Two Way Destiny By Frank Belknap Long They were alone on an enchanted planet, a lost Eden glowing with beauty and strangeness. But over them hung a cloud of tribal hate. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Fantastic Universe October 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] _As science fiction has increased its speculative scope there has come into its orbit a new and largely unexplored world of shining possibilities--the world of comparative ethnology. Why do some primitive human societies glorify hate, fear, cruelty, war, and others live at peace with their neighbors? In this unusual novelette the gifted and versatile Frank Belknap Long has penetrated to the very core of the mystery with dramatically compelling logic._ She was kneeling when I saw her, her face half in shadows, her girlishly slender figure mirrored by the cool-running stream at her feet. You'd think that on a planet like Dracona a man would be safe from shock. Between the fire mountains and the sea, and the snowy-crested birds that never stop singing you'd think that nothing could surprise him. Remember Blake's City and Garden, his New Jerusalem with its shining Eden just over the hill? Well--Dracona is just as tremendous as that, even though it's all a garden wilderness with the city part left out. Surely on Dracona there was enough nerve-tingling beauty everywhere to enchant a lad with my capacity for enjoyment. Why couldn't I have accepted that beauty as a near approach to paradise, content in the knowledge that I was my own master under the stars? Why did I have to step into a forest clearing and let a slender pale girl strip away all of my defenses, leaving me as naked as a new-born babe to the great, roaring winds of unreason? If I had shouted the question then and there the forest might have murmured in reply: "It's because you haven't seen a woman for so long. It's because loneliness is a destructive blight, and you're a young romantic fool." It might have shouted that to my mind, to the tumultuously pounding blood at my temples. But it wouldn't have been a complete answer. I knew she wasn't from Earth the instant she raised her eyes, and looked at me. Mocking eyes she had, of a deep, lustrous violet, and her pale hair clustered in little, golden ringlets about her brow, giving her the tantalizingly defiant aspect of a woman with enough of the eternal tease in her to be secretly amused by her own beauty. * * * * * She was collecting zoological specimens in the pollen-scented Draconian dusk. Not me, especially. Just iridescent spider bats, darter birds with vermilion beaks, and flying lizards which measured forty-eight inches straight across their wing-tips.