Margaret, already adopted as a friend, proved a delightful companion. Her ready tongue, her quick, delicate wit, and
her facility of expression delighted all three.
One day Crane suggested to Seaton that they should take notes, in addition to the photographs they had been taking.
“I know comparatively little of astronomy, but, with the instruments we have, we should be able to get data, espe-
cially on planetary systems, which would be of interest to astronomers. Miss Spencer, being a secretary, could
help us?”
“Sure,” Seaton said. “That’s an idea-nobody else ever had a chance to do it before.”
“I’ll be glad to-taking notes is the best thing I do!” Margaret cried, and called for pad and pencils.
After that, the two worked together for several hours on each of Martin’s off shifts.
The Skylark passed one solar system after another, with a velocity so great that it was impossible to land.
Margaret’s association with Crane, begun as a duty, became a very real pleasure for them both. Working together in
research, sitting together at the board in easy conversation or in equally easy silence, they compressed into days
more real companionship than is usually possible in months.
Oftener and oftener, as time went on, Crane found the vision of his dream home floating in his mind as he steered
the Skylark in her meteoric flight or as he lay strapped into his narrow bunk. Now, however, the central figure of
the vision, instead of being a blur, was clear and sharply defined. And for her part, Margaret was drawn more and
more to the quiet and unassuming, but steadfast young inventor, with his wide knowledge and his keen, incisive
mind.
The Skylark finally slowed down enough to make a landing possible, and course was laid toward the nearest planet
of a copper-bearing sun_ As vessel neared planet a wave of excitement swept through four of the five. They
watched the globe grow larger, glowing white, its outline softened by the atmosphere surrounding it. It had two
satellites; its sun, a great, blazing orb, looked so big and so hot that Margaret became uneasy.
“Isn’t it dangerous to get so close, Dick?”
“Uh-uh. Watching the pyrometers is part of the pilot’s job. Any overheating and he’d snatch us away in a hurry.”
They dropped into the atmosphere and on down, almost to the surface. The air was breathable, its composition
being very similar to that of Earth’s air, except that the carbon dioxide was substantially higher. Its pressure was
somewhat high, but not too much; its temperature, while high, was endurable. The planet’s gravitational pull was
about ten per cent higher than Earth’s. The ground was almost hidden by a rank growth of vegetation, but here and
there appeared glade-like openings.
Landing upon one of the open spaces, they found the ground solid and stepped out. What appeared to be a glade was
in reality a rock; or rather a ledge of apparently solid metal, with scarcely a loose fragment to be seen. At one end
of the ledge rose a giant tree, wonderfully symmetrical, but of a peculiar form, its branches being longer at the top
than at the bottom, and having broad, dark-green leaves, long thorns, and odd, flexible, shoot-like tendrils. It stood
as an outpost of the dense vegetation beyond. The fern-trees, towering two hundred feet or more into the air were
totally unlike the forests of Earth. They were an intensely vivid green and stood motionless in the still, hot air. Not
a sign of animal life was to be seen; the whole landscape seemed to be asleep.
“A younger planet than ours,” DuQuesne said. “In the Carboniferous, or about. Aren’t those fern-trees like those in
the coal measures, Seaton?”
“Check-I was just trying to think what they reminded me of. But it’s this ledge that interests me no end. Who ever
heard of a chunk of noble metal this big?”
“How do you know it’s noble?” Dorothy asked.
“No corrosion, and its probably been sitting here for a million years.” Seaton, who had walked over to one of the
loose lumps, kicked it with his heavy shoe. It did not move.
He bent over to pick it up, with one hand. It still did not move. With both hands and all the strength of his back he
could lift it, but that was all.
“What do you make of this, DuQuesne?”
DuQuesne lifted the mass, then took out his knife and scraped. He studied the freshly-exposed metal and the
scrapings, then scraped and studied again.
“Hmm. Platinum group, almost certainly . . . and the only known member of that group with that peculiar bluish
sheen is your X.”
“But didn’t we agree that free X and copper couldn’t exist on the same planet, and that planets of copper bearing
suns carry copper?”
“Yes, but that doesn’t make it true. If this stuff is X, it’ll give the cosmologists something to fight about for the next
twenty years. I’ll take these scrapings and run a couple of quickies.”
“Do that, and I’ll gather in these loose nuggets. If it’s X-and I’m pretty sure it mostly is-that’ll be enough to run all
the power-plants of Earth for ten thousand years.”
Crane and Seaton, accompanied by the two girls, rolled the nearest pieces of metal up to the ship. Then, as the
quest led them farther and farther afield, Crane protested. “This is none too safe, Dick.”
“It looks perfectly safe to me. Quiet as a-”
Margaret screamed. Her head was turned, looking backward at the Skylark; her face was a mask of horror. Seaton
drew his pistol as he whirled, only to check his finger on the trigger and lower his hand. “Nothing but X-plosive
bullets,” he said, and the four watched a thing come out slowly from behind their ship.
Its four huge, squat legs supported a body at least a hundred feet long, pursy and ungainly; at the end of a long,
sinuous neck a small head seemed composed entirely of cavernous mouth armed with row upon row of carnivorous
teeth. Dorothy gasped with terror; both girls shrank closer to the two men, who maintained a baffled silence as the
huge beast slid its hideous head along the hull of the vessel.
“I can’t shoot, Mart-it’d wreck the boat and if I had any solids they wouldn’t be any good.”
“No. We had better hide until it goes away. You two take that ledge, we’ll take this one.”
“Or gets far enough away from the Skylark so we can blow him apart,” Seaton added as, with Dorothy close beside
him, he dropped behind the low bulwark.
Margaret, her staring eyes fixed upon the monster, remained motionless until Crane touched her gently and drew
her down to his side. “Don’t be frightened, Peggy. It will go away soon.”
“I’m not, now-much.” She drew a deep breath. “If you weren’t here, though, Martin, I’d be dead of pure fright.” His
arm tightened around her; then he forced it to relax. This was neither the time nor the place….
A roll of gunfire came from the Skylark. The creature roared in pain and rage, but was quickly silenced by the
stream of .50-caliber machine-gun bullets.
“DuQuesue’s on the job-let’s go!” Seaton cried, and the four rushed up the slope. Making a detour to avoid the
writhing body, they plunged through the opening door. DuQuesne closed the lock. They huddled together in over-
whelming relief as an appalling tumult arose outside.
The scene, so quiet a few moments before, was horribly changed. The air seemed filled with hideous monsters.
Winged lizards of prodigious size hurtled through the air to crash against the Skylark’s armored hull. Flying mon-
strosities, with the fangs of tigers, attacked viciously. Dorothy screamed and started back as a scorpion-like thing
ten feet in length leaped at the window in front of her, its terrible sting spraying the quartz with venom. As it fell to
the ground a spider-if an eight-legged creature with spines instead of hair, faceted eyes, and a bloated globular
body weighing hundreds of pounds may be called a spider leaped upon it; and, mighty mandibles against the terrible
sting, a furious battle raged. Twelve-foot cockroaches climbed nimbly across the fallen timber of the morass and
began feeding voraciously on the carcass of the creature DuQuesne had killed. They were promptly driven away by
another animal, a living nightmare of that reptilian age which apparently combined the nature and disposition of
tyrannosaurus rex with a physical shape approximating that of the sabertooth tiger. This newcomer towered fifteen
feet high at the shoulders and had a mouth disproportionate even to his great size; a mouth armed with sharp fangs
three feet in length. He had barely begun his meal, however, when he was challenged by another nightmare, a thing
shaped more or less like a crocodile.
The crocodile charged. The tiger met him head on, fangs front and rending claws outstretched. Clawing, striking,
tearing savagely, an avalanche of bloodthirsty rage, the combatants stormed up and down the little island.