And then the white shape came looming through the murkiness right at Nils's pistol. He could even see the animal's eye, whereas usually you were lucky if you could distinguish the head. He raised his gun and fired and had the satisfaction of seeing the lion flounder and thrash and finally subside, floating aimlessly in the air. "Got it," Nils said, grinning. That was another bonus, and each time Nils got a bonus, one of his kids had enough money to get through college. He threw the harpoon and snagged the beast just behind it's right foreflipper. Pulling in the harpoon cable, he made certain that the weapon was firmly embedded in the lion's flesh. "Pull away," he said. "We think you'd better come up, too," they said on the raft. "Okay," Nils said. There was only one more child to earn an education for, and then he was going to quit. He and the dead lion were pulled up through the atmosphere slowly and gently, but side by side, so that he could look closely at the beast he had killed. * * * * * Evolution had been kind to the air lion of Uranus. To the only animal inhabitant of a planet whose surface temperature is -180 degrees Centigrade, Evolution had granted the thickest fur coat of any animal known to man and a cold-blooded circulatory system. To the inhabitant of a planet whose atmosphere is mostly hydrogen and methane, Evolution had given a complicated respiratory apparatus that breathed in hydrogen and exhaled hydrogen sulfide. To retain the balance of Uranian chemistry, Evolution had provided a brittle, yellow, rootless plant-life that inhaled hydrogen sulfide and exhaled hydrogen. To the inhabitant of a planet where most of the atmosphere was in a liquid state, Evolution had seen to it that the air lion was perfectly capable of living entirely in a liquid environment: a thick skin and heavy bone structure enabled the air lion to withstand the heavy pressures of the Uranian depths, gills made it possible for him to breathe liquids, and his powerful flippers made him the strongest swimmer in the solar system. One would say that a bountiful Providence had been good to the air lion. Granted the inconveniences of its environment, certainly the air lion was efficiently equipped by Nature to live on its home planet. But Providence also provided the air lion with a natural enemy which bade fair to exterminate the species. And that enemy was women--the same women (or rather, their descendants) who caused the extermination of the egret. Women on Earth had taken a fancy to air lion coats; and, despite the high cost of these coats (between forty and fifty thousand dollars), the number of air lions was decreasing more rapidly than any species could withstand.