[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1947.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The communicator-phone set up a clamor when the sky was just beginningto gray in what, on this as yet unnamed planet, they called the eastbecause the local sun rose there. The call-wave had turned on the set.Bob Wentworth kicked off his blankets and stumbled from his bunk in theatmosphere-flier, and went sleepily forward to answer. He pushed theanswer-stud.
"Hello, what's the trouble?" he said wearily. "Talk louder, there'ssome static. Oh—No, there's no trouble. Why should there be? The devilI'm late reporting! Haynes and I obeyed orders and tried to find theend of a confounded skit-tree plantation. We chased our tails all daylong, but we made so much westing that we gained a couple of hourslight. So it isn't sunrise yet, where we are."
Wentworth yawned as he listened.
"Oh, we set down the flier on a sort of dam and went to sleep,"he answered. "No, nothing happened. We're used to feeling creepy.We thrive on it. Haynes says he's going to do a sculpture groupof a skit-tree planter which will be just an eye peeking around atree-trunk. No! Hang it, no!
"We photographed a couple of hundred thousand square miles ofskit-trees growing in neat rows, and we photographed dams, and canals,and a whole irrigation system, but not a sign of a living creature.No cities, no houses, no ruins, no nothing. I've got a theory, McRae,about what happened to the skit-tree planters."
He yawned again.
"Yeah. I think they built up a magnificent civilization and then founda snark. Snark! SNARK. Yes. And the snark was a boojum." He paused. "Sothey silently faded away."
He grinned at the profanity that came out of the communicator-speaker.Then—back at the irreverently nicknamed Galloping Cow which was thebase ship of the Extra-Solarian Research Institute expedition to thisstar-cluster—McRae cut off.
Wentworth stretched, and looked out of the atmosphere-flier's windows.He absently noticed that the static on the communication-set kept up,which was rather odd on a FM receiver. But before the fact could haveany meaning, he saw something in motion in the pale gray light of dawn.He squinted. Then he caught his breath.
He stood frozen until the moving object vanished. It moved, somehow, asif it carried something. But it was bigger than the Galloping Cow!Only after it vanished did he breathe again, and then he licked hislips and blinked.
Haynes' voice came sleepily from the bunk-space of the flier.
"What's from the Galloping Cow? Planning to push off for Earth?"
Wentworth took a deep breath and stared where the moving thing had goneout of sight.
"No," he said then, very quietly. "McRae was worried because we hadn'treported. It's two hours after sunrise back where the ship is." Heswallowed. "Want to get up now?"
"I could do with coffee," said Haynes, "pending a start for home."
Wentworth heard him drop his feet to the floor. Bob Wentworth pinchedhimself and winced, and swallowed again, and then twisted the openerof a beverage can labeled Coffee, and it began to make bubblingnoises. He put it aside to heat and brew itself, and pulled out twobreakfast-rations. He put them in the readier. Finally he stared againout the flier's window.
The light outside grew stronger. To the north—if where the sun rosewas east—a low but steep range of mountains began just beyond the spotwhere the flier had landed for the night. It had settled down on apatently a