Astounding Science Fiction, British Edition — page 54: what you’re looking at

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

52 ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION visible above them, with the iridescent haze hiding the higher peaks. The trees were almost like those of the desert regions of New Earth, scat- tered very thinly across the mountain’s foot, and viciously thorned bushes grew among them. Some of them, Blake. noticed, were in bloom with exotically beautiful blossoms, ranging from delicate pink to vivid scarlet. “Pretty,” Cooke commented. “A little dangerous to try to pick one, I'd say; those thorns are Nature’s ice picks.” “We ought to name it... this world,” Taylor said. ““What shail we call it?” ‘“‘Aurora,”’ Lenson said instantly. “She was the goddess of the dawn in ancient mythology. She was beauti- ful and she wore a veil. This world is beautiful and it wears a veil—that shining haze.” “A good name,” Taylor agreed. He looked toward the creek a few hundred feet away, the creek itself. hidden by the green trees that grew thickly along its banks. “Let’s get a sample of the water for analysis.” They walked toward the creek, each of them unconsciously glancing back at the towering bulk of the ship as they went their way. Men always did that, Blake had noticed, when they set down on an alien planet. They would go out from their ship with their eyes alertly watching for danger ahead, and they never failed to look back at the ship as though to reassure themselves that it’s ponderous mass was still there. It was a normal thing to do; when a man set down on an alien world he was on his own and his only link with other humans and other worlds was his ship. It had brought him there; it, alone, could take him back. A man walked out from his ship knowing that it would be waiting for him to return, like a great, patient dog; waiting and ready to hurl itself into space at his command. Sometimes an alien planet held death for the bipeds who ventured to explore it, such as the spider monsters of Nelson 14, and the ship would be the sword of vengeance for those who lived to fight their way back to it. The ship would avenge the fallen with fury in the thunder of its voice and annihilation in its flaming breath, leaving only drifting ashes where once had been alien things that had made the mis- take of killing a human. Without their ship, men on a hostile, alien world would be near- helpless; with their ship, they were invincible conquerors. **Flowers, even,’ Cooke exclaimed as they neared the trees by the creek. “Red, blue, yellow, purple; green trees and good air—what more could we offer colonists?” Blake had been examining the shin- ing sand with increasing curiosity and he stopped to inspect a bright crystal half the size of his hand. It was not quartz. He scratched at it with his knife point but could not make any impression. The same would have been true of quartz, but the crystal did not have the appearance of quartz. It was alive with internal fires and the crystal system, such as he could tell from its rounded, worn form, was distinctly not that of quartz. A little way farther on he found one that glowed a deep ruby red. He paused to pick it up, then hur- ried on at an excited exclamation from Lenson, who had gone with the others to the edge of the creek. ‘‘Look at this!” | “This’’ was a crystal at the very edge of the creek’s roiling, opalescent waters, the same deep ruby red as the one he had in his hand but a foot in diameter. Near it were other, smaiier, comiclboooks.c© inn