Richard Ashby

“ Creatures who were no less than Gods!
A wave of fear tore at the Commander as the glittering moon faded away. Eternal nothingness of grey enclosed the ship....
The sun was up when Eddie recovered consciousness. Stiff and cold, he sat and looked around sleepily a moment before remembering. Then, as he saw Rags sitting before him, tail wagging happily, it all began to come back: Last night, sometime; humming lights above the tree house, someone moving about up there, himself sneaking up to see, then ... nothing. He must have tripped and knocked himself out, somehow. ”

“ Frowning to cover his embarrassment, he took out the last of the Scout's finds. For a moment all of them were struck by the bright colors on the flat surface. The one old man reached out a trembling hand. "Records," he murmured incredulously. "Records such as our own race is said to have once made, long, long ago before Law." ”

“ Creatures who could make themselves invisible, who had mastered space travel, who worked in magic more powerful than that of Law's, who could whiff out entire solar systems, who could survive incredible mishaps and hardships. ”

“ Life had blundered into the outer edges of his field.
Hastily, the Scout put a score of his latest finds into his sack and left the tree house. And without bothering to search for the life that had triggered his alarm (Law specified a Scout was to flee in such an instance) he adjusted his weight and rose up to his waiting ship.
Minutes later he had passed the world's satellite and was in view of his parent craft. ”

“ And all of them were swaying gently in the night wind, twenty feet or so above the tree.
Rags went slowly ahead, two feet, three, four, then stopped ... belly almost to the dust. His teeth shone in a soundless snarl, not a muscle of his body moving. Eddie had never seen him act like this, not even when the bear had come down into the valley to raid for chickens. Rags was plainly terrified, and something of the dog's emotion communicated itself. The boy bit his lip grimly, then strained to listen, heard what the dog was hearing; someone ... something was moving about up in the oak. ”

“ The Scout yawned, then lifted the ship from the mountain and arrowed it down into the folds of the valley. His visor translated the immediate night into light, showing him the typically repugnant surface features of a type J planet: Foliage, sharp young geology, water flowing in natural beds. A world like a hundred others he'd visited in the name of Law.
When the floor of the valley came up he leveled off, then silently sped along in search of dwellings. Beneath him, on level stretches of land, stood odd four-legged creatures. The dominants of this world? ”

“ He returned to the window.
Something thrashed in the highest branches of the oak. Rags began his whining again.
There was but one thing to do. He found his moccasins by the night table and pulled them on, threw a leather jacket on over his pajamas. From the wall above his desk, Eddie took down his .22, broke it, slipped in a shell, and tiptoed from the house.
The humming was stronger outside. Not louder, exactly, but more easy to feel. He crouched down, the way he'd seen commandos do in pictures, and began to run, holding the rifle at ready before him. ”

“ A simple people indeed, he pondered. He was about to leave when he noticed the stack of artifacts in one corner. The Scout bent to examine them. They seemed to be composed of the same material as the white of the "CAMEL" cylinders, but thicker and bound together in long wide flat construction. ”

“ But the sages would not venture an opinion as to the thing's purpose, so the Commander took out the package of white cylinders.
Only the next to the eldest made any comment. He claimed that he had seen such articles in his youth, brought out from a system of three worlds that swung above a nova. The white things there, he reminisced, were units of value ... useful in bartering. They were designed to be spent quickly, lest the stuffing fall out. The other experts agreed that these were no doubt also monies. ”