Close to the size of a Terran rat it hopped on large, over-developed hind legs, between which bobbed a fluff of tail. Small handlike paws hung down across its darker belly fur. The ears were large, fan shaped, and fringed with the same fluff as the tail. Black buttons of eyes showed neither pupil nor iris, and a rounded muzzle ended in a rodent’s prominent teeth. But Dard did not have long to catalogue such physical points. It sighted him. Then it gave a wild bound, making an about-face turn while in the air-disappearing in a second. Dard was left to pick up from the center of the trail the object it had just dropped in its flight.
“Rabbit?” Harmon wondered, “or squirrel, or rat? How’re we gonna know? What did that critter drop, boy?”
Dard held a pod about three inches long, dark blue and shiny. He surrendered it to Harmon who slit the outer covering with thumbnail and shook out a dozen dark-blue seeds.
“Pears, beans, wheat?” Harmon’s bewilderment showed signs of irritation. “It grows, ripens this way, and it may be good to eat. But,” he turned to his companions and ended with an explosive, “how’re we ever gonna know?”
“Take ’em back and try ’em on the hamsters,” Cully returned laconically. “But that hopper sure could go, couldn’t he?” Thus he unconsciously christened the third type of fauna they had discovered in the new world.
Harmon stowed seeds and pod away in a zipper closed pocket, before they moved on through grass which arose waist high about them. Here and there in it they spotted more of the seed pods.
In fact shortly the pod-headed plants were so thick around them that they might have been swishing through a field of ripened grain. Harmon broke silence:
“This remind you of anything?”
They regarded the expanse of blue doubtfully and shook their heads.
“Well, it does me. This here looks jus’ like a wheatfield all ready t’ be reaped! I tell you I’m athinkin’ we’re walkin’ over somebody’s farm!”