were shattered practically to matchsticks.

The look of the ground about the building sites was simply and purely
impossible. It was a mass of hoofprints. Cattle by thousands and tens
of thousands had trampled everything. Cattle had burst in the wooden
sides of the buildings. Cattle had piled themselves up against the
beams upholding roofs until the buildings collapsed.

Then cattle had gone plunging over the wrecked buildings until there
was nothing left but indescribable chaos. Many, many cattle had died
in the crush. There were heaps of dead beasts about the metal girders
which were the foundation of the landing-grid. The air was tainted by
the smell of carrion.

The settlement had been destroyed, positively by stampeded cattle in
tens or hundreds of thousands charging blindly through and over and
upon it. Senselessly, they'd trampled each other to horrible
shapelessness. The mine shaft was not choked, because enormously
strong timbers had fallen across and blocked it. But everything else
was pure destruction.

Calhoun said evenly, "Clever! Very clever! You can't blame men when
beasts stampede. We should accept the evidence that some monstrous
herd, making its way through a mountain pass, somehow went crazy and
bolted for the plains. This settlement got in the way and it was too
bad for the settlement! Everything's explained, except the ship that
went to Weald.

"A cattle stampede, yes. Anybody can believe that! But there was a man
stampede. Men stampeded into the ship as blindly as the cattle
trampled down this little town. The ship stampeded off into space as
insanely as the cattle. But a stampede of men and cattle, in the same
place? That's a little too much!"

"But what--"

"How," asked Calhoun directly, "do you intend to get in touch with
your friends here?"

"I--I don't know," she said, distressed. "But if the ship stays here,
they're bound to come and see why. Won't they? Or will they?"

"If they're sane, they won't," said Calhoun. "The one undesirable
thing, here, would be human footprints on top of cattle tracks. If
your friends are a meat-getting party from Dara, as I believe, they
should cover up their tracks, get off-planet as fast as possible, and
pray that no signs of their former presence are ever discovered. That
would be their best first move, certainly!"

"What should I do?" she asked helplessly.

"I'm far from sure. At a guess, and for the moment, probably nothing.
I'll work somethin