Astounding British Edition, Vol. 9, No. 10 — page 28: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

26 of trajectories under this gravity, or he would have been tempted to lob a shell to the other side of the slope to attract their attention. However, the worry proved fruitless; the tank reached the stranded sled, turned, and was hitched up to its load without further interference. Lackland, once more under way, decided that the giants had over-estimated the effective- ness of the gun; an attack from close quarters—emerging, for example, from the concealed tunnel mouths which must shelter the individuals who started the rocks downhill—would leave the weapon completely helpless, since neither high explosive nor thermite shells could be used close to the Bree or her crew. Lack- land had no hand weapons with him, and in any case would have been more than reluctant to emerge from the tank to use them. The giants were, presumably, fully as strong as Barlennan’s people, and he had seen the latter do things to metal that had seriously undermined his trust in personal armor. There was no point, however, in worry- ing over what might have happened. He could, of course, use such thought as the basis for plans to insure that nothing of the sort did happen later; and with great reluctance he decided that there could be no more exploration until the Bree had reached the waters of the eastern ocean. Barlennan, when this conclusion was offered for his consideration, agreed, though he made some reservations in his own mind. Certainly while the Flyer slept his own crew was going to keep working. They now had two ternees which could be used to check new plants for edibility, and Barlennan was shrewd enough to realize that he might create a market for a new foodstuff strictly on the basis of its rarity, even though it had no particular virtue as regarded taste. Lackland had already remarked that the Mesklinites were similar in many ways to his own people, though he had not mentioned caviar to the captain. With the expedition once more under way and the tangible results of the inter- ruption rapidly being transferred from tank roof to ship by leaping Mesklinites, Lackland made a call to Toorey, listened the strange creatures. ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION humbly to the expected blast when Ros- ten learned what he had been doing, and silenced him as before with the report that much plant tissue was now available if Rosten would send down for it. By the time the rocket had landed far . enough ahead of them to preserve the Mesklinite nervous systems, had waited for their arrival, picked up the new speci- mens—to which Barlennan had generously added a large number of the eggs they no longer wanted to hatch—and waited once more until the tank had traveled safely out of range of its take-off blast, many more days had passed. These, ex- cept for the rocket’s visit, were relatively uneventful. Every few miles a boulder- rimmed hilltop was sighted, but they carefully avoided these, and none of the giant natives were seen outside their cities. This fact rather worried Lackland, where or how they obtained food. With nothing but the relatively boring job of driving to occupy his mind, he naturally formed many hypotheses about These he oc- casionally outlined to Barlennan, but that worthy was of little help in deciding among them. It was not that he was com- pletely uninterested, since he did have some share of normal curiosity; but his mind was of the sort which could not deal with problematical matters when there were practical ones immediately at hand. He had such problems, or felt that he had, in the investigation of the food resources of the country they were traversing, and Lackland got little of value from their conversations. One of his own ideas, however, bothered him. He had been wondering just why the giants built their cities in such a fashion. They could hardly have been expecting either the tank or the Bree. It seemed a rather impractical. way to repel invasion by others of their own kind who evidently, from the common- ness of the custom, could hardly be taken by surprise. | Still, there was a possible reason. It was just a hypothesis; but it would account for the city design, and for the lack of natives in the country outside, and for the absence of anything resembling farm lands in the neighborhood of the Eomichbooksico