y through every
atom of his body.

Then the mists suddenly cleared like the tearing away of a mighty
curtain, and with startling abruptness Powell found himself again in
a solid world of material things. For a moment as he gazed dazedly
about him he thought that the roseate glow of the projector must
still be playing tricks with his eyesight, for the landscape around
him was completely and incredibly red!

* * * * *

He soon realized that the monochrome of scarlet was a natural aspect
of things in Arret. The weird vegetation all around him was of a
uniform glossy red. The sandy soil under his feet was dull
brick-red. High in the reddish-saffron sky overhead there blazed a
lurid orb of blood-red hue, the intense heat of its ruddy radiance
giving the still dry air a nearly tropical temperature. From this
orb's position in the sky and its size, Powell was forced to
conclude that it must be the Arretian equivalent of Earth's moon.

For a moment he stood motionless as he peered cautiously around him,
trying to decide what should be his first step in this scarlet world
that was so utterly alien in every way to his own. On every side the
landscape stretched monotonously away from him in low rolling dunes
like the frozen ground swell of a crimson sea--dunes covered with
vegetation of a kind never seen upon Earth.

Not a leaf existed in all that weird flora. Instead of leaves or
twigs the constituent units of bushes and grasses consisted of
globules, glossy spheres of scarlet that ranged in size from
pinheads to the bulk of large pumpkins. The branches of the
vegetation were formed from strings of the globules set edge to edge
and tapering in size like graduated beads strung upon wire,
dwindling in bulk until the tips of the branches were as fragile as
the fronds of maidenhair fern. The bulk of the shrubbery was
head-high, and so dense that Powell could see for only a couple of
yards into the thicket in any direction.

The stillness around Powell was complete. Not even a globular twig
stirred in the hot dry air. Powell decided to head for the crest of
one of the low dunes some fifty feet away. From its top he might be
able to sight something that would give a clue to the location of
the "Cave of Blue Flames" of which Joan had written.

* * * * *

He arrived at the foot of the dune's slope without incident. But
there he came to an abrupt halt as the silence