ld of cold; its sun was distant, pale, and wan. It had
monstrous forms of vegetation, of which each branch and member writhed
and fought with a grotesque and horrible individual activity. Ever and
anon a struggling part broke from its parent plant and darted away in
independent existence; leaping upon and consuming or being consumed by a
fellow creature equally monstrous. This flora was of a uniform color, a
lurid, sickly yellow. In form some of it was fern-like, some
cactus-like, some vaguely tree-like; but it was all outrageous,
inherently repulsive to all Solarian senses. And no less hideous were
the animal-like forms of life which slithered and slunk rapaciously
through that fantastic pseudo-vegetation. Snake-like, reptile-like,
bat-like, the creatures squirmed, crawled, and flew; each covered with a
dankly oozing yellow hide and each motivated by twin common impulses--to
kill and insatiably and indiscriminately to devour. Over this reeking
wilderness Roger drove his vessel, untouched by its disgusting, its
appalling ferocity and horror.

"There should be intelligence, of a kind," he mused, and swept the
surface of the planet with an exploring beam. "Ah, yes, there is a city,
of sorts," and in a few minutes the outlaws were looking down upon a
metal-walled city of roundly conical buildings.

Inside these structures and between and around them there scuttled
formless blobs of matter, one of which Roger brought up into his vessel
by means of a tractor. Held immovable by the beam it lay upon the floor,
a strangely extensile, amoeba-like, metal-studded mass of leathery
substance. Of eyes, ears, limbs, or organs it apparently had none, yet
it radiated an intensely hostile aura; a mental effluvium concentrated
of rage and of hatred.

"Apparently the ruling intelligence of the planet," Roger commented.
"Such creatures are useless to us; we can build machines in half the
time that would be required for their subjugation and training. Still,
it should not be permitted to carry back what it may have learned of
us." As he spoke the adept threw the peculiar being out into the air and
dispassionately rayed it out of existence.

"That thing reminds me of a man I used to know, back in Penobscot."
Penrose was as coldly callous as his unfeeling master. "The
evenest-tempered man in town--mad all the time!"

Eventually Roger found a location which satisfied his requirements of
raw materials, and made a landing upon that unfriendl