Next morning, before sun-up, we lay in wait for the herd behind a rock beside the waterhole. The sky was growing pale saffron near the horizon, then light yellow, and finally glaring brass as the sun arose. (By "sun," I mean the star Polaris, of course. Our sun is a star, you know. Or did you? _I_ knew, naturally.) Then, afar off, I espied the bulky blobs in the sky that were the flying tuskers of K'niik-K'naak. No man had ever hunted one before. I felt pretty proud, let me tell you. Onward they came through the air, their large skin-type gray wings flapping stolidly up and down, about three strokes to the mile. Enormous creatures they were, with fiery little eyes, and long trailing trunks that had a wicked little hook at the tip. But the thing that really caught one's eye was their tusks. Ten of them. Eight originating in the mouth, and one in either fore-knee. Each tusk was seven feet in length, long, white, straight-tapered and flawless. But not ivory, not on these babies. Pure pearl. That lovely lustrous calcareous concretion! Each tusk would bring fifty thousand interplanetary credits on the open market. And there were ten per elephantine beast, and at least sixty of them in the herd. "Look at that, will you!" I cried to Mimp. "Look, feast your ugly eyes on that gleaming fortune swooping down upon us, Mimp!" "I look, I feast," he murmured servilely, huddled behind me behind the rock behind the tree. Aliens tend to be cowardly when their lives are in danger. Carefully, I raised the rifle and took a bead on the youngest beast in that descending herd. It's slightly illegal to shoot the fledglings, but after all, I wasn't going to bring him _back_ with me, so no one would know. It's just that I find that when I shoot the eldest in a herd of wildlife, the others miss their protector and flee. But if I shoot one of the babies, the elder ones stay around to protect it, and I get to kill lots more. Nasty, perhaps, but that's the hunting game for you. Anyhow, I took this bead on the beast. I was just in the act of depressing the firing stud when an unwonted lightness in the weapon caught my attention. Irritated, I cracked open the firing chamber. "_Mimp!_" I growled, in one of my rare real wraths. "You didn't _load_ the ray-rifle! Even a Moxley .55 is no damned good without cartridges!" "A thousand pardons, boss," muttered Mimp, inclining his loathsome lavender face in a subservient bow. "I go get." He wriggled away across the sand and into the hut, fortunately not disturbing the herd, which was now kneeling on the slope above the waterhole and inhaling that putrid pink liquid through their trunks. I drooled a bit, seeing the rainbow glint of sunlight on those magnificent tusks. Seconds passed, then minutes. The herd was practically slaked, and still no crawling Mimp reappeared from the hut. Soon they'd fly off, and cost me a fortune.