Among The Scented Ones By BASIL WELLS To Besan Wur this backward planet of stampeding monstrosities and stinking humanoids was Sanctuary. Here he could be free--until they discovered he gave off no odor.... [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1947. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] A vast dark flood spread across the matted green of the broad Saaaran plain. It rolled westward relentlessly, its outer flanks washing around and over the lower hills and lapping deep into the fringes of the jungle. A rolling endless thunder of countless pounding feet went before its tossing crest. Past the ruins of a score of ancient cities the stampeding herd of green-crested saurians thundered. It seemed a world devoid of intelligent life that they traversed in their unreasoning terror. Only the jungle-grown walls and splintered streets showed that man had once been here.... The great salmon-hued sun was directly overhead as the maddened _denars_ poured through a five-mile gap between twin ranges of low hills. Twelve miles further their thundering progress was checked. And along the line of the northern cluster of hills a giant tube of unrusting metal mesh was laid. Lianas and other vegetation half-swallowed its forty-foot diameter, but inside there was a smooth hard-surfaced roadway where thirty-foot wheels, with cabins for passengers between their twin tires, raced swiftly. Even as a group of twenty wheels spun eastward through the tube the stampeding _denars_ crashed through the stout metal mesh guarding the highway.... * * * * * Besan Wur shouted, terror-stricken, as an avalanche of huge green-crested saurians surged toward them through the disintegrating sides of the tubeway. He tasted the salt of bitten lips. The giant double tires smoked as Nard Rost, the gray-haired Garro at the controls, spun the wheel tightly about and sent it hurtling back along the way they had come. "That was--close!" Besan's voice was shrill. His fingers were biting into the back of his seat as he peered backward at the hissing horde of _denars_. "Ras Thib--Walof Jemar--all the others!" Nard Rost nodded grave assent. At least twelve of the wheels had been swallowed up by that churning death from the open plains. "There isn't any chance they could have survived," Besan said numbly. "The wheels are flattened and broken already." Besan gasped and his hand went to his throat. For by now the acrid musty scent of the older Garro pervaded the narrow drum of a cabin. That scent was the natural protection of the men of Saaar; only a mindless stampeding herd of _denars_, or other men, would brave contact with his kind.