Andre Norton - THE STARS ARE OURS

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."