The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Anglers of Arz, by Roger Phillips Dee

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Title: The Anglers of Arz

Author: Roger Phillips Dee

Illustrator: Bob Martin

Release Date: June 2, 2010 [EBook #32665]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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The Anglers of Arz

By Roger Dee

Illustrated by BOB MARTIN

[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from IF Worlds of Science
Fiction January 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence
that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

[Sidenote: _In order to make Izaak Walton's sport complete, there must
be an angler, a fish, and some bait. All three existed on Arz but there
was a question as to which was which._]

[Illustration: _There were two pinkish, bipedal fishermen on the tiny
islet._]

The third night of the _Marco Four's_ landfall on the moonless Altarian
planet was a repetition of the two before it, a nine-hour intermission
of drowsy, pastoral peace. Navigator Arthur Farrell--it was his turn to
stand watch--was sitting at an open-side port with a magnoscanner ready;
but in spite of his vigilance he had not exposed a film when the
inevitable pre-dawn rainbow began to shimmer over the eastern ocean.

Sunrise brought him alert with a jerk, frowning at sight of two pinkish,
bipedal Arzian fishermen posted on the tiny coral islet a quarter-mile
offshore, their blank triangular faces turned stolidly toward the beach.

"They're at it again," Farrell called, and dropped to the mossy turf
outside. "Roll out on the double! I'm going to magnofilm this!"

Stryker and Gibson came out of their sleeping cubicles reluctantly,
belting on the loose shorts which all three wore in the balmy Arzian
climate. Stryker blinked and yawned as he let himself through the port,
his fringe of white hair tousled and his naked paunch sweating. He
looked, Farrell thought for the thousandth time, more like a retired
cook than like the veter