Soft come the dragons

corridor. He was captain of the block and was to be the last into the shelter from that particular accessway.
    He glanced out of the nearest window. There was sure to be wind. The spindly pine-palms were swaying erratically, some bent nearly to the snapping point in the gale. This was only the front of the tidal winds, he knew, and the soft breezes and the dragons would follow.
    The dragons that looked so beautiful in pictures but which killed any man who looked directly into their eyes.
    The dragons that seemed to live constantly in the air— without eating.
    The dragons that killed with their eyes . . . '
    He had a vision of the first victims, their eyes crystallized, shrunken within the blackened sockets, the brain wilted within the skull. He shuddered.
    Still, it did not seem right to hide when they came.
    Though the specially designed lenses failed, though dozens of scientists died trying to prove that they wouldn't, that men's eyes could be protected from the deadly dragons, it did not seem right to hide.
    Though gunnery officers could not shoot them down (because only a shot in the eye seemed to kill the beasts, and aiming at those misty, pupilless orbs was impossible), it did not seem right to squirrel away in the earth.
    The last man in the corridor pounded down the stairs. Dante swung the door shut, sealed it, then flicked the shutters that would partially protect the windows.
    The shelter was filled with men. The city's compliment numbered sixty-eight. They were sixty-eight prepared to wait out another three hours of dragons and silence in the cellar.
    Dante decided the entire affair got more ridiculous each time. It hardly seemed as if the planet were worth all the trouble. But then he knew it was. There were the Bakium deposits, and the planet itself was central to this galaxy. Someday, it would be built nearly as heavily as Earth. A grand population.
    Certainly more than sixty-eight.
    Sixty-seven.
    "Sixty-seven!" the Secretary shrilled.
    "Impossible!" Marshall shouted.
    "Menchen. Menchen isn't here."
    "Who has that corridor?"
    "I, sir."
    "Anamaxender. Why the hell didn't you notice he was missing?"
    "Sorry, sir."
    "You'll be damned sorry before this is over." Marshall turned to the other faces. "Who saw him last."
    "I believe just about everyone was asleep, commander," Dante said quietly. Marshall opened his mouth to speak, then thought better of it. He turned to Twain. "You know corridor F?"
    "Yes, sir."
    Every man was required to have a memorized floor plan of the installation buried deep in the emergency vaults of his mind. It was a ridiculous question.
    "Go after Menchen. Go to his room and see if he needs help. At any cost, get back here."
    "But the dragons," someone said.
    "They won't be out yet, and it will be another half hour before they gain access to the upper floors."
    Twain was strapping on a radio set, fastening a blaster to his belt. He crossed to Dante and handed him a sheaf of eight papers. He smiled and was gone.
    At the head of the stairs, there was a sucking of a door unsealing, then a second whine as it sealed again—behind Holden Twain.
    Mare Dante had nothing to do. He could have sat and worried, but the commander had been right. Dragons would not break into the upper corridors for a while yet. Until things really started getting bad above, there was no reason to worry.
    He sat down and opened the folded sheets of yellow papers.
     
    Hath a man not eyes?
    Can he feel not pain?
    Does the grass grow greener?
    Is Gods blood rain?
     
    And so it goes,
    And so it is.
    Is there a soul?
    And if there is,
    Where is it?
     
    M.A. Dante was jealous. Jealousy? When he translated that and deducted the source, he realized that Twain's poetry had taken a change for the better. It was no longer what Dante called "tree and flower poetry." There was something of a philosophical note in those last three lines. At least, there was pessimism.
    Pessimism, he strongly believed, was merely realism.
    Suddenly, he was very worried about the boy—the man —upstairs.
    He stood and approached Marshall. "Commander, I—"
    Marshall turned, his eyes gleaming, immediately on the defensive. Between clenched teeth: "Dante. What is it now? Would you like to take over command of the operation? Would you like to—"
    "Oh, shut up!" He turned up the volume on the receiver that would carry Twain's words back to them. "I am not an enemy of yours. I disagree with your methods and procedure. I do not lower myself to