"I w-was only fooling," Charlie said, vaguely understanding that you could somehow make things happen on this world called Crimson. But he learned a lesson that night. You could make things happen on Crimson, but you couldn't unmake them. The tiger roared again. But they were downwind from it and it went elsewhere in search of prey. Huddled together near the embers of the Indian campfire, the two children slept fitfully through the cold night. Then the three suns finally came up on three different sides of the horizon. Crimson was deadly, but beautiful.... * * * * * _Although credit for the discovery of _Aladdin's Planet_ goes to the explorer Richard Purcell of Earth, two Earth children actually were shipwrecked there twenty years before Purcell's expedition. But instead of paving the way for Purcell, they actually made the exploration more difficult for him. In fact, it was positively fraught with peril. But since _Aladdin's Planet_ had become the galaxy's arsenal of plenty, it was well worth Purcell's effort. As any schoolboy knows in this utopia of 24th century plenty, _Aladdin's Planet_, almost exactly at the heart of the galaxy, where matter is spontaneously created to sweep out in long cosmic trails across the galaxy, is the home not merely of spontaneous creation of matter, but spontaneous _formed_ creation, with any human psyche capable of doing the handwork of God. A planet of great import ..._ _--from The ANNALS OF SPACE, Vol. 2_ * * * * * She stood poised for a glorious moment on the very edge of the rock, the bronze and pink of her glistening in the sun, the spray still clinging to her from her last dive. Then, grace in every line of her lithe body, she sprang from the rock in a perfectly executed swan dive. Charlie helped her out, smiling. "That was pretty," he said. "Well, you taught me how." Her figure was not yet that of a woman, but far more than that of a girl. She was very beautiful and Charlie knew this although he had no standards to judge by, except for the Indian women they occasionally saw or Blackbeard's slave girls when the pirate ship came in to trade. Unselfconsciously, Robin climbed into her gold-mesh shorts. Charlie helped her fasten the gold-mesh halter. Long, long ago--it seemed an unreal dream, almost--he had been a very small boy and his mother had taken him to a show in which everyone danced and sang and wore gold-mesh clothing. He had never forgotten it, and now all their clothing was gold-mesh. * * * * * Robin spun around and looked at him. Her tawny blonde hair fell almost to her waist, and he helped her comb it with a jewel-encrusted comb he had wished into being a few days before. "I so like Crimson!" she cried impulsively. Charlie smiled. "Why, that's a funny thing to say. Is there any other kind of a place?" "You mean, but Crimson?" "Yes."