an commander of a Terran Colonies expedition.

Gibson followed, stretching his powerfully-muscled body like a wrestler
to throw off the effects of sleep. Gibson was linguist-ethnologist of
the crew, a blocky man in his early thirties with thick black hair and
heavy brows that shaded a square, humorless face.

"Any sign of the squids yet?" he asked.

"They won't show up until the dragons come," Farrell said. He adjusted
the light filter of the magnoscanner and scowled at Stryker. "Lee, I
wish you'd let me break up the show this time with a dis-beam. This
butchery gets on my nerves."

Stryker shielded his eyes with his hands against the glare of sun on
water. "You know I can't do that, Arthur. These Arzians may turn out to
be Fifth Order beings or higher, and under Terran Regulations our
tampering with what may be a basic culture-pattern would amount to armed
invasion. We'll have to crack that cackle-and-grunt language of theirs
and learn something of their mores before we can interfere."

Farrell turned an irritable stare on the incurious group of Arzians
gathering, nets and fishing spears in hand, at the edge of the
sheltering bramble forest.

"What stumps me is their motivation," he said. "Why do the fools go out
to that islet every night, when they must know damned well what will
happen next morning?"

Gibson answered him with an older problem, his square face puzzled. "For
that matter, what became of the city I saw when we came in through the
stratosphere? It must be a tremendous thing, yet we've searched the
entire globe in the scouter and found nothing but water and a scattering
of little islands like this one, all covered with bramble. It wasn't a
city these pink fishers could have built, either. The architecture was
beyond them by a million years."

* * * * *

Stryker and Farrell traded baffled looks. The city had become something
of a fixation with Gibson, and his dogged insistence--coupled with an
irritating habit of being right--had worn their patience thin.

"There never was a city here, Gib," Stryker said. "You dozed off while
we were making planetfall, that's all."

Gibson stiffened resentfully, but Farrell's voice cut his protest short.
"Get set! Here they come!"

Out of the morning rainbow dropped a swarm of winged lizards, twenty
feet in length and a glistening chlorophyll green in the early light.
They stooped like hawks upon the islet offshore, burying the t