ty soon."

"If dry wood were gold dust, we couldn't buy a hot dog."

"Eric, that reminds me that I'm hungry."

He confessed to a few pangs of his own. They turned their attention to
looking for banana trees, and coconut palms, but they did not seem to
abound in the Venerian jungle. Even small animals that might have been
slain with a broken branch had contrary ideas about the matter.

At last, from sheer weariness, they stopped, and gathered branches to
make a sloping shelter by a vast fallen tree-trunk.

"This will keep out the rain--maybe--" Eric said hopefully. "And
tomorrow, when it has quit raining--I'm sure we'll do better."

They crept in, as gloomy night fell without. They lay in each other's
arms, the body warmth oddly comforting. Nada cried a little.

"Buck up," Eric advised her. "We're back to nature--where we've always
wanted to be."

* * * * *

With the darkness, the temperature fell somewhat, and a high wind rose,
whipping cold rain into the little shelter, and threatening to demolish
it. Swarms of mosquito-like insects, seemingly not inconvenienced in the
least by the inclement elements, swarmed about them in clouds.

Then came a sound from the dismal stormy night, a hoarse, bellowing
roar, raucous, terrifying.

Nada clung against Eric. "What is it, dear?" she chattered.

"Must be a reptile. Dinosaur, or something of the sort. This world seems
to be in about the same state as the Earth when they flourished
there.... But maybe it won't find us."

The roar was repeated, nearer. The earth trembled beneath a mighty
tread.

"Eric," a thin voice trembled. "Don't you think--it might have been
better-- You know the old life was not so bad, after all."

"I was just thinking of our rooms, nice and warm and bright, with hot
foods coming up the shaft whenever we pushed the button, and the gay
crowds in the park, and my old typewriter."

"Eric?" she called softly.

"Yes, dear."

"Don't you wish--we had known better?"

"I do." If he winced at the "we" the girl did not notice.

The roaring outside was closer. And suddenly it was answered by another
raucous bellow, at considerable distance, that echoed strangely through
the forest. The fearful sounds were repeated, alternately. And always
the more distant seemed nearer, until the two sounds were together.

And then an infernal din broke out in the darkness. Bellows. Screams.
Deafening shrieks. Mighty splashes, as i