THE STARS ARE OURS

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?"