arden spot, hunting for the unmistakable spoor of the giant reptile.
And within a matter of minutes they found it, the mud still moist as
Dalgard proved with an exploring fingertip. At the same time Sssuri
twirled his spear significantly. Before them the lane ran on between
two walls without any breaks. Dalgard uncased his bow and strung it.
From his quiver he chose one of the powerful arrows, the points of
which were kept capped until use.

A snake-devil, with its nervous system controlled not from the tiny,
brainless head but from a series of auxiliary "brains" at points along
its powerful spine, could and would go on fighting even after that
head was shorn away, as the first colonists had discovered when they
depended on the deadly ray guns fatal to any Terran life. But the
poison-tipped arrow Dalgard now handled, with confidence in its
complete efficiency, paralyzed within moments and killed in a
quarter-hour one of the scaled monstrosities.

"Lair--"

Dalgard did not need that warning thought from his companion. There
was no mistaking that sickly sweet stench born of decaying animal
matter, which was the betraying effluvium of a snake-devil's lair. He
turned to the right-hand wall and with a running leap reached its
broad top. The lane curved to end in an archway cut through another
wall, which was higher than Dalgard's head even when he stood on his
present elevation. But bands of ornamental patterning ran along the
taller barrier, and he was certain that it could be climbed. He
lowered a hand to Sssuri and hoisted the merman up to join him.

But Sssuri stood for a long moment looking ahead, and Dalgard knew
that the merman was disturbed, that the wall before them had some
terrifying meaning for the native Astran. So vivid was the impression
of what could only be termed horror--that Dalgard dared to ask a
question:

"What is it?"

The merman's yellow eyes turned from the wall to his companion. Behind
his hatred of this place there was another emotion Dalgard could not
read.

"This is the place of sorrow, the place of separation. But _they_
paid--oh, how they paid--after that day when the fire fell from the
sky." His scaled and taloned feet moved in a little shuffling war
dance, and his spear spun and quivered in the sunlight, as Dalgard had
seen the spears of the mer-warriors move in the mock combats of their
unexplained, and to his kind unexplainable, rituals. "Then did our
spears drink, and knives eat!