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GLOBAL2 Chapter 7: Dealing with Foreign Exchange 1
Chapter 7
DEALING WITH FOREIGN EXCHANGE
Learning Objectives
After studying this chapter, you should be able to:
1. List the factors that determine foreign exchange rates.
2. Articulate and explain the steps in the evolution of the international monetary
system.
3. Identify strategic responses firms can take to deal with foreign exchange
movements.
4. Identify three things you need to know about currency when doing business
internationally.
Chapter Summary
This chapter begins by considering the factors that determine foreign exchange rates,
including relative price differences, purchasing power parity (PPP), interest rates, money
supply, productivity, balance of payments, exchange rate policies, and investor
psychology. The second section of the chapter looks at the history of the international
monetary system from the gold standard to post–Bretton Woods. Finally, we look at
strategies for financial and non-financial firms.
Opening Case Discussion Guide
As Latin American countries began to shake off the 2008-2009 global recession, they
quickly became attractive destinations for foreign, particularly American, investment.
Increasing demand for commodities attracted large inflows of money, and the region’s
currencies quickly appreciated against the dollar, putting a tight squeeze on Latin
American exporters and manufacturers and leaving policy makers with difficult choices.
Key issues for students to focus on in this case relate to the basic mechanics of foreign
exchange—namely what is causing the appreciation of Latin American currencies—and
how Latin American policy makers can and are choosing to respond to these challenges.

2 GLOBAL2 Chapter 7: Dealing with Foreign Exchange
_______________________________________________________________________
LESSON PLAN FOR LECTURE
_______________________________________________________________________
Brief Outline and Suggested PowerPoint Slides
Learning Outcome PowerPoint Slides
Learning Objectives Overview 2: Learning Objectives
LO1
List the factors that determine foreign
exchange rates.
3: Example of Key Exchange Rates
(4/6/11)
4: What Determines Foreign Exchange
Rates?
5: Purchasing Power Parity
6: Interest Rates and Money Supply
7: Productivity
8-9: Balance of Payments
10: Exchange Rate Policies
11: Investor Psychology
LO2
Articulate and explain the steps in the
evolution of the international monetary
system.
12-14: The Evolution of the International
Monetary System
15: International Monetary Fund (IMF)
LO3
Identify strategic responses firms can take
to deal with foreign exchange movements.
16-18: Strategic Responses to Foreign
Exchange Movements
LO4
Identify three things you need to know
about currency when doing business
internationally.
19: Three Things To Know About
Currencies
Debate 20: The IMF’s Actions, Criticisms, and
Reforms

_______________________________________________________________________
CHAPTER OUTLINE
_______________________________________________________________________
LO1: List the factors that determine foreign exchange rates.
1. Key Concepts
A foreign exchange rate is the price of one currency expressed in another. This
section identifies six factors that determine foreign exchange rates: (1) basic
supply and demand, (2) relative price differences and purchasing power parity, (3)
interest rates and money supply, (4) productivity and balance of payments, (5)
exchange rate policies, and (6) investor psychology.
2. Key Terms
• Appreciation is an increase in the value of the currency.
• Balance of payments is a country’s international transaction statement, which
includes merchandise trade, service trade, and capital movement.
• Bandwagon effect refers to the effect of investors moving in the same direction
at the same time, like a herd.
• Capital flight is a phenomenon in which a large number of individuals and
companies exchange domestic currencies for a foreign currency.
• Clean (or free) float is a pure market solution to determine exchange rates.
• Depreciation is a loss in the value of the currency.
• Dirty (or managed) float refers to using selective government intervention to
determine exchange rates.
• Fixed rate policy is setting the exchange rate of a currency relative to other
currencies.
• Foreign exchange rate is the price of one currency in terms of another.
• Floating (or flexible) exchange rate policy is the willingness of a government to
let demand and supply conditions determine exchange rates.
• Target exchange rates (or crawling bands) refer to specified upper or lower
bounds within which an exchange rate is allowed to fluctuate.
3. Discussion Exercise
While we often attribute movements in exchange rate to purely economic reasons,
investor psychology can produce dramatic swings, as well. To illustrate this point,
lead the students through a game. The game begins with the instructor passing out
amounts of money in various currencies (these can be copied, or even just pieces
of paper with the denomination written). The instructor should then post a table of
the exchange rates between the various currencies, with an explanation that the
rates will change periodically. Then, invite the students to sell the currencies that
they have and buy others, the objective being to end up with the most money. At
random points in the game, the instructor should make changes to the exchange
rate table, sometimes small and others times very dramatic. Given these changes,
some students may choose to trade as much as possible, in order to take advantage
of exchange rate changes, while other students may choose to hang on to what
they have, so as not to be hurt by potential future changes.

At the game’s conclusion, have students consider and discuss how changes to the
exchange rate affected their attitude towards the currencies that they held, and the
currencies that they wanted. How does the psychological factor bring about
changes to the supply and demand of currencies? How did your mindset influence
the actions that you took in the class’ exchange market?
LO2: Articulate and explain the steps in the evolution of the international monetary
system.
1. Key Concepts
The international monetary system evolved from the gold standard (1870– 1914),
to the Bretton Woods system (1944–1973), and eventually to the current post-
Bretton Woods system (1973–present). The IMF, an enduring legacy of the
Bretton Woods system, serves as a lender of last resort to help member countries
fight balance of payments problems.
2. Key Terms
• Bretton Woods system was a system in which all currencies were pegged at a
fixed rate to the US dollar.
• Common denominator is a currency or commodity to which the value of all
currencies are pegged.
• Gold standard was a system in which the value of most major currencies was
maintained by fixing their prices in terms of gold.
• International Monetary Fund (IMF) is an international organization that was
established to promote international monetary cooperation, exchange stability,
and orderly exchange arrangements.
• Post–Bretton Woods system is a system of flexible exchange rate regimes with
no official common denominator.
• Quota refers to the weight a member country carries within the IMF, which
determines the amount of its financial contribution (technically known as its
“subscription”), its capacity to borrow from the IMF, and its voting power.
LO3: Identify strategic responses firms can take to deal with foreign exchange
movements.
1. Key Concepts
A primary goal for financial companies is to make profit from the foreign
exchange market, where individuals and firms buy and sell currencies. To do so,
there are three types of transactions they can undertake: (1) spot transactions, (2)
forward transactions, and (3) swaps. Relevant to foreign exchange rates, the
primary concern for non-financial companies is how to deal with the potential
losses that come from fluctuations in rates. The three primary strategies they can
employ are (1) invoicing in their own currencies, (2) currency hedging, and (3)
strategic hedging.

2. Key Terms
• Bid rate is the price at which a bank is willing to buy a currency.
• Currency hedging is a transaction that protects traders and investors from
exposure to the fluctuations of the spot rate.
• Currency risk refers to the potential for loss associated with fluctuations in the
foreign exchange market.
• Currency swap is a foreign exchange transaction between two firms in which
one currency is converted into another at Time 1, with an agreement to revert it
back to the original currency at a specified Time 2 in the future.
• Foreign exchange market is the market where individuals, firms, governments,
and banks buy and sell currencies of other countries.
• Forward discount is a condition under which the forward rate of one currency
relative to another currency is higher than the spot rate.
• Forward premium is a condition under which the forward rate of one currency
relative to another currency is lower than the spot rate.
• Forward transactions are foreign exchange transactions in which participants
buy and sell currencies now for future delivery.
• Offer rate is the price at which a bank is willing to sell a currency.
• Spot transactions are the classic single-shot exchanges of one currency for
another.
• Spread is the difference between the offered price and the bid price.
• Strategic hedging is spreading out activities in a number of countries in different
currency zones to offset any currency losses in one region through gains in other
regions.
3. Discussion Exercise
Non-financial companies that deal with exchange rates have two strategic choices
to safeguard against currency risks: currency hedging and strategic hedging. The
former involves the use of forward transactions, which necessitates some
expectations or forecasts of future rates. Strategic hedging, meanwhile, entails the
spreading out of a firm’s activities in a number of different currency zones in
order to offset losses in any one zone. While currency hedging can largely be
performed by a small group of experts, strategic hedging requires interaction
across many divisions, including production, marketing, sourcing and finance.
As the executive of a manufacturing firm that receives supplies from 18 different
countries and sells products to 24 countries, your success and failure is
determined by exchange rates, which cause frequent fluctuations in the price of
supplies and the sale price of manufactured goods. Considering both the pros and
cons of currency hedging versus strategic hedging, which strategy would you opt
for? How would you justify this decision to other executives and to shareholders?

LO4: Identify three things you need to know about currency when doing business
internationally.
1. Key Concepts
First, the successful manager must develop foreign exchange literacy. Second, risk
analysis of any country must include an analysis of its currency risks. Third, a
country’s high currency risks does not mean that it should be avoided completely.
Instead, managers should develop a currency risk management strategy via
currency hedging, strategic hedging, or both.
Debate: The IMF’s Actions, Criticisms, and Reforms
1. Key Concepts
Critics argue that the IMF’s lending may allow more problems to arise as a result
of moral hazard. Other critics point out a lack of accountability. Still other critics
contend that the IMF’s “one-size-fits-all” strategy may not work in every
situation.
The IMF, however, has recently adjusted certain policies, in the wake of 2008, as
many developed countries adopted large deficit spending programs to try to stave
off recessions. This made it difficult for the IMF to require balanced budgets of
countries receiving its loans. The IMF is also expected to become significantly
larger, as leaders at the April 2009 G-20 Summit agreed to increase IMF funding
from $250 billion to $750 billion.
Closing Case
• Closing Case Discussion Guide
Some students reading this case may reach the conclusion that international
markets have many risks and that changes in currency values is one of them. They
would be right, of course. However, some may go a step farther and feel that the
risks are too many and too great, thus a firm should focus only on domestic
markets. You need to help them understand the difference between avoiding risk
(not doing anything that contains risk) and risk avoidance via risk management.
• Closing Case Discussion Questions
1. Why is the value of the yuan relative to the dollar so important?
If the value (exchange rate) of the yuan is low compared to the dollar, that means
that a product selling for a specific amount of yuan does not need as many dollars
to convert into the yuan needed to buy the product. Those in the U.S. using dollars
to buy from China pay less dollars (i.e. have a lower price) for what they obtain
from China. China is thus able to sell more to the U.S. thus benefiting their
companies and employees and consumers in the U.S. are able to buy products and
pay less than they would be the case otherwise.

2. If you were the CEO of Wal-Mart and were preparing for a meeting with the most
vocal members of the US Congress on China’s currency “manipulation,” what
would you say to them?
It might be tactfully pointed out that those whose votes the members of congress
need to stay in office may include votes from Wal-Mart employees and thus those
employees depend on the firm doing well. The voters might include others whose
employer’s survival (and thus their survival) may be affected by the production
done for Wal-Mart in China. Furthermore, many of those potential voters include
customers whose standard of living would be much lower if they could not obtain
low priced Wal-Mart products.
3. Assuming that the yuan will appreciate further against the dollar, what should
Wal-Mart do?
Contingency planning is essential to any company that wishes to not only survive
but to also expand and prosper. Any source of product or any market could suffer
as a result of an unexpected natural disaster, war, or political upheaval. It
should endeavor to broaden its national and geographic suppliers and to identify
firms around the world that could become suppliers within a short period of time
if needed.
4. If you were an exporter from Argentina, Indonesia, Malaysia, or South Korea and
selling to China, would you accept payment in yuan (instead of dollars)?
Student answers may vary. The important thing is not so much the answer as the
extent to which the student demonstrates thought in providing the answer.
Video Case
Watch “Interpret Numbers with Care” by Sir Peter Middleton of Camelot.
• Questions and Answer from Prep Card:
1. Sir Peter Middleton quoted an instructor who wanted everyone to be above
average. What is the problem with everyone being above average? Middleton
then indicated that actually everyone was above average except for one person.
How was that possible?
A “mean average” involves adding up the scores of all the students and dividing
by the number of students thus it would be impossible for everyone to do better
than everyone. However, if one person did lower than all the rest, that person
brings down the average and raises the average for the others.
2. Middleton argues that almost everything you do is affected by numbers. Show
how numbers are related to each major heading of this chapter.
Students may have varying responses to this question. The key thing is the
thought put into the explanation of foreign exchange rates and strategic
responses to foreign exchange movement.

3. According to Middleton, one could produce six versions of a balance sheet or a
profit-and-loss statement. If you have had accounting, show how one could
produce two versions of either of those financial statements. If you have never
had an accounting class, use what you learned about currency exchange rates to
show how those changes could affect what is reported as profit.
Those who have had accounting will show how valuation of inventories used
during a period of time or the extent to which an expenditure is treated as an
expense or investment will affect the balance sheet and income statement. Those
who focus on the currency market may point out that as currencies change in
value to each other that will affect the prices of goods from a given country and
thus affects sales and profits.
4. Middleton recommended that one ask how a number would look if things were
different. One way to do that is to not simply compare performance in Period B
to Period A but to compare actual performance in Period B to what was forecast
for Period B. For example, suppose your firm’s exports drop by 10%, which
would appear to be bad. How might that be good?
If exports might otherwise have dropped by 50% but a brilliant strategy kept the
drop to only 10%, that would be good.
5. Numbers can be misleading according to Middleton. That could be true in the
currency market. For example, when the value of the dollar increases, many
people would feel that is a good thing. How might it be bad?
The increase in value would make exports more expensive to overseas buyers and
thus hurt the sales of some firms.

_______________________________________________________________________
ADDITIONAL DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
*Review Questions
*Critical Discussion Questions
_______________________________________________________________________
Review Questions
1. What are the five major factors that influence foreign exchange rates?
The basic factor is the supply and demand for a currency as affected by the
following five factors: (1) relative price differences (the impact of purchasing
power parity), (2) interest rates and monetary supply (interest rates in a country
will affect demand for a currency and monetary policy affects supply of the
currency), (3) productivity and balance of payments (productivity affects the cost
of a country’s goods and that cost will impact exports which in turn affects the
balance of payments), (4) exchange rate policies (a currency which can be freely
exchanged will be more desirable than one which cannot), and (5) investor
psychology - positive or negative expectations will affect the extent to which a
currency is desirable.
2. What are the differences between a floating exchange rate policy and a fixed
exchange rate policy?
Floating (or flexible) exchange rate policy: the willingness of a government to let
the demand and supply conditions determine exchange rates. Fixed exchange rate
policy; fixing the exchange rate of a currency relative to other currencies.
3. Describe the IMF’s roles, responsibilities, and challenges.
International Monetary Fund (IMF): an international organization of 185
member countries that was established to promote international monetary
cooperation, exchange stability, and orderly exchange arrangements; to foster
economic growth and high levels of employment; and to provide temporary
financial assistance to countries to help ease balance of payments adjustment.
While an IMF loan provides short-term financial resources, however, it also
comes with strings attached, including long-term policy reforms that recipient
countries must undertake to receive their loans.

4. Describe the three primary types of foreign exchange transactions made by
financial companies.
There are three primary types of foreign exchange transactions: (1) spot
transactions, (2) forward transactions, and (3) swaps.
• Spot transactions: the classic single-shot exchange of one currency for another.
• Forward transactions: a foreign exchange transaction in which participants buy
and sell currencies now for future delivery, typically in 30, 90, or 180 days, after
the date of the transaction.
• Swap: a foreign exchange transaction in which one currency is converted into
another in Time 1, with an agreement to revert it back to the original currency at
a specific Time 2 in the future.
5. Why is the strength of the US dollar important to the rest of the world?
The rest of the world holds so many greenbacks that most countries fear the
capital loss they would suffer if the dollar falls too deep. Second, many countries
prefer to keep the value of their currencies down to promote exports.
6. How would you describe the theory of purchasing power parity (PPP)?
Purchasing power parity: a theory that suggests that in the absence of trade
barriers (such as tariffs), the price for identical products sold in different
countries must be the same.
7. What is the relationship between a country’s current account balance and its
currency?
A country experiencing a current account surplus will see its currency
appreciate; conversely, a country experiencing a current account deficit will see
its currency depreciate.
8. How is the phenomenon of capital flight an example of the bandwagon effect or
herd mentality?
Capital flight: a phenomenon in which a large number of individuals and
companies exchange domestic currencies for a foreign currency. Bandwagon
effect: the result of investors moving as a herd in the same direction at the same
time.
9. Why did the gold standard evolve to the Bretton Woods system? Then why did
the Bretton Woods system evolve to the present post-Bretton Woods system?
The gold standard provided predictability but placed a focus on economic
adjustments and exports which were difficult to maintain during wartime and thus
toward the end of World War II the Bretton Woods system was created in which
currencies were pegged to the dollar but it was difficult to maintain those pegged
rates. As a result, under post-Bretton Woods flexible rates became more common.

10. Name and describe three ways nonfinancial companies can cope with currency
risks.
There are three primary strategies: (1) invoicing in their own currency, (2)
currency hedging and (3) strategic hedging.
• By invoicing in their own currency, firm can find some protection from
unfavorable foreign exchange movements.
• Currency hedging: a transaction that protects traders and investors from
exposure to the fluctuations of the spot rate, it involves the transactions discussed
in question eight in which the intent is to transfer risk from the hedgers to
speculators.
• Strategic hedging: spreading out activities in a number of countries in different
currency zones to offset the currency losses in certain regions through gains in
other regions.
11. Which do you think is a better policy to adopt: a floating exchange rate or a fixed
rate?
The important thing is not so much the answer as the extent to which the student
demonstrates thought in providing the answer.
12. Devise your own example of a way a firm might engage in currency hedging.
Currency hedging involves a transaction that protects traders and investors from
exposure to the fluctuations of the spot rate. In regards to the examples, the
important thing is not so much the answer as the extent to which the student
demonstrates thought in providing the answer.
13. What concepts must a savvy manager understand about currencies to do
international business successfully?
First, foreign exchange literacy must be fostered. Second, risk analysis of any
country must include its currency risks. Finally, a country’s high currency risks
do not necessarily suggest that that country needs to be totally avoided. Instead, it
calls for a prudent currency risk management strategy via currency hedging,
strategic hedging, or both.
14. What skills might a manager need to develop to devise strategies for managing
currency risk?
Useful skills include currency hedging, strategic hedging, or both.

Critical Discussion Questions
1. Suppose that US$1 equals €0.7778 in New York and US$1 equals €0.7775 in
Paris. How can foreign exchange traders in New York and Paris profit from these
exchange rates?
Arbitrageurs profit by buying low in one market and selling high in another.
However, as they dump more of a currency into the higher priced market, they are
increasing the supply of that currency in that market and as the supply increases
relative to the demand the price will go down until it reaches a level in which no
arbitrage profits can be obtained because the value of the currency in both
markets is the same.
2. Should China revalue the yuan against the dollar? If so, what impact may this
have on (1) US balance of payments, (2) Chinese balance of payments, (3)
relative competitiveness of Mexico and Thailand, (4) firms such as Wal-Mart, and
(5) US and Chinese retail consumers?
The US balance of payments would improve and the Chinese balance of payments
would decline. The relative competitiveness of any country with its currency tied
to the dollar would also likely improve. Wal-Mart and U.S. consumers would lose
but Chinese retail consumers would gain.
3. ON ETHICS: You are an IMF official going to a country whose export earnings
are not able to pay for imports. The government has requested a loan from the
IMF. In which areas would you recommend the government to cut: (1) education,
(2) salaries for officials, (3) food subsidies, and/or (4) tax rebates for exporters?
Student answers will vary but it is unlikely that any would pick number four.

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open food pack between his knees, from which he snatched things
and swallowed them voraciously, feeding like a wild dog.
"Didrickson! Sergeant Didrickson!" the Lieutenant yelled. "What are
you doing?"
The supply man stared back, and Hague knew from the man's face
what had happened. He crouched warily, eyes wild with panic and
jaw hanging foolishly slack. This was Didrickson, the steady, efficient
man who'd sat at the chart table the night they began this march. He
had been the only man Devlin thought competent and nerveless
enough to handle the food. This was the same Didrickson, and
madder now than a March hare, Hague concluded grimly. The
enlisted man snatched up the food pack, staring at them in wild fear,
and began to run back down the trail, back the way they'd come.
"Come back, Didrickson. We've got to have that food, you fool!"
The madman laughed crazily at the sound of the officer's voice,
glanced back for a moment, then spun and ran.
Sergeant Brian, as always, was ready. His rifle cracked, and the
explosive missile blew the running man nearly in half. Sergeant Brian
silently retrieved the food pack and brought it back to Hague.
"Do you want it here, Lieutenant, or shall I take it up to the main
party?"
"We'll keep it here, Sergeant. Sewell can take it back tonight after our
medical check." Hague's voice shook, and he wished savagely that he
could have had the nerve to pass that swift death sentence.
Didrickson's crime was dangerous to every member of the party, and
the Sergeant had been right to shoot. But when the time came—
when perhaps the Sergeant wasn't with him—would he, Hague, react
swiftly and coolly as an officer should, he wondered despairingly?
"All right, lads, let's pull," he said, and the tight-lipped gun crew filed
again into the hushed, somber forest corridors.

II
Communications Technician Harker took a deep pull at his mug of
steaming coffee, blinked his eyes hard at the swimming dials before
him, and lit a cigarette. Odysseus warning center was never quiet,
even now in the graveyard watch when all other lights were turned
low through the great ship's hull. Here in the neat grey room,
murmuring, softly-clicking signal equipment was banked against
every wall in a gleaming array of dials and meters, heavy power
leads, black panels, and intricate sheafs of colored wire. The sonar
kept up a sleepy drone, and radar scopes glowed fitfully with
interference patterns, and the warning buzzer beeped softly as the
radar echoed back to its receivers the rumor of strange planetary
forces that radar hadn't been built to filter through. What made the
interference, base technicians couldn't tell, but it practically paralyzed
radio communication on all bands, and blanketed out even radar
warnings.
The cigarette burned his finger tips, and Harker jerked awake and
tried to concentrate on the letter he was writing home. It would be
microfilmed, and go on the next courier rocket. A movement at the
Warnings Room door, brought Harker's head up, and he saw
Commander Chapman, lean and grey, standing there.
"Good evening, sir. Come on in. I've got coffee on." The
Communications Technician took a pot from the glow heater at his
elbow, and set out another cup.
The Commander smiled tiredly, pulled out a stubby metal stool, and
sat across the low table from Harker, sipping the scalding coffee
cautiously. He looked up after a moment.
"What's the good word, Harker? Picked up anything?"
Harker ran his fingers through his mop of black hair, and grimaced.
"Not a squeak, sir. No radio, no radar. Of course, the interference may
be blanketing those. Creates a lot of false signals, too, on the radar
screens. But we can't even pick 'em up with long-range sonar. That
should get through. We're pretty sure they crashed, all right."

"How about our signals, Harker? Do you think we're getting through
to them?"
Harker leaned back expansively, happy to expound his specialty.
"Well, we've been sending radio signals every hour on the hour, and
radio voice messages every hour on the half hour. We're sending a
continuous sonar beam for their direction-finder. That's about all we
can do. As for their picking it up, assuming the rocket has crashed
and been totally knocked out, they still have a radio in the whippet
tank. It's a transreceiver. And they have a portable sonar set, one of
those little twenty-pound armored detection units. They'll use it as a
direction finder."
Chapman swirled the coffee around in the bottom of his cup and
stared thoughtfully into it.
"If they can get sonar, why can't we send them messages down the
sonar beam? You know, flick it on and off in Morse code?"
"It won't work with a small detector like they have, sir. With our big
set here, we could send them a message, but that outfit they have
might burn out. It has a limited sealed motor supply that must break
down an initial current resistance on the grids before the rectifiers
can convert it to audible sound. With the set operating continuously,
power drainage is small, but begin changing your signal beam and
the power has to break down the grid resistance several hundred
times for every short signal sent. It would burn out their set in a
matter of hours.
"It works like a slide trombone, sort of. Run your slide way out, and
you get a slowly vibrating column of air, and that is heard as a low
note, only on sonar it would be a short note. Run your slide way up,
and the vibrations are progessively faster and higher in pitch. The
sonar set, at peak, is vibrating so rapidly that it's almost static, and
the power flow is actually continuous. But, starting and stopping the
set continuously, the vibrators never have a chance to reach a normal
peak, and the power flow is broken at each vibration in the receiver—
and a few hours later your sonar receptor is a hunk of junk."

"All right, Harker. Your discussion is vague, but I get the general idea
that my suggestion wasn't too hot. Well, have whoever is on duty call
me if any signals come through." The Commander set down his cup,
said goodnight, and moved off down the hushed corridor. Harker
returned to his letter and a chewed stub of pencil, while he scowled
in a fevered agony of composition. It was a letter to his girl, and it
had to be good.
Night had begun to fall over the forest roof, and stole thickening
down the muddy cathedral aisles of great trees, and Hague listened
hopefully for the halt signal from the whippet tank, which should
come soon. He was worried about Bucci who was laughing and
talking volubly, and the officer decided he must have a touch of fever.
The dark, muscular gunner kept talking about his young wife in what
was almost a babble. Once he staggered and nearly fell, until Hurd
took the pneumatic gun barrel assembly and carried it on his own
shoulders. They were all listening expectantly for the tank's klaxon,
when a brassy scream ripped the evening to echoing shreds and a
flurry of shots broke out ahead.
The scream came again, metallic and shrill as a locomotive gone
amok; yells, explosive-bullet reports, and the sound of hammering
blows drifted back.
"Take over, Brian," Hague snapped. "Crosse, Hurd—let's go!"
The three men ran at a stagger through the dragging mud around a
turn in the trail, and dropped the pneumatic gun swiftly into place,
Hurd at firing position, Crosse on the charger, and Hague prone in
the slime snapping an ammunition belt into the loader.
Two emergency flares some one had thrown lit the trail ahead in a
garish photographic fantasy of bright, white light and ink-black
shadow, a scene out of Inferno. A cart lay on its side, men were
running clear, the whippet tank lay squirming on its side, and above it
towered the screaming thing. A lizard, or dinosaur, rearing up thirty

feet, scaly grey, a man clutched in its two hand-like claws, while its
armored tail smashed and smashed at the tank with pile-driver blows.
Explosive bullets cracked around the thing's chest in blue-white flares
of light, but it continued to rip at the man twisting pygmy-like in its
claws—white teeth glinting like sabers as its blindly malevolent
screams went on.
"On target," Hurd's voice came strained and low.
"Charge on," from Crosse.
"Let her go!" Hague yelled, and fed APX cartridges as the gun
coughed a burst of armor-piercing, explosive shells into the rearing
beast. Hague saw the tank turret swing up as Whittaker tried to get
his gun in action, but a slashing slap of the monster's tail spun it back
brokenly. The cluster of pneumatic shells hit then and burst within
that body, and the great grey-skinned trunk was hurled off the trail,
the head slapping against a tree trunk on the other side as the reptile
was halved.
"Good shooting, Crosse," Hague grunted. "Get back with Brian. Keep
the gun ready. That thing might have a mate." He ran toward the
main party, and into the glare of the two flares.
"Where's Devlin?"
Clark, the navigation officer, was standing with a small huddle of men
near the smashed supply cart.
"Here, Hague," he called. His eyes were sunken, his face older in the
days since Hague had last seen him. "Devlin's dead, smashed
between the cart and a tree trunk. We've lost two men, Commander
Devlin and Ellis, the soils man. He's the one it was eating." He
grimaced.
"That leaves twenty-three of us?" Hague inquired, and tried to sound
casual.
"That's right. You'll continue to cover the rear. Those horn sounds you
reported had Devlin worried about an attack from your direction. I'll
be with the tank."

Sergeant Brian was stoically heating ration stew over the cook unit
when Hague returned, while the crew sat in a close circle, alternately
eying nervously the forest at their backs, and the savory steam that
rose from Brian's mixture. There wasn't much for each of them, but it
was hot and highly nutritious, and after a cigarette and coffee they
would feel comfort for a while.
Crosse, seated on the grey metal charger tube he'd carried all day,
fingered the helmet in his lap, and looked inquiringly at the
Lieutenant.
"Well, sir, anybody hurt? Was the tank smashed?"
Hague squatted in the circle, sniffed the stew with loud enthusiasm,
and looked about the circle.
"Commander Devlin's dead, and Ellis. One supply cart smashed, but
the tank'll be all right. The lizard charged the tank. Balistierri thinks it
was the lizard's mating season, and he figured the tank was another
male and he tried to fight it. Then he stayed—to—lunch and we got
him. Lieutenant Clark is in command now."
The orange glow of Brian's cook unit painted queer shadows on the
strained faces around him, and Hague tried to brighten them up.
"Will you favor us with one of your inimitable harmonica
arrangements, Maestro Bormann?"
"I can't right now. I'm bandaging Helen's wing." He held out
something in the palm of his hand, and the heater's glow glittered on
liquid black eyes. "She's like a little bird, but without her feathers.
See?" He placed the warm lump in Hague's hand. "For wings, she's
just got skin, like a bat, except she's built like a bird."
"You ought to show this to Balistierri, and maybe he'll name this for
you too."
Bormann's homely face creased into a grin. "I did, sir. At the noon
halt when I found it. It's named after my girl. 'Bormann's Helen', only
in Latin. Helen's got a broken wing."

As they ate, they heard the horn note again. Bucci's black eyes were
feverishly bright, his skin hot and dry, and the vine scratches on his
leg badly inflamed; and when the rest began to sing he was quiet.
The reedy song of Bormann's harmonica piped down the quiet forest
passages, and echoed back from the great trees; and somewhere, as
Hague dozed off in his little tent, he heard the horn note again,
sandwiched into mouth organ melody.
Two days of slogging through the slimy green mud, and at a noon
halt Sewell brought back word to be careful, that a man had failed to
report at roll call that morning. The gun crew divided Bucci's
equipment between them, and he limped in the middle of the file on
crutches fashioned from ration cart wreckage. Crosse, who'd been
glancing off continually, like a wizened, curious rat, flung up his arm
in a silent signal to halt, and Hague moved in to investigate, the ever
present Brian moving carefully and with jungle beast's silent poise
just behind him. Crumpled like a sack of damp laundry, in the murk of
two root buttresses, lay Romano, one of the two photographers. His
Hasselblad camera lay beneath his body crushing a small plant he
must have been photographing.
From the back of Romano's neck protruded a gleaming nine-inch
arrow shaft, a lovely thing of gleaming bronze-like metal, delicately
thin of shaft and with fragile hammered bronze vanes. Brian moved
up behind Hague, bent over the body and cut the arrow free.
They examined the thing, and when Brian spoke Hague was
surprised that this time even the rock-steady Sergeant spoke in a
hushed voice, the kind boys use when they walk by a graveyard at
night and don't wish to attract unwelcome attention.
"Looks like it came from a blowgun, Lieutenant. See the plug at the
back. It must be poisoned; it's not big enough to kill him otherwise."
Hague grunted assent, and the two moved back trailward.
"Brian, take over. Crosse, come on. We'll report this to Clark.
Remember, from now on wear your body armor and go in pairs when

you leave the trail. Get Bucci's plates on to him."
Bormann and Hurd set down their loads, and were buckling the
weakly protesting Bucci into his chest and back plates, as Hague left
them.
Commander Chapman stared at the circle of faces. His section
commanders lounged about his tiny square office. "Well, then, what
are their chances?"
Bjornson, executive for the technical section, stared at Chapman
levelly.
"I can vouch for Devlin. He's not precisely a rule-book officer, but
that's why I recommended him for this expedition. He's at his best in
an unusual situation, one where he has to depend on his own wits.
He'll bring them through."
Artilleryman Branch spoke in turn. "I don't know about Hague. He's
young, untried. Seemed a little unsure. He might grow panicky and
be useless. I sent him because there was no one else, unless I went
myself."
The Commander cleared his throat brusquely. "I know you wanted to
go, Branch, but we can't send out our executive officers. Not yet,
anyway. What about Clark? Could he take over Devlin's job?"
"Clark can handle it," Captain Rindell of the Science Section, was
saying. "He likes to follow the rule-book, but he's sturdy stuff. He'll
bring them through if something happens to Devlin."
"Hmmmm—that leaves Hague as the one questionable link in their
chain of command. Young man, untried. Of course, he's only the
junior officer. There's no use stewing over this; but I'll tell you frankly,
that if those men can't get their records through to us before we
send the next courier rocket to earth, I think the U.S. Rocket Service
is finished. This attempt will be chalked up as a failure. The project

will be abandoned entirely, and we'll be ordered back to Earth to
serve as a fighter arm there."
Bjornson peered from the space-port window and looked out over the
cinder-packed parade a hundred feet below. "What makes you so
sure the Rocket Service is in immediate danger of being scrapped?"
"The last courier rocket contained a confidential memo from
Secretary Dougherty. There is considerable war talk, and the other
Service Arms are plunging for larger armaments. They want their
appropriations of money and stock pile materials expanded at our
expense. We've got to show that we are doing a good job, show the
Government a concrete return in the form of adequate reports on the
surface of Venus, and its soils and raw materials."
"What about the 'copters!" Rindell inquired. "They brought in some
good stuff for the reports."
"Yes, but with a crew of only four men, they can't do enough."
Branch cut in dryly. "About all I can see is to look hopeful. The Rocket
would have exhausted its fuel long ago. It's been over ten weeks
since they left Base."
"Assuming they're marching overland, God forbid, they'll have only
sonar and radio, right?" Bjornson was saying. "Why not keep our
klaxon going? It's a pretty faint hope, but we'll have to try everything.
My section is keeping the listeners manned continually, we've got a
sonar beam out, radio messages every thirty minutes, and with the
klaxon we're doing all we can. I doubt if anything living could
approach within a twenty-five mile range without hearing that klaxon,
or without us hearing them with the listeners."
"All right." Commander Chapman stared hopelessly at a fresh batch
of reports burdening his desk. "Send out ground parties within the
ten mile limit, but remember we can't afford to lose men. When the
'copters are back in, send them both West." West meant merely in a
direction west from Meridian 0, as the mother rocket's landing place
had been designated. "They can't do much searching over that
rainforest, but it's a try. They might pick up a radio message."

Chapman returned grumpily to his reports, and the others filed out.
III
At night, on guard, Hague saw a thousand horrors peopling the
Stygian forest murk; but when he flashed his lightpak into darkness
there was nothing. He wondered how long he could stand the
waiting, when he would crack as Supply Sergeant Didrickson had,
and his comrades would blast him down with explosive bullets. He
should be like Brian, hard and sure, and always doing the right thing,
he decided. He'd come out of OCS Gunnery School, trained briefly in
the newly-formed U.S. Rocket Service. Then the expedition to Venus
—it was a fifty-fifty chance they said, and out of all the volunteers
he'd been picked. And when the first expedition was ready to blast
off from the Base Camp on Venus, he'd been picked again. Why, he
cursed despairingly? Sure, he wanted to come, but how could his
commanders have had faith in him, when he didn't know himself if he
could continue to hold out.
Sounds on the trail sent his carbine automatically to ready, and he
called a strained, "Halt."
"Okay, Hague. It's Clark and Arndt."
The wiry little navigation officer, and lean, scraggy Geologist Arndt,
the latter's arm still in a sling, came into the glow of Hague's
lightpak.
"Any more horns or arrows?" Clark's voice sounded tight, and
repressed; Hague reflected that perhaps the strain was getting him
too.
"No, but Bucci is getting worse. Can't you carry him on the cart?"
"Hague, I've told you twenty times. That cart is full and breaking
down now. Get it through your head that it's no longer individual men
we can think of now, but the entire party. If they can't march, they

must be left, or all of us may die!" His voice was savage, and when
he tried to light a cigarette his hand shook. "All right. It's murder, and
I don't like it any better than you do."
"How are we doing? What's the over-all picture?" Both of the officers
tried to smile a little at the memory of that pompous little phrase,
favorite of a windbag they'd served under.
"Not good. Twenty-two of us now."
"Hirooka thinks we may be within radio range of Base soon," he
continued more hopefully. "With this interference, we can't tell,
though."
They talked a little longer, Arndt gave the gunnery officer a food-and-
medical supply packet, and Hague's visitors became two bobbing
glows of light that vanished down the trail.
A soul crushing weight of days passed while they strained forward
through mud and green gloom, like men walking on a forest sea
bottom. Then it was a cool dawn, and a tugging at his boot awoke
the Lieutenant. Hurd, his face a strained mask, was peering into the
officer's small shelter tent and jerking at his leg.
"Get awake, Lieutenant. I think they're here."
Hague struggled hard to blink off the exhausted sleep he'd been in.
"Listen, Lieutenant, one of them horns has been blowing. It's right
here. Between us and the main party."
"Okay." Hague rolled swiftly from the tent as Hurd awoke the men.
Hague moved swiftly to each.
"Brian, you handle the gun. Bucci, loader. Crosse, charger. Bormann,
cover our right; Hurd the left. I'll watch the trail ahead."
Brian and Crosse worked swiftly and quietly with the lethal efficiency
that had made them crack gunners at Fort Fisher, North Carolina.
Bucci lay motionless at the ammunition box, but his eyes were bright,
and he didn't seem to mind his feverish, swollen leg. The Sergeant
and Crosse slewed the pneumatic gun to cover their back trail, and

fell into position beside the gleaming grey tube. Hague, Bormann and
Hurd moved quickly at striking tents and rolling packs, their rifles
ready at hand.
Hague had forgotten his fears and the self-doubt, the feeling that he
had no business ordering men like Sergeant Brian, and Hurd and
Bormann. They were swallowed in intense expectancy as he lay
watching the dawn fog that obscured like thick smoke the trail that
led to Clark's party and the whippet tank.
He peered back over his shoulder for a moment. Brian, Bucci, and
Crosse, mud-stained backs toward him, were checking the gun and
murmuring soft comments. Bormann looked at the officer, grinned
tightly, and pointed at Helen perched on his shoulder. His lips
carefully framed the words, "Be a pushover, Helen brings luck."
The little bird peered up into Bormann's old-young face, and Hague,
trying to grin back, hoped he looked confident. Hurd lay on the other
side of the trail, his back to Bormann, peering over his rifle barrel,
bearded jaws rhythmically working a cud of tobacco he'd salvaged
somewhere, and Hague suddenly thought he must have been saving
it for the finish.
Hague looked back into the green light beginning to penetrate the
trail fog, changing it into a glowing mass—then thought he saw a
movement. Up the trail, the whippet tank's motor caught with a roar,
and he heard Whittaker traversing the battered tank's turret. The
turret gun boomed flatly, and a shell burst somewhere in the forest
darkness to Hague's right.
Then there was a gobbling yell and gray man-like figures poured out
onto the trail. Hague set his sights on them, the black sight-blade
silhouetting sharply in the glowing fog. He set them on a running
figure, and squeezed his trigger, then again, and again, as new
targets came. Sharp reports ran crackling among the great trees.
Sharp screams came, and a whistling sound overhead that he knew
were blowgun arrows. The pneumatic gun sputtered behind him, and
Bormann's and Hurd's rifles thudded in the growing roar.

With a gobbling yell, gray, man-like figures came leaping among
them.
Blue flashes and explosive bullets made fantastic flares back in the
forest shadows; and suddenly a knot of man-shapes were running
toward him through the fog. Hague picked out one in the glowing
mist, fired, another, fired. Gobbling yells were around him, and he
shot toward them through the fog, at point-blank range. A thing rose
up beside him, and Hague yelled with murderous fury, and drove his
belt knife up into grey leather skin. Something burned his shoulder as
he rolled aside and fired at the dark form standing over him with a
poised, barbed spear. The blue-white flash was blinding, and he
cursed and leaped up.

There was nothing more. Scattered shots, and the forest lay quiet
again. After that shot at point-blank range, Hague's vision had
blacked out.
"Any one else need first aid?" he called, and tried to keep his voice
firm. When there was silence, he said, "Hurd, lead me to the tank."
He heard the rat-faced man choke, "My God, he's blind."
"Just flash blindness, Hurd. Only temporary." Hague kept his face
stiff, and hoped frantically that he was right, that it was just
temporary blindness, temporary optic shock.
Sergeant Brian's icy voice cut in. "Gun's all right, Lieutenant. Nobody
hurt. We fired twenty-eight rounds of H.E. No A.P.X. Get going with
him, Hurd."
He felt Hurd's tug at his elbow, and they made their way up the trail.
"What do they look like, Hurd?"
"These men-things? They're grey, about my size, skin looks like
leather, and their heads are flattish. Eyes on the side of their heads,
like a lizard. Not a stitch of clothes. Just a belt with a knife and arrow
holder. And they got webbed claws for feet. They're ugly-looking
things, sir. Here's the tank."
Clark's voice came, hard and clear. "That you, Hague?" Silence for a
moment. "What's wrong? You're not blinded?"
Sewell had dropped his irascibility, and his voice was steady and
kindly.
"Just flash blindness, isn't it, sir? This salve will fix you up. You've got
a cut on your shoulder. I'll take care of that too."
"How are your men, Hague?" Clark sounded as though he were
standing beside Hague.
"Not a scratch. We're ready to march."
"Five hurt here, three with the advance party, and two at the tank.
We got 'em good, though. They hit the trail between our units and

got fire from both sides. Must be twenty of them dead."
Hague grimaced at the sting of something Sewell had squeezed into
his eyes. "Who was hurt?"
"Arndt, the geologist; his buddy, Gault, the botanist; lab technician
Harker, Crewman Harker, and Szachek, the meteorologist man. How's
your pneumatic ammunition?"
"We fired twenty-eight rounds of H.E."
Cartographer Hirooka's voice burst in excitedly.
"That gun crew of yours! Your gun crew got twenty-one of these—
these lizard-men. A bunch came up our back trail, and the pneumatic
cut them to pieces."
"Good going, Hague. We'll leave you extended back there. I'm pulling
in the advance party, and there'll be just two groups. We'll be at
point, and you continue at afterguard." Clark was silent for a
moment, then his voice came bitterly, "We're down to seventeen
men, you know."
He cursed, and Hague heard the wiry little navigator slosh away
through the mud and begin shouting orders. He and Hurd started
back with Whittaker and Sergeant Sample yelling wild instructions
from the tank as to what the rear guard might do with the next batch
of lizard-men who came sneaking up.
Hague's vision was clearing, and he saw Balistierri and the
photographer Whitcomb through a milky haze, measuring,
photographing, and even dissecting several of the lizard-men. The
back trail, swept by pneumatic gunfire was a wreck of wood splinters
and smashed trees, smashed bodies, and cratered earth.
They broke down the gun, harnessed the equipment, and swung off
at the sound of Clark's whistle. Bucci had to be supported between
two of the others, and they took turnabout at the job, sloshing
through the water and mud, with Bucci's one swollen leg dragging
uselessly between them. It was punishing work as the heat veils
shimmered and thickened, but no one seemed to consider leaving

him behind, Hague noticed; and he determined to say nothing about
Clark's orders that the sick must be abandoned.
Days and nights flashed by in a dreary monotony of mud, heat,
insects and thinning rations. Then one morning the giant trees began
to thin, and they passed from rainforest into jungle.
The change was too late for Bucci. They carved a neat marker beside
the trail, and set the dead youth's helmet atop it. Lieutenant Hague
carried ahead a smudged letter in his shirt, with instructions to
forward it to Wilma, the gunner's young wife.
Hague and his four gunners followed the rattling whippet tank's trail
higher, the jungle fell behind, and their protesting legs carried them
over the rim of a high, cloud-swept plateau, that swept on to the limit
of vision on both sides and ahead.
The city's black walls squatted secretively; foursquare, black, glassy
walls with a blocky tower set sturdily at each of the four corners,
enclosing what appeared to be a square mile of low buildings. Grey
fog whipped coldly across the flat bleakness and rustled through dark
grass.
Balistierri, plodding beside Hague at the rear, stared at it warily,
muttering, "And Childe Roland to the dark tower came."
Sampler's tank ground along the base of the twelve-foot wall, turned
at a sharp right angle, and the party filed through a square cut
opening that once had been a gate. The black city looked tenantless.
There was dark-hued grass growing in the misted streets and
squares, and across the lintels of cube-shaped, neatly aligned
dwellings, fashioned of thick, black blocks. Hague could hear nothing
but whipping wind, the tank's clatter, and the quiet clink of
equipment as men shuffled ahead through the knee-high grass,
peering watchfully into dark doorways.
Clark's whistle shrilled, the tank motor died, and they waited.

"Hague, come ahead."
The gunnery officer nodded at Sergeant Brian, and walked swiftly to
Clark, who was leaning against the tank's mud-caked side.
"Sampler says we've got to make repairs on the tank. We'll shelter
here. Set your gun on a roof top commanding the street—or, better
yet, set it on the wall. I'll want two of your gunners to go hunting
food animals."
"What do you think this place is, Bob?"
"Beats me," and the navigator's wind-burned face twisted in a
perplexed expression. "Lenkranz knows more about metals, but he
thinks this stone is volcanic, like obsidian. Those lizard-men couldn't
have built it."
"We passed some kind of bas-relief or murals inside the gate."
"Whitcomb is going to photograph them. Blake, Lenkranz, Johnston,
and Hirooka are going to explore the place. Your two gunners, and
Crewman Swenson and Balistierri will form the two hunting parties."
For five days, Hague and Crosse walked over the sullen plateau
beneath scudding, leaden clouds, hunting little lizards that resembled
dinosaurs and ran in coveys like grey chickens. The meat was good,
and Sewell dropped his role of medical technician to achieve glowing
accolades as an expert cook. Balistierri was in a zoologist's paradise,
and he hunted over the windy plain with Swenson, the big white-
haired Swede, for ten and twelve hours at a stretch. Balistierri would
sit in the cook's unit glow at night, his thin face ecstatic as he
described the weird life forms he and Swenson had tracked down
during the day; or alternately he'd bemoan the necessity of eating
what were to him priceless zoological specimens.
Whittaker and Sampler hammered in the recalcitrant tank's bowels
and shouted ribald remarks to any one nearby, until they emerged
the third day, grease-stained and perspiring, to announce that "She's
ready to roll her g—— d—— cleats off."

Whittaker had been nursing the tank's radio transreceiver beside the
forward hatch this grey afternoon, when his wild yell brought Hague
erect. The officer carefully handed Bormann's skin bird back to the
gunner, swung down from the city wall's edge, and ran to Whittaker's
side. Clark was already there when Hague reached the tank.
"Listen! I've got 'em!" Whittaker yelped and extended the crackling
earphones to Clark.
A tinny voice penetrated the interference.
"Base.... Peter One.... Do you hear ... to George Easy Peter One ...
hear me ... out."
Whittaker snapped on his throat microphone.
"George Easy Peter One To Base. George Easy Peter One To Base.
We hear you. We hear you. Rocket crashed. Rocket crashed.
Returning overland. Returning overland. Present strength sixteen
men. Can you drop us supplies? Can you drop us supplies?"
The earphones sputtered, but no more voices came through. Clark's
excited face fell into tired lines.
"We've lost them. Keep trying, Whittaker. Hague, we'll march-order
tomorrow at dawn. You'll take the rear again."
Grey, windy dawnlight brought them out to the sound of Clark's call.
Strapping on equipment and plates, they assembled around the tank.
They were rested, and full fed.
"Walk, you poor devils," Whittaker was yelling from his tank turret.
"And, if you get tired, run awhile," he snorted, grinning heartlessly, as
he leaned back in pretended luxury against the gunner's seat, a thinly
padded metal strip.
Balistierri and the blond Swenson shouldered their rifles and shuffled
out. They would move well in advance as scouts.

"I wouldn't ride in that armored alarm-clock if it had a built-in
harem," Hurd was screaming at Whittaker, and hurled a well-placed
mudball at the tankman's head as the tank motor caught, and the
metal vehicle lumbered ahead toward the gate, with Whittaker
sneering, but with most of his head safely below the turret rim.
Beside it marched Clark, his ragged uniform carefully scraped clean of
mud, and with him Lenkranz, the metals man. Both carried rifles and
wore half empty bandoliers of blast cartridges.
The supply cart jerked behind the tank, and behind it filed Whitcomb
with his cameras; Sewell, the big, laconic medical technician;
Johnston; cartographer Hirooka perusing absorbedly the clip board
that held his strip map; Blake, the lean and spectacled bacteriologist,
brought up the rear. Hague waited until they had disappeared
through the gate cut sharply in the city's black wall, then he turned
to his gun crew.
Sergeant Brian, saturnine as always, swung past carrying the
pneumatic barrel assembly, Crosse with the charger a pace behind.
Next, Bormann, whispering to Helen who rode his shoulder piping
throaty calls. Last came Hurd, swaggering past with jaws grinding
steadily at that mysterious cud. Hague cast a glance over his
shoulder at the deserted street of black cubes, wondered at the dank
loneness of the place, and followed Hurd.
The hours wore on as they swung across dark grass, through damp
tendrils of cloud, and faced into whipping, cold wind, eyes narrowed
against its sting. Helen, squawking unhappily, crawled inside
Bormann's shirt and rode with just her brown bird-head protruding.
"Look at the big hole, Lieutenant," Hurd called above the wind.
Hurd had dropped behind, and Hague called a halt to investigate
Hurd's find, but as he hiked rapidly back, the wiry little man yelled
and pitched out of sight. Brian came running, and he and Hague
peered over the edge of a funnel shaped pit, from which Hurd was
trying to crawl. Each time he'd get a third of the way up the
eighteen-foot slope, gravelly soil would slide and he'd again be
carried to the bottom.

"Throw me a line."
Brian pulled a hank of nylon line from his belt, shook out the snarls,
and tossed an end into Hurd's clawing hands. Hague and the
Sergeant anchored themselves to the upper end and were preparing
to haul, when Hague saw something move in the gravel beneath
Hurd's feet, at the funnel bottom, and saw a giant pincers emerging
from loose, black gravel.
"Hurd look out!" he screamed.
The little man, white-faced, threw himself aside as a giant beetle
head erupted through the funnel bottom. The great pincers jaws
fastened around Hurd's waist as he struggled frantically up the pit's
side. He began screaming when the beetle monster dragged him
relentlessly down, his distorted face flung up at them appealingly.
Hague snatched at his rifle and brought it up. When the gun cracked,
the pincers tightened on Hurd's middle, and the little man was
snipped in half. The blue-white flash and report of the explosive
bullet blended with Hurd's choked yells, the beetle rolled over on its
back and the two bodies lay entangled at the pit bottom. Brian and
Hague looked at each other in silent, blanched horror, then turned
from the pit's edge and loped back to the others.
Bormann and Crosse peered fearfully across the wind-whipped grass,
and inquired in shouts what Hurd was doing.
"He's dead, gone," Hague yelled savagely over the wind's whine.
"Keep moving. We can't do anything. Keep going."
IV
At 1630 hours Commander Technician Harker slipped on the earset,
threw over a transmitting switch, and monotoned the routine verbal
message.

"Base to George Easy Peter One.... Base to George Easy Peter One....
Do you hear me George Easy Peter One.... Do you hear me George
Easy Peter One ... reply please ... reply please." Nothing came from
his earphones, but bursts of crackling interference, until he tried the
'copters next, and "George Easy Peter Two" and "George Easy Peter
Three" reported in. They were operating near the base.
He tried "One" again, just in case.
"Base to George Easy Peter One.... Base to George Easy Peter One....
Do you hear me.... Do you hear me ... out."
A scratching whisper resolved over the interference. Harker's face
wore a stunned look, but he quickly flung over a second switch and
the scratching voice blared over the mother ship's entire address
system. Men dropped their work throughout the great hull, and
clustered around the speakers.
"George One.... Base ... hear you ... rocket crashed ... overland ...
present strength ... supplies ... drop supplies."
Interference surged back and drowned the whispering voice, while
through Odysseus' hull a ragged cheer grew and gathered volume.
Harker shut off the address system and strained over his crackling
earphones, but nothing more came in response to his radio calls.
He glanced up and found the Warning Room jammed with
technicians, science section members, officers, men in laboratory
smocks, or greasy overalls, or spotless Rocket Service uniforms,
watching intently his own strained face as he tried to get through.
Commander Chapman looked haggard, and Harker remembered that
some one had once said that Chapman's young sister was the wife of
the medical technician who'd gone out with Patrol Rocket One.
Harker finally pulled off the earphones reluctantly and set them on
the table before him. "That's all. You heard everything they said over
the P.A. system. Nothing more is coming through."

Night came, another day, night again, and they came finally to the
plateau's end, and stood staring from a windy escarpment across an
endless roof of rainforest far below, grey green under the continuous
roof of lead-colored clouds. Hague, standing back a little, watched
them. A thin line of ragged men along the rim peering mournfully out
across that endless expanse for a gleam that might be the distant
hull of Odysseus, the mother ship. A damp wind fluttered their rags
and plastered them against gaunt bodies.
Clark and Sampler were conferring in shouts.
"Will the tank make it down this grade?" Clark wanted to know.
For once, Sergeant Sampler's mobile, merry face was grim.
"I don't know, but we'll sure try. Be ready to cut that cart loose if the
tank starts to slip."
Drag ropes were fastened to the cart, a man stationed at the tank
hitch, and Sampler sent his tank lurching forward over the edge, and
it slanted down at a sharp angle. Hague, holding a drag rope, set his
heels and allowed the tank's weight to pull him forward over the rim;
and the tank, cart, and muddy figures hanging to drag ropes began
descending the steep gradient. Bormann, just ahead of the
Lieutenant, strained back at the rope and turned a tight face over his
shoulder.
"She's slipping faster!"
The tank was picking up speed, and Hague heard the clash of gears
as Sampler tried to fight the downward pull of gravity. Gears ground,
and Sampler forced the whippet straight again, but the downward
slide was increasing. Hague was flattened under Bormann, heels
digging, and behind him he could hear Sergeant Brian cursing,
struggling to keep flat against the downward pull.
The tank careened sideways again, slipped, and Whittaker's white
face popped from her turret.
"She's going," he screamed.

A drag rope parted. Clark sprang like a madman between tank and
cart, and cut the hitch. The tank, with no longer sufficient restraining
weight, tipped with slow majesty outward, then rolled out and down,
bouncing, smashing as if in a slow motion film, shedding parts at
each crushing contact. It looked like a toy below them, still rolling
and gathering speed, when Hague saw Whittaker's body fly free, a
tiny ragdoll at that distance, and the tank was lost to view when it
bounced off a ledge and went floating down through space.
Clark signalled them forward, and they inched the supply cart
downward on the drag ropes, legs trembling with strain, and their
nerves twitching at the memory of Whittaker's chalky face peering
from the falling turret. It was eight hours before they reached the
bottom, reeling with exhaustion, set a guard, and tumbled into their
shelter tents. Outside, Hague could hear Clark pacing restlessly,
trying to assure himself that he'd been right to cut the tank free, that
there'd been no chance to save Whittaker and Sampler when the
tank began to slide.
Hague lay in his little tent listening to the footsteps splash past in
muddy Venusian soil, and was thankful that he hadn't had to make
the decision. He'd been saving three cigarettes in an oilskin packet,
and he drew one carefully from the wrapping now, lit it, and inhaled
deeply. Could he have done what Clark did—break that hitch? He still
didn't know when he took a last lung-filling pull at the tiny stub of
cigarette and crushed it out carefully.
As dawn filtered through the cloud layer, they were rolling shelter
tents and buckling on equipment. Clark's face was a worn mask when
he talked with Hague, and his fingers shook over his pack buckles.
"There are thirteen of us. Six men will pull the supply cart, and six
guard, in four hour shifts. You and I will alternate command at
guard."
He was silent for a moment, then watched Hague's face intently as
he spoke again.

"It'll be a first grade miracle if any of us get through. Hague, you—
you know I had to cut that tank free." His voice rose nervously. "You
know that! You're an officer."
"Yeah, I guess you did." Hague couldn't say it any better, and he
turned away and fussed busily with the bars holding the portable
Sonar detection unit to the supply cart.
They moved off with Hague leaning into harness pulling the supply
cart bumpily ahead. Clark stumbled jerkily at the head, with Blake, a
lean, silent ghost beside him, rifle in hand. The cart came next with
Hague, Bormann, Sergeant Brian, Crosse, Lenkranz and Sewell
leaning in single file against its weight. At the rear marched
photographer Whitcomb, Hirooka with his maps, and Balistierri, each
carrying a rifle. The big Swede Swenson was last in line, peering
warily back into the rainforest shadows. The thirteen men wound
Indian file from sight of the flatheaded reptilian thing, clutching a
sheaf of bronze arrows, that watched them.
Hague had lost count of days again when he looked up into the
shadowy forest roof, his feet finding their way unconsciously through
the thin mud, his ears registering automatically the murmurs of talk
behind him, the supply cart's tortured creaking, and the continuous
Sonar drone. The air felt different, warmer than its usual steam bath
heat, close and charged with expectancy, and the forest seemed to
crouch in waiting with the repressed silence of a hunting cat.
Crosse yelled thinly from the rear of the file, and they all halted to
listen, the hauling crew dropping their harness thankfully. Hague
turned back and saw Crosse's thin arm waving a rifle overhead, then
pointing down the trail. The Lieutenant listened carefully until he
caught the sound, a thin call, the sound of a horn mellowed by
distance.
The men unthinkingly moved in close and threw wary looks into the
forest ways around them.

"Move further ahead, Hague. Must be more lizard-men." Clark swore,
with tired despair. "All right, let's get moving and make it fast."
The cart creaked ahead again, moving faster this time, and the
snicking of rifle bolts came to Hague. He moved swiftly ahead on the
trail and glanced up again, saw breaks in the forest roof, and realized
that the huge trees were pitching wildly far above.
"Look up," he yelled, "wind coming!"
The wind came suddenly, striking with stone wall solidity. Hague
sprinted to the cart, and the struggling body of men worked it off the
trail, and into a buttress angle of two great tree roots, lashing it there
with nylon ropes. The wind velocity increased, smashing torn
branches overhead, and ripping at the men who lay with their heads
well down in the mud. Tiny animals were blown hurtling past, and
once a great spider came flailing in cartwheel fashion, then smashed
brokenly against a tree.
The wind drone rose in volume, the air darkened, and Hague lost
sight of the other men from behind his huddled shelter against a wall
like root. The great trees twisted with groaning protest, and
thunderous crashes came downward through the forest, with
sometimes the faint squeak of a dying or frightened animal. The wind
halted for a breathless, hushed moment of utter stillness, broken only
by the dropping of limbs and the scurry of small life forms—then
came the screaming fury from the opposite direction.
For a moment, the gunnery officer thought he'd be torn from the root
to which his clawing fingers clung. Its brutal force smashed breath
from Hague's lungs and held him pinned in his corner until he
struggled choking for air as a drowning man does. It seemed that he
couldn't draw breath, that the air was a solid mass from which he
could no longer get life. Then the wind stopped as suddenly as it had
come, leaving dazed quiet. As he stumbled back to the cart, Hague
saw crushed beneath a thigh-sized limb a feebly moving reptilian
head; and the dying eyes of the lizard-man were still able to stare at
him in cold malevolence.

The supply cart was still intact, roped between buttressing roots to
belt knives driven into the tough wood. Hague and Clark freed it,
called a hasty roll, and the march was resumed at a fast pace
through cooled, cleaner air. They could no longer hear horn sounds;
but the grim knowledge that lizard-men were near them lent
strength, and Hague led as rapidly as he dared, listening carefully to
the Sonar's drone behind him, altering his course when the sound
faded, and straightening out when it grew in volume.
A day slipped by and another, and the cart rolled ahead through thin
greasy mud on the forest floor, with the Sonar's drone mingled with
murmuring men's voices talking of food. It was the universal topic,
and they carefully worked out prolonged menus each would engorge
when they reached home. They forgot heat, insect bites, the sapping
humidity, and talked of food—steaming roasts, flanked by crystal
goblets of iced wine, oily roasted nuts, and lush, crisp green salads.
V
Hague, again marching ahead with Balistierri, broke into the
comparatively bright clearing, and was blinded for a moment by the
sudden, cloud-strained light after days of forest darkness. As their
eyes accommodated to the lemon-colored glare, he and Balistierri
sighted the animals squatting beneath low bushes that grew thickly in
the clearing. They were monkey-like primates with golden tawny
coats, a cockatoo crest of white flaring above dog faces. The
monkeys stared a moment, the great white crests rising doubtfully,
ivory canine teeth fully three inches long bared.
They'd been feeding on fruit that dotted the shrub-filled clearing; but
now one screamed a warning, and they sprang into vines that made
a matted wall on every side. The two rifles cracked together again,
and three fantastically colored bodies lay quiet, while the rest of the
troop fled screaming into tree tops and disappeared. At the blast of
sound, a fluttering kaleidoscope of color swept up about the startled

rocketeers, and they stood blinded, while mad whorls of color whirled
around them in a miniature storm.
"Giant butterflies," Balistierri was screaming in ecstasy. "Look at
them! Big as a dove!"
Hague watched the bright insects coalesce into one agitated mass of
vermillion, azure, metallic green, and sulphur yellow twenty feet
overhead. The pulsating mass of hues resolved itself into single
insects, with wings large as dinnerplates, and they streamed out of
sight over the forest roof.
"What were they?" he grinned at Balistierri. "Going to name them
after Bormann?"
The slight zoologist still watched the spot where they'd vanished.
"Does it matter much what I call them? Do you really believe any one
will ever be able to read this logbook I'm making?" He eyed the
gunnery officer bleakly, then, "Well, come on. We'd better skin these
monks. They're food anyway."
Hague followed Balistierri, and they stood looking down at the golden
furred primates. The zoologist knelt, fingered a bedraggled white
crest, and remarked, "These blast cartridges don't leave much meat,
do they? Hardly enough for the whole party." He pulled a tiny metal
block, with a hook and dial, from his pocket, looped the hook through
a tendon in the monkey's leg and lifted the dead animal.
"Hmmm. Forty-seven pounds. Not bad." He weighed each in turn,
made measurements, and entered these in his pocket notebook.
The circle around Sewell, who presided over the cook unit, was merry
that night. The men's eyes were bright in the heater glow as they
stuffed their shrunken stomachs with monkey meat and the fruits the
monkeys had been eating when Hague and Balistierri surprised them.
Swenson and Crosse and Whitcomb, the photographer, overate and
were violently sick; but the others sat picking their teeth contentedly
in a close circle. Bormann pulled his harmonica from his shirt pocket,
and the hard, silvery torrent of music set them to singing softly.
Hague and Blake, the bacteriologist, stood guard among the trees.

At dawn, they were marching again, stepping more briskly over tiny
creeks, through green-tinted mud, and the wet heat. At noon, they
heard the horn again, and Clark ordered silence and a faster pace.
They swung swiftly, eating iron rations as they marched. Hague
leaned into his cart harness and watched perspiration staining
through Bormann's shirted back just ahead of him. Behind, Sergeant
Brian tugged manfully, and growled under his breath at buzzing
insects, slapping occasionally with a low howl of muted anguish.
Helen, the skin bird, rode on Bormann's shoulder, staring back into
Hague's face with questioning chirps; and Hague was whistling softly
between his teeth at her, when Bormann stopped suddenly and
Hague slammed into him. Helen took flight with a startled squawk,
and Clark came loping back to demand quiet. Bormann stared at the
two officers, his young-old face blank with surprise.
"I'm, I'm shot," he stuttered, and stared wonderingly at the thing
thrusting from the side opening in his chest armor. It was one of the
fragile bronze arrows, gleaming metallically in the forest gloom.
Hague cursed, and jerked free of the cart harness.
"Here, I'll get it free." He tugged at the shaft, and Bormann's face
twisted. Hague stepped back. "Where's Sewell? This thing must be
barbed."
"Back off the trail! Form a wide circle around the cart, but stay under
cover! Fight 'em on their own ground!" Clark was yelling, and the
men clustered about the cart faded into forest corridors.
Hague and Sewell, left alone, dragged Bormann's limp length
beneath the metal cart. Hague leaped erect again, man-handled the
pneumatic gun off the cart and onto the trail, spun the charger crank,
and lay down in firing position. Behind him, Sewell grunted, "He's
gone. Arrow poison must have paralyzed his diaphragm and chest
muscles."
"Okay. Get up here and handle the ammunition." Hague's face was
savage as the medical technician crawled into position beside him
and opened an ammunition carrier.

"Watch the trail behind me," Hague continued, slamming up the top
cover plate and jerking a belt through the pneumatic breech. "When I
yell charge, spin the charger crank; and when I yell off a number, set
the meter arrow at that number." He snapped the cover plate shut
and locked it.
"The other way! They're coming the other way!" Sewell lumbered to
his knees, and the two heaved the gun around. A blowgun arrow
rattled off the cart body above them, and gobbling yells filtered
among the trees with an answering crack of explosive cartridges. A
screaming knot of grey figures came sprinting down on the cart.
Hague squeezed the pneumatic's trigger, the gun coughed, and blue-
fire-limned lizard-men crumpled in the trail mud.
"Okay, give 'em a few the other way."
The two men horsed the gun around and sent a buzzing flock of
explosive loads down the forest corridor opening ahead of the cart.
They began firing carefully down other corridors opening off the trail,
aiming delicately lest their missiles explode too close and the
concussion kill their own men; but they worked a blasting circle of
destruction that smashed the great trees back in the forest and made
openings in the forest roof. Blue fire flashed in the shadows and froze
weird tableaus of screaming lizard-men and hurtling mud, branches,
and great splinters of wood.
An exulting yell burst behind them. Hague saw Sewell stare over his
shoulder, face contorted, then the big medical technician sprang to
his feet. Hague rolled hard, pulling his belt knife, and saw Sewell and
a grey man-shape locked in combat above him, saw leathery grey
claws drive a bronze knife into the medic's unarmored throat; and
then the gunnery officer was on his feet, knife slashing, and the
lizard-man fell across the prone Sewell. An almost audible silence fell
over the forest, and Hague saw Rocketeers filtering back onto the
cart trail, rifles cautiously extended at ready.
"Where's Clark?" he asked Lenkranz. The grey-haired metals man
gazed back dully.

"I haven't seen him since we left the trail. I was with Swenson."
The others moved in, and Hague listed the casualties. Sewell,
Bormann, and Lieutenant Clark. Gunnery Officer Clarence Hague was
now in command. That the Junior Lieutenant now commanded
Ground Expeditionary Patrol Number One trickled into his still numb
brain; and he wondered for a moment what the Base Commander
would think of their chances if he knew. Then he took stock of his
little command.
There was young Crosse, his face twitching nervously. There was
Blake, the tall, quiet bacteriologist; Lenkranz, the metals man;
Hirooka, the Nisei; Balistierri; Whitcomb, the photographer, with a
battered Hasselblad still dangling by its neck cord against his armored
chest. Swenson was still there, the big Swede crewman; and
imperturbable Sergeant Brian, who was now calmly cleaning the
pneumatic gun's loading mechanism. And, Helen, Bormann's skin
bird, fluttering over the ration cart, beneath which Bormann and
Sewell lay in the mud.
"Crosse, Lenkranz, burial detail. Get going." It was Hague's first order
as Commander. He thought the two looked most woebegone of the
party, and figured digging might loosen their nerves.
Crosse stared at him, and then sat suddenly against a tree hole.
"I'm not going to dig. I'm not going to march. This is crazy. We're
going to get killed. I'll wait for it right here. Why do we keep walking
and walking when we're going to die anyway?" His rising voice
cracked, and he burst into hysterical laughter. Sergeant Brian rose
quietly from his gun cleaning, jerked Crosse to his feet, and slapped
him into quiet. Then he turned to Hague.
"Shall I take charge of the burial detail, sir?"
Hague nodded; and suddenly his long dislike of the iron-hard
Sergeant melted into warm liking and admiration. Brian was the man
who'd get them all through.
The Sergeant knotted his dark brows truculently at Hague. "And I
don't believe Crosse meant what he said. He's a very brave man. We

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