THE STARS ARE OURS

"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!"