The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

of it.
    “This lies south from here. We’ll cruise in that direction.”
    Raf would have liked to ask some questions of his own. The city photographed was a sizable one. Why then this deserted land here? Why hadn’t the inhabitants been out to investigate the puzzle of the space ship’s landing? He said slowly, “I’ve mounted one gun, sir. Do you want the other installed? It will mean that the flitter can only carry three instead of four—”
    Hobart pulled his lower lip between his thumb and forefinger. He glanced at his lieutenant then to Lablet, sitting quietly to one side. It was the latter who spoke first.
    “I’d say this shows definite traces of retrogression.” He touched the photograph. “The place may even be only a ruin.”
    “Very well. Leave off the other gun,” Hobart ordered crisply. “And be ready to fly at dawn day after tomorrow with full field kit. You’re sure she’ll have at least a thousand-mile cruising radius?”
    Raf suppressed a shrug. How could you tell what any machine would do under new conditions? The flitter had been put through every possible test in his home world. Whether she would perform as perfectly here was another matter.
    “They thought she would, sir,” he replied. “I’ll take her up for a shakedown run tomorrow after the motor is installed.”
    Captain Hobart dismissed him with a nod, and Raf was glad to clatter down ladders into the cool of the evening once more. Flying high in a formation of two lanes were some distant birds, at least he supposed they were birds. But he did not call attention to them. Instead he watched them out of sight, lingering alone with no desire to join those crew members who had built a campfire a little distance from the ship. The flames were familiar and cheerful, a portion, somehow, of their native world transported to the new.
    Raf could hear the murmur of voices. But he turned and went to the flitter. Taking his hand torch, he checked the work he had done during the day. To-morrow—tomorrow he could take her up into the blue-green sky, circle out over the sea of grass for a short testing flight. That much he wanted to do.
    But the thought of the cruise south, of venturing toward that sprawling splotch Hobart and Lablet identified as a city was somehow distasteful, and he was reluctant to think about it.
    CHAPTER 3
    Snake-Devil’s Trail
    Dalgard drew the waterproof covering back over his brow, making a cheerful job of it, preparatory to their pushing out to sea once more. But he was as intent upon what Sssuri had to tell as he was on his occupation of the moment.
    “But that is not even a hopper rumor,” he was protesting, breaking into his companion’s flow of thought.
    “No. But, remember, to the runners yesterday is very far away. One night is like another; they do not reckon time as we do, nor lay up memories for future guidance. They left their native hunting grounds and are drifting south. And only a very great peril would lead the runners into such a break. It is against all their instincts!”
    “So, long ago—which may be months, weeks, or just days—there came death out of the sea, and those who lived past its coming fled—” Dalgard repeated the scanty information Sssuri had won for them the night before by patient hour-long coaxing. “What kind of death?”
    Sssuri’s great eyes, somber and a little tired, met his. “To us there is only one kind of death to be greatly feared.”
    “But there are the snake-devils—” protested the colony scout.
    “To be hunted down by snake-devils is death, yes. But it is a quick death, a death which can come to any living thing that is not swift or wary enough. For to the snake-devils all things that live and move are merely meat to fill the aching pit in their swollen bellies. But there were in the old days other deaths, far worse than what one meets under a snake-devil’s claws and fangs. And those are the deaths we fear.” He was running the smooth haft of his spear back and forth through his fingers as if testing the balance of the weapon because the time was not far away when he must rely upon it.
    “Those Others!” Dalgard shaped the words with his lips as well as in his mind.
    “Just so.” Sssuri did not nod, but his thought was in complete agreement.
    “Yet they have not come before—not since the ship of my fathers landed here,” Dalgard protested, not against Sssuri’s judgment but against the whole idea.
    The merman got to his feet,