rs, I felt
nothing beyond the personal infirmities that I'd brought with me.

The definite decline of E-T's sun forced me to give up.

The walk back to the plain wasn't entirely fruitless; I found something
that I'd overlooked previously: the scattered remains of a small
vertebrate. Many of the bones were missing.

"What happened to you?" I mused. "Did you come for a meal and got killed
by a larger animal? Or were you caught in the same disaster that--?"

There was no way to tell.

What was it about Epsilon-Terra that could accept one survey team for
months of occupancy--occupancy that had involved detailed examination of
the region within miles of the plain and the hillside, and cursory
examination of thousands of square miles of the rest of the insular mass
by air, including touchdowns at key points for short stays--and that
five years later could entice, enmesh, and destroy the entire
complement of a modern star ship, indiscriminately, within a matter of
hours?

* * * * *

It was late afternoon when I reached the camp.

I was tired, dirty, thirsty, hungry, and thoroughly frustrated.

I drank from a previously unopened water bowser and wolfed several
nutratabs.

Then I stumbled over to the shuttler, secured the recorder and
interrogation setup, raised the star ship, and brought Moya up to date.

"I'm going to move this vehicle to the hillside and spend the night
there. I figure I'd better give E-T a full twenty-six hour rotation
interval to come up with something before the next step. Tomorrow, I'm
going to need a man down here to witness the location and disposition of
the corpses. You know the drill. It's your decision whether they should
be identified singly, if possible, and secured for removal to Terra, or
whether they should be interred here, commonly. My recommendation is to
make a film record and plant them, but I'm too tired to argue. One thing
more: whoever you send--if he gives me any lip, I'll cut him down like a
small tree. There's been enough mistakes made here already."

I spent the night in the shuttler. Call it an atavistic response to the
unknowns of darkness.

It was a restless interval between dusk and dawn.

Occasionally, I illuminated the hillside and surrounding area. A couple
of times, I glimpsed the eye reflections of small animals. They seemed
to possess the shyness of most nocturnal creatures. But I couldn't help
wondering--

Morning dawned g