THE STARS ARE OURS

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."