The Skylark of Valeron

by E. E. Smith

The great trunk fell with a crash as he spoke, and was almost instantly forced beneath the repellant surface by the weight of the massed "mud puppies" who flung themselves upon it.

"Ah, I thought so!" Crane remarked. "Their molar teeth do not match their incisors, being quite Titanotheric in type. Probably they can assimilate lignin and cellulose instead of requiring our usual nutrient carbohydrates. However, this terrain does not seem to be at all suitable for our purpose."

"I'll say it doesn't. I'll scout around and see if we can't find some high land somewhere, but I've got a hunch that we won't care for that, either. This murky air and the strong absorption lines of SO2 seem to whisper in my ear that we'll find some plenty hot and plenty sulphurous volcanoes when we find the mountains."

A few large islands or small continents of high and solid land were found at last, but they were without exception volcanic. And those volcanoes were not quiescent. Each was in constant and furious eruption.

"Well, I don't see any place around here either fit to live in or solid enough to anchor an observatory onto," Seaton concluded, after he had surveyed the entire surface of the globe. "I think we'd better flit across to the next one, don't you, folks?"

Suiting action to word, he shot the beam to the next nearest planet, which chanced to be the one whose orbit was nearest the blazing sun, and a mere glance showed that it would not serve the purposes of the Terrestrials. Small it was, and barren: waterless, practically airless, lifeless; a cratered, jagged, burned-out ember of what might once have been a fertile little world.

The viewpoint then leaped past the flaming inferno of the luminary and came to rest in the upper layers of an atmosphere.

"Aha!" Seaton exulted, after he had studied his instruments briefly. "This looks like home, sweet home to me. Nitrogen, oxygen, some CO2, a little water vapor, and traces of the old familiar rare gases. And see the oceans, the clouds, and the hills? Hot dog!"

As the projection dropped toward the new world's surface, however, making possible a detailed study, it became evident that there was something abnormal about it. The mountains were cratered and torn; many of the valleys were simply desolate expanses of weathered lava, tuff, and breccia; and, while it seemed that climatic conditions were eminently suitable, of animal life there was none.

And it was not only the world itself that had been outraged. Near a great inland lake there spread the ruins of what had once been a great city; ruins so crumbled and razed as to be almost unrecognizable. What had been stone was dust, what had been metal was rust; and dust and rust alike were now almost completely overgrown by vegetation.