Soft come the dragons

bridal gown and devil black and jack-of-lantern orange.
    The butterfly dragons that were twenty yards wide and seventy yards long—but weighed only two or three hundred pounds. The flimsy, gossamer dragons.
    The dragons of beauty.
    The dragons that killed with their eyes.
    He sighed, turned from the windowside, and sat down in one of the black leather easy chairs, snapping on the small, high-intensity reading lamp in the arm. Lighting a cigarette, he looked over his newer poems.
    The first three he tossed in the wastebasket without reviewing. The fourth he read, reread, then read aloud for full effect.
     
    "Discovery Upon Death"
     
    "dear mankind:
    am writing you from purgatory
    to say that i
    have made a discovery
    that i wish you
    would spread around up there,
    god, now listen mankind,
    god is a computer
    and someone misprogrammed him . . ."
     
    "Not bad," said a voice from the darkness. Abner stepped into the small circle of light around the chair. "But don't tell me the Pioneer Poet has doubts about life?"
    "Please, the name is Mare."
    Pioneer Poet. It was a name Life had coined when his first volume had been published and had won critical acclaim. He admitted it all seemed romantic: a space force surveyor drafted for three years, writing poetry on some alien world in some alien star system. But, Pioneer Poet?
    "Heard about your fight with Marshall."
    "It wasn't a fight."
    "It was the way I heard it. What bothers you about him, Mare?"
    "He doesn't understand things."
    "Neither do any of us."
    "Suffice it to say he might be a mirror in which I can see myself. And the reflection isn't a nice one."
    They sat in silence a moment.
    "You plan to sit up all night?" Abner asked.
    "No, Pioneer Physician, I do not."
    Abner grinned. "Dragon warnings should go up in six hours. You'll need your rest."
    He folded his poems and rose, flicked off the light, and said: "Fine, but let us just look at the ocean a minute, huh?"
     
    The snakes growing from her scalp hissed and bared fangs.
    His hand burned with the dribbling of his own blood where their sharp teeth raked him.
    Slowly, she turned, and the beauty was there in the face— and the horror was there.
    In the eyes.
    And his muscles, slowly but doubtlessly and without pause, began turning to granite.
    "No!" he screamed. "I think I'm just beginning to see—"
    His hair became individual strands of rock. Each cell of his face froze into eternity and became a part of something that could never die—that could only be eroded by wind and rain.
    And finally his eyes, staring into hers, slipped into cataract, then to stone.
    And he woke to the sound of screams in his ears.
    Before opening his eyes, he could see her, pinned behind the wheel, mouth twisted in agony.
    The flames licking at her face as he was tossed free, the tumbling, burning car, plunging over the cliff and away.
    But when the waking dream was over, he still heard the screams. He fumbled for his bed light, and the flood of yellow fire made him squint. He looked at the clock. Five o'clock in the morning Translated Earth Time.
    The dragon warning was in effect. They were not screams, but the wails of mechanical voices. "Beware and Run," they seemed to say.
    Bewareandrun, bewareandrun, bewareandrun . . .
    He had been sleeping in his duty suit, a uniform of shimmering purple synthe-fabric. The United Earth emblem graced his right arm: a dove sitting on a green globe. That was one symbol that always repulsed him. He pictured the dove loosening its bowels.
    Stumbling across the room, he palmed open the door and stepped into the corridor, blinking away the remainders of sleep from his eyes.
    Holden Twain was running down the 'hall, strapping his nylon belt around his waist. "I have some poetry for you to look at while we're in the shelter," he said breathlessly, coming to a halt at Dante's side.
    Mario liked the kid. He was five years the poet's junior, but his innocence seemed to add to his immaturity—and charm. He had not met Hemingway's Discovery of Evil. He never understood "The Killers" when he read it. Dante made him plunge through it every few weeks, searching for that glint of understanding that would mean he saw it all.
    "Fine," Mario said. "That'll help pass the hours in that dreadful hole."
    They set out at a steady trot down the hall, past the large windows that peered out upon the alien landscape.
    At the stairwell, Mario ushered the younger man down and waited at the head for the others from that