They crept silently through the underbrush. It was feeding in the field, not noisily, yet they could hear it. The dogs hadn't barked. They inched nearer. The blue sun of Glade came up and shone full on their quarry. The gun dropped in Hafner's hand. He clenched his teeth and raised it again. Marin put out a restraining arm. "Don't shoot," he whispered. "I'm the exec here. I say it's dangerous." "Dangerous," agreed Marin, still in a whisper. "That's why you can't shoot. It's more dangerous than you know." Hafner hesitated and Marin went on. "The omnimal couldn't compete in the changed environment and so it evolved mice. We stopped the mice and it countered with rats. We turned back the rat and it provided the tiger. "The tiger was easiest of all for us and so it was apparently stopped for a while. But it didn't really stop. Another animal was being formed, the one you see there. It took the omnimal two years to create it--how, I don't know. A million years were required to evolve it on Earth." Hafner hadn't lowered the rifle and he showed no signs of doing so. He looked lovingly into the sights. "Can't you see?" urged Marin. "We can't destroy the omnimal. It's on Earth now, and on the other planets, down in the storage areas of our big cities, masquerading as rats. And we've never been able to root out even our own terrestrial rats, so how can we exterminate the omnimal?" "All the more reason to start now." Hafner's voice was flat. Marin struck the rifle down. "Are their rats better than ours?" he asked wearily. "Will their pests win or ours be stronger? Or will the two make peace, unite and interbreed, make war on us? It's not impossible; the omnimal could do it if interbreeding had a high survival factor. "Don't you still see? There is a progression. After the tiger, it bred this. If this evolution fails, if we shoot it down, what will it create next? This creature I think we can compete with. _It's the one after this that I do not want to face._" * * * * * It heard them. It raised its head and looked around. Slowly it edged away and backed toward a nearby grove. The biologist stood up and called softly. The creature scurried to the trees and stopped just inside the shadows among them. The two men laid down their rifles. Together they approached the grove, hands spread open to show they carried no weapons. It came out to meet them. Naked, it had had no time to learn about clothing. Neither did it have weapons. It plucked a large white flower from the tree and extended this mutely as a sign of peace. "I wonder what it's like," said Marin. "It seems adult, but can it be, all the way through? What's inside that body?" "I wonder what's in his head," Hafner said worriedly. It looked very much like a man. --F. L. WALLACE * * * * *