nside you'll be carried out of
the ship."

"Thank you, no," Jason told him. "I have no particular desire to make a
spectacular landing on your planet sealed up like a packaged sausage."

"Don't be a fool," was Kerk's snapped answer. "We're _all_ going out in
these tubes. We've been away too long to risk the surface without
reorientation."

* * * * *

Jason did feel a little foolish as he saw the others getting into tubes.
He picked the nearest one, slid into it feet first, and pulled the lid
closed. When he tightened the wheel in the center, it squeezed down
against a flexible seal. Within a minute the CO{2} content in the closed
cylinder went up and an air regenerator at the bottom hummed into life.

Kerk was the last one in. He checked the seals on all the other tubes
first, then jabbed the air-lock override release. As it started cycling
he quickly sealed himself in the remaining cylinder. Both inner and
outer locks ground slowly open and dim light filtered in through sheets
of falling rain.

For Jason, the whole thing seemed an anticlimax. All this preparation
for absolutely nothing. Long, impatient minutes passed before a lift
truck appeared driven by a Pyrran. He loaded the cylinders onto his
truck like so much dead cargo. Jason had the misfortune to be buried at
the bottom of the pile so he could see absolutely nothing when they
drove outside.

It wasn't until the man-carrying cylinders had been dumped in a
metal-walled room, that Jason saw his first native Pyrran life.

The lift truck driver was swinging a thick outer door shut when
something flew in through the entrance and struck against the far wall.
Jason's eye was caught by the motion, he looked to see what it was when
it dropped straight down towards his face.

Forgetful of the metal cylinder wall, he flinched away. The creature
struck the transparent metal and clung to it. Jason had the perfect
opportunity to examine it in every detail.

It was almost too horrible to be believable. As though it were a bearer
of death stripped to the very essentials. A mouth that split the head in
two, rows of teeth, serrated and pointed. Leathery, claw-tipped wings,
longer claws on the limbs that tore at the metal wall.

Terror rose up in Jason as he saw that the claws were tearing gouges in
the transparent metal. Wherever the creature's saliva touched the metal
clouded and chipped under the assault of the teeth.

Logic said t