He couldn't shrug, he wasn't physiologically capable of it, but it was apparent that he felt they'd soon reach a planet whose climate could support intelligent life. If the Bosun-Colonel had any ideas that such directions as up and down were meaningless in space, he kept them to himself. As the second planet from its sun hove into view, he switched on the magniscan eagerly. "I say, this is more like it. Clouds and all that sort of thing. Should we have a go at it, sir?" The Conductor yawned. "Too bloody cloudy for my taste. Too equivocal. Let's push on," he said languidly. "I have a hunch the third planet might be just our dish of tea." Quelling his disappointment, the Bosun-Colonel waited for the third planet to swim into being. And when it did, blooming like an orchid in all its greens and moistnesses, he could scarcely contain his excitement. "Why, it looks just like Earth," he marveled. "Gad, sir, what a master stroke of navigation. How did you realize this would be it?" "Oh, I don't know," the Conductor said modestly. "Things usually have a habit of occurring in threes. I'm quite a student of numerology, you know." Then he remembered the Mission and drew himself erect on all his legs. "You may prepare for landing, Mister," he ordered crisply. The Bosun-Colonel shifted over to manual and busied himself at the helm, luffing the square craft down the troughs of air. Gliding over the vast tropical oceans, he put down at a large land mass above a shallow warm sea, twenty-five degrees below the northern pole. Too numbed for comment, the crew stared out at the alien vista. They'd heard of retarded life forms from other Missionary expeditions--of planets where the inhabitants, in extreme emergency, had been known to commit murder. But this was surely the worst, the most vicious imaginable in the galaxy. Here, with life freshly up from the sea, freshly launched on the long climb to maturity and self-realization--was nothing but horror. With so lush a vegetation, so easily capable of supporting them side by side in abundance, the monsters were actually feeding on each other. Great lumbering beasts they were with their bristling hides and huge tails, charging between the giant tree ferns; gouging living chunks from one another while razor-toothed birds with scaly wings flapped overhead, screaming for the remnants. As the sounds of carnage came through the audio ports, the youngest Oarsman keeled over in a faint. Even the Conductor was visibly shaken. The Bosun-Colonel turned to him with a sick expression. "Surely it's a lost cause, Skipper. Life like this will never have a soul worth saving." "Not in its present stage," the Old Man was forced to agree. "Still, one never knows the devious paths that evolution takes." He considered the scene for a thoughtful, shuddering interval. "Perhaps in several thousand millenniums...."