THE STARS ARE OURS

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 The stick was lowered into the flood and as cautiously withdrawn, an inch or so of it now dyed red.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.