As It Was

In a cruel Cosmos one lived only to be killer or killed. The One proved that . It killed a hundred times a day. Thisbe II was its blood-red preserve ... and now, throwing the challenge in Its myriad faces was Pritchard, the brightest name in big-game hunting throughout the length and breadth of Galaxy A.
Dawn on Thisbe II was much like dawn on Terra, except for the color. The giant star Piramus lifted its magenta disk above the little planet's fore-shortened horizon and, in that brief moment, sent orange corona flares shimmering out from its limb. An odd ionization effect caused faint ripples of light to flicker in the purple sky above.
As the sun ascended, the magenta brightened into a crimson dazzle with a lavender halo. The flanks of distant mountains flamed curiously, as if their sides were smooth and polished mirrors.
Yet nothing gleamed with such intensity as the good ship Apollo , towering a hundred and ten feet on her fins. Her surface—chrome-plated nickel-steel coated with a thick porcelain glaze—was expressly designed to bounce back every slightest beam of light.
So she stood now like a flaming sword, in the center of a wide black circle, the area of yesterday's landing burn, and lay across it a wide fan of reflected sunlight. Presently, a thing like an enormous grasshopper-leg unfolded from her side. In its grasp was something that looked like a tray full of erect ants. The tray touched ground softly, the ants walked off and became men, and the long derrick folded back into the Apollo , taking the tray with it.
The men left on the ground stood looking about them eagerly. After some of the barren, hostile worlds they had visited this one seemed little short of Paradise. From the eminence on which the ship stood they could look in every direction at rolling hills, among which clumps of feathery foliage rose profusely, and occasional startling upthrusts of rock, like clubs brandished from underground, leaning in every possible angle and having frequently such straight planes of cleavage that they almost seemed artificial. Olive-hued hills and dramatic fists of rock alike marched off to a disturbingly close-appearing horizon, where began a sky that was not blue but lavender.