sand to the inner valley, beading for the cliff house. Rogan had set up the projector the night before, and they had put the first of the discovered tapes in it. If something about the rulers of this world could be learned from those-this was the time to do it!

“Where’re you bound for, kid?” Kimber fell into step.

“The cliffs.” Dard was being pushed by the feeling that time was not his to waste, that he must know-now!

The pilot asked no more questions but followed Dard into the rock cell where Rogan had installed his machine. The boy checked the preparation made the night before. He turned off the light-the screen on the wall was a glowing square of blue-white and then the projector began to hum.

“This one of those rolls from the carrier?”

But Dard did not answer. For now the screen was in use. He began to watch…

“Turn it off! Turn that off!”

His frenzied fingers found the proper button. They were surrounded by honest light, clean red-yellow walls.

Kimber’s face was in his hands, the harshness of his breathing filled the room. Dard, shaken, sick, dared not move. He gripped the edge of the shelf which supported the projector, gripped so tightly that the flesh under his nails turned dead white. He tried to concentrate upon that phenomenon-not on what he had just seen.

“What- what did you see?” he moistened his lips and asked dully. He had to know. Maybe it was only his own reaction. But-but it couldn’t be! The very thought that only he had seen that led to panic-to a terror beyond bearing.

“I don’t know…” Kimber’s answer dragged out of him word by painful word. “It wasn’t meant-ever meant for man—our kind of man—to see—”

Dard raised his head, made himself stare at that innocuous screen, to assure himself that there was nothing there now.

“It did something to me—inside,” he half whispered.

“It was meant to, I think. But-Great Lord-what sort of minds-feelings-did they have! Not human-totally alien. We have no common meeting point-we never shall have-with that!”

“And it was all just color, twisting, turning color,” Dard began.

Kimber’s hand dosed about his wrist with crushing intensity.

“I was right,” Dard did not feel the pain of that grip, “they used color as a means of communication. But— but—”

“What they had to say with it! Yes, not for us-never for us. Keep your mind off it, Dard. Five minutes more of that and you might not have been human—ever again!”

“We couldn’t establish contact with them— with— ”

“Minds that could conceive that? No, we can’t. So that was what brought you here-you wanted to see if Harmon was right in his neutral policy? Now you know-with that we have no common ground. And we’ll have to make the others understand. If we do meet Those Others—the result will undoubtedly be war.”

“Fifty- three of us-maybe a whole nation of them left.” Dard was still sick and shaken-sensing a deep inner violation.

First there had been the tyranny of Pax, which had been man-made and so understandable, in all its narrow cruelty, because it had been the work of human beings. And now this-which man dared not-touch!

Kimber had regained control of himself. There was even a trace of the familiar impish grin on his face as he said:

“When the fighting is the toughest, that’s when our breed digs in toes. And we needn’t borrow trouble. Get Kordov and Harmon in here. If we are going to discuss the offer of the mermen we want them to know what to expect from overseas.”

But- to Dard’s dismay-the projection of Those Others’ tapes aroused in Harmon no more than a vague uneasiness -though it shook Kordov. And, as they insisted on the rest of the men viewing it, they discovered that it varied in its effects upon different individuals. Rogan, sensitive to communication devices, almost fainted after a few moments’ strict attention. Santee admitted that he did not like it but couldn’t say why. But, in the end, the weight of evidence was that they could not hope to deal with Those Others.

“I’m still sayin’,” Harmon insisted, “that we shouldn’t get pulled into anything them sea people has started. You say them pictures make Those Others regular devils. Well, they’re still across the sea. We shouldn’t go lookin’ for trouble-then maybe we don’t find none!”

“We’re not suggesting an expeditionary force, Tim,” Kimber answered mildly. “But if they are alive overseas they may just get the idea to reclaim this land-and you’d want to know about it ahead of time if they did. The mermen will keep us informed. Then we could supply them with better arms.”

“Yeah, and right there you’ve got trouble! You make sea-goin’ ray guns and the first thing you know they’re gonna use ’em. They hate Those Others don’t they? Back on earth we picked off a Peaceman whenever we got the chance, didn’t we? And let that happen a coupla times and Those Others are gonna come lookin’ for where those new guns came from. I ain’t sayin’ we oughta turn our backs on the mermen-they seem peaceful. But we’re plain foolish if we get mixed up in any war of theirs. I said it before and I’m gonna keep on sayin’ it!”

“All right, Tim. And you’re speaking the truth. But this is good land, ain’t it?”

“Sure, it’s good land! We’re gonna have a mighty fine farm here. But farmin’ and fightin’ don’t mix. What about that fella what lived fight over there? He didn’t live out the last war, did he?”

“Suppose they want this good land back? How long can we defend it?”

For the first time a shadow of doubt appeared in Tim Harmon’s eyes.

“Okay!” he flung up a hand in surrender. “I’ll go with you halfway. I say be friends with the mermen and help ’em-some. But I’m not gonna vote for no gangin’ up with ’em in a private war!”

“That’s all we want you to do, Tim. We’ll ally with the mermen and make plans for defense,” Kordov soothed him.

Dard smiled wryly. Inside he was amused, amused and tired. They had come across the galaxy to escape to freedom, only to live again under the shadow of fear. It was a long way to travel to come-home!

A new frontier to guard. What was that thing Kimber had once quoted while standing on a mountainside in the Terran winter?

"Frontiers of any type, physical or mental, are but a challenge to our breed. Nothing can stop the questing of men, not even Man. If we will it, not only the wonders of space, but the very stars are ours!”

They had known the wonders of space, the stars were theirs-if they could hold them! But who-or what-dared to say that they could not? Why, Dard savored the new pride growing hotly within him, they had broken the bonds of space-

There was a wide world before them, unlimited in its possibilities. On distant Terra this ill-assorted group had drawn into tight alliance because they believed alike-in what? Freedom-Man’s freedom! They had faced the sterility of Pax clear-eyed and refused to be bound by it- entrusting their lives to the knowledge Pax had outlawed- and it had brought them here. They-if they willed it-worked for a united goal-they could do anything!

Dard’s eyes were on the painted cliffs but inwardly he saw beyond-across the wide and waiting land. Alliance with the merpeople-taming of the land-building a new civilization-his breath came faster. Why a lifetime was not going to be time enough to do everything that even he could see had to be done.

Could their breed be defeated? He gave his answer to the uncertain future with a single word: