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on, Rafe. You know you want to climb it. Go ahead, I don't mind."

"You don't? You won't mind waiting here?"

"Who said I'd wait here? I think I can make it. And--" she smiled a little, "I suppose I'm as curious

as you are--to get one glimpse of what's beyond it!

He rose with alacrity. "We can leave everything but the canteens here," he said. "It
 
is
 
an easy enoughclimb--not a climb at all, really; just a steep sort of scramble." He felt light-hearted, joyous at her suddensharing of his mood. He went ahead, searching out the easiest route. showing her where to set her feet. Common sense told him that this climb, based only on curiosity to see what lay beyond and not on theirmission's needs, was a little foolhardy--who could risk a broken ankle?--but he could not contain himself. Finally they struggled up the last few feet and stood looking out over the peak. Camilla cried out insurprise and a little dismay. The shoulder of the mountain on which they stood had obscured the realrange which lay beyond; an enormous mountain range which lay, seemingly endless and to the very edgeof their sight, wrapped in eternal snow, enormous and jagged and covered with glaciated ridges andpeaks below which pale clouds drifted, lazily and slow.

Rafe whistled. "Good God, it makes the Himalayas look like foothills," he muttered.

"It seems to go on forever! I suppose we didn't see it before because the air wasn't so clear, with

clouds and fog and rain, but--" Camilla shook her head in wonder. "It's like a wall around the world'!'

"This explains something else," Rafe said slowly. "the freak weather. Flowing over a series of glaciers like that, no wonder there's almost perpetual rain, fog, snow--you name it! And if they are really as high as they look--

46

I can't tell how far away they are, but they could easily be a hundred miles on a clear day like this--itwould also explain the tilt of this world on its axis. They call the Himalayas, on Earth, a third pole. This is

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a
 
real
 
third pole! A third icecap, anyway."

"I'd rather look the other way," Camilla said, and faced back toward the folds and folds of green-violet valleys and forests. "I prefer my planets with trees and flowers--and sunlight, even if the sunlight is the color of blood."

"Let's hope it shows us some stars tonight and some moons."

Chapter

FOUR

"I simply can't believe this weather," Heather Stuart said, and Ewen, stepping to the door of the tent,

jeered gently, "What price your blizzard warnings now?"

"I'm glad to be wrong," Heather said firmly, "Rafe and Camilla need it, on the mountain." An expression of disquiet passed over her face. "I'm not so sure I
 
was
 
wrong, though, there's something about this weather that scares me a little. It seems all wrong for this planet somehow."

Ewen chuckled. "Still defending the honor of your old Highland granny and her second-sight?"

Heather did not smile. "I never believed in second sight. Not even in the Highlands. But now I'm not

so sure. How is Marco?"

"Not much change, although Judy did manage to get him to swallow a little broth. He seems a little

better, although his pulse is still awfully uneven. Where is Judy, by the way?"

"She went into the woods with MacLeod. I made her promise not to go out of sight of the clearing, though." A sound inside of the tent drew them both back; for the first time in three days, something other than inarticulate moans from Zabal. Inside he was moving, struggling to

47

sit up. He muttered, in a hoarse astonished voice, "Que pasõ O Dio, mi duele--duele tanto--"

Ewen bent over him, saying gently, "It's all right, Marco, you're here, we're with you. Are you in

pain?"

He muttered something in Spanish: Ewen looked blankly up at Heather, who shook her head. "Idon't speak it; Camilla does, but I only know a few words." But before she could muster any of them, Zabal muttered, "Pain? You'd better believe! What were those things? How long--where's Rafe?"

Ewen checked the man's heart-rate before he spoke. He said, "Don't try to sit up; I'll put a pillow

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behind your head. You've been very ill; we thought you weren't going to make it."
And I'm still not so

sure
 
, he thought grimly, even while he wadded his spare coat to put behind the injured man's head and Heather encouraged him to swallow some soup.
 
No, please, there have been too many deaths
 
. But he knew this would make no difference. On Earth only the old died, as a rule. Here--well, it was different. Damn different.

"Don't waste your breath talking. Save your strength and we'll tell you everything," he said.

The night fell, still miraculously clear and free of fog or rain. Even on the heights, no fog closed in,and Rafe, setting up Camilla's telescope and other instruments on the flat place of their camp, saw for thefirst time the stars rise over the peaks, clear and brilliant but very far away. He did not know a Cepheidvariable from a constellation, so much of what she was trying to do was incomprehensible to him; butwith a carefully shielded light--not to spoil the dark-adaptation of her eyes--he wrote down carefulstrings of figures and co-ordinates as she gave them. After what seemed hours of this, she sighed andstretched cramped muscles.

"That's all I can do for now; I can take more readings just before dawn. Still no sign of rain?"

"None, thank goodness."

Around them the scent from the flowers on the lower slopes was sweet and intoxicating, asquick-blooming shrubs, vivified by two days of heat and dryness, burst and opened all around. Theunfamiliar scents were a little dizzying. Over the mountain floated a great gleaming moon, with a paleiridescent glow; then, following it by

48

only a few moments, another, this one with pale violet lustre.

"Look at the moon," she whispered.

"Which moon?" Rafe smiled in the darkness. "Earthmen get used to saying, the moon; I suppose

some day someone will give them names..."

They sat on the soft dry grass, watching the moons swing free of the mountains and rise. Rafequoted softly, "If the stars shone only one night in a thousand years, how men would look and wonderand adore."

She nodded. "Even after ten days, I find I miss them."

Rationally Rafe knew that it was madness to sit here in the dark. If nothing else, birds or beasts ofprey--perhaps the banshee-screamer from the heights they had heard last night--might be abroad in thedark. He said so, finally, and Camilla, like the breaking of a spell, started and said, "You're right. I mustwake well before dawn."

Rafe was somehow reluctant to go into the stuffy darkness of the shelter-tent. He said, "In the old

days it used to be believed it was dangerous to sleep in the moonlight--that's where the word lunatic

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came from. Would it be four times as dangerous to sleep under four moons, I wonder?"

"No, but it would be--lunatic," Camilla said, laughing gently. He stopped, took her shoulders in a gentle grip and for a moment the girl, biting back a tart remark, thought in a mixture of fear and anticipation that he would bend down and kiss her; but then he turned away and said, "Who wants to be sane? Good night, Camilla. See you an hour before sunrise," and strode away, leaving her to go before him into the shelter.

A clear night, over the planet of the four moons. Banshees prowled on the heights, freezing theirwarm blooded prey with their screams, blundering toward them by the heat of their blood, but nevercoming below the snow-line; on a snowless night, anything on rock or grass was safe. Above the valleys,great birds of prey swung; beasts still unknown to the Earthmen prowled in the depths of the deep forest,living and dying, and trees unheard crashed to the ground. Under the moonlight, in the unaccustomed heatand dryness of a warm wind blowing away from the glaciated ridges, flowers bloomed and opened, andshed their perfume and pollen. Night-blooming

49

and strange, with a deep and intoxicating scent... .

The red sun rose clear and cloudless, a brilliant sunrise with the sun like a giant ruby in a clear garnetsky. Rafe and Camilla, who had been at the telescope for two hours, sat and watched it with the pleasantfatigue of a light task safely over for some time.

"Shall we start down? This weather is too good to last," Camilla said, "and although I've gotten used

to the mountain in the sun, I don't think I'd care to navigate it on ice."

"Right. Pack up the instruments--you know how they go--and I'll fix a bite of rations and strike the tent. We'll start down while the weather holds--not that it doesn't look like a gorgeous day. If it's still fine tonight we can stop on one of the hilltops and camp out, and you can take some more sightings," he said.

Within forty minutes they were going down. Rafe cast a wistful look back at the huge unknownrange before turning his back on it. His own undiscovered range, and probably he would never see itagain.

Don't be too sure
, a voice remarked precisely in his mind, but he shrugged it off. He didn't believe

in precognition.

He sniffed the light flower-scents, half enjoying them, half disturbed by their faintly acrid sweetness. Themost noticeable were the tiny orange flowers Camilla had plucked the day before, but there was also alovely white flower, star-shaped with a golden corolla, and a deep blue bell-like blossom with inner stalks

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covered with a shimmering gold-colored dust. Camilla bent over, inhaling the spicy fragrance. Rafe

thought to warn her, after a moment;

"Remember Heather and Judy turning green? Serve you right if you Do!"

She looked up, laughing. Her face looked faintly gold from the flower-dust. "If it was going to hurtme it would have already--the air's full of the scent, or haven't you noticed? Oh, it's so beautiful, sobeautiful, I feel like a flower myself, I feel as if I could get drunk on flowers--"

She stood rapt, gazing at the beautiful bell-shaped blossom and seeming to shimmer with the golden

dust.
 
Drunk
 
, Rafe thought,
 
drunk on flowers
 
. He let his pack slip from his shoulder and roll away.

"You
 
are
 
a flower," he said hoarsely. He seized her and kissed her; she raised her lips to his, shyly at

first, then with growing passion. They clung together in the

50

field of waving flowers; she broke free first, and ran toward the stream which flowed down the slope,

laughing, bending to toss her hands in the water.

Rafe thought in astonishment,
 
what has happened to us
 
, but the thought slid lightly over his mindand vanished. Camilla's slight body seemed to flicker, to go in and out of focus. She stripped off herclimbing boots and thick socks, dabbling her feet in the water.

Rafe bent over her and pulled her down into the long grass.

In the camp on the lower heights, Heather Stuart woke slowly, feeling the hot sun through the orangesilk of the tent. Marco Zabal still drowsed in his corner, his blanket drawn over his head; but as shelooked at him he began to stir, and sniffed at her.

"So you sleep too, still?"

"I suppose the others are out in the clearing," Heather said, stirring. "Judy said she wanted to test some of the nuts on the trees for edible carbohydrates--I notice her test kits aren't here. How are you feeling, Marco?"

"Better," he said, stretching. "I think maybe I get up for a minute today. Something in this air and sun,

it does me good."

"It's lovely," she agreed. She too was conscious of some extra sense of well-being and euphoria in

the scented air.
 
It must be the higher oxygen content
 
.

She stepped into the bright air, stretching like a cat in the sunshine.

A clear picture came into her mind, bright and intrusive and strangely exciting; Rafe,

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drawing Camilla into his arms
... . "That's lovely," she said aloud, and breathed deeply, smelling the

curious, somehow golden scent which seemed to fill the light warm wind.

"What's lovely? You are," said Ewen, coming around the tent and laughing. "Come on, let's walk in

the forest--"

"Marco--"

"Marco's better. Do you realize that with all these people I've hardly spoken to you alone since

before the crash?"

Hand in hand, they ran toward the trees; MacLeod, coming from the edge of the forest, his hands

filled with ripe round clear greenish fruits, held out a handful.

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