"Her turquoise thunderbird." He showed us the bit of blackened silver and blue-veined stone. "Back on Terra.... Back when we were student pilots.... We bought it from an Indian in an old, old town called Sante Fe." He bent again. "Lilith?" he whispered. "Lilith, what killed you?" We found no other bones, nothing even to tell us what force or poison kept the creeping jungle back from that solitary plant. We left at dusk. Tenderly, Lance Llandark brought the gathered bones. Carefully we carried a few leaves and dried pods from that crazy sentinel plant. We found no other clue. Patiently, day by forty-hour day, we searched the other sites. We found jet marks and stumps and teeming weeds, but nothing like that tormented nightmare over Lilith Llandark's skeleton. We found no wreckage. Nothing to show how the planet had murdered the lost expeditions. Day by eternal day, the unknown leered from the secret places of its genes. It was all vegetable. We saw no animal movement, heard no cry or insect hum. The silence became suffocating. Day after desperate day, we returned to the micro-probe. "The answer's in the genes," Lance Llandark whispered grimly. "We've no other chance." He kept the probe running on the strangest genes of all; those from the plant nightmare that had grown beside his wife. They were like nothing else on the planet. The double-stranded chains of DNA were monstrously long; many of the nucleotide links held copper or arsenic atoms. "Queer!" Lance kept muttering. "No copper or arsenic in other plants here. I'd like to know why." * * * * * He was running when we heard the woman scream. In that stifling quiet, her cry unnerved us all. We crowded down to the lock. Tattered, stained with blood-colored juices, she slipped through those coiled, constricting creepers. She splashed out into the open ditch, waving a filthy rag. Halfway to the ship, she fell into the mud. Lance Llandark led three of us to bring her in. She whimpered and looked up. Tears streaked the grime on her wasted face. "Lance!" she gasped. "My dear." "Lilith--" But he shrank back suddenly. "I found Lilith dead!" "I am nearly dead." She tried weakly to get up. "You see, we're all marooned out there in the bush. Emergency landing, when we tried to get off. Wrecked our astrogation gear. Need your spare astro-pilot--" "Back." He swung on us. "Back aboard!" "What's wrong?" We were stunned, "She's your wife--" "Aboard! Instanter!" We obeyed his deadly voice. "Help--" she whispered faintly behind us in the mud. "Survivors--need astro-pilot-to plot our way home--" The clanging lock cut off her voice. Angrily we turned on Lance Llandark. "Hold it!" he snapped. "I'm not crazy--the planet is. Come along to the micro-probe. I'm probing a seed from the plant we found by Lilith's bones. It puzzled me. So much of it was--" In spite of the tension, he had to grope for a word to express meaning.