Valkyrie From The Void By BASIL WELLS Staggering under the blasting heat of a great ringed sun, she fought only to cross her savage slimy world. The lithe Priestess Ylda knew not that her goal lay, bright and shining, a thousand light-years away. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1948. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Hardan Synn reined in his graceful golden-furred _maar_ as he reached the rim of the river's low bluff. He was uncomfortable, for the _vurth_-padded garments that covered his naked body were growing dry, but tied to his huge hornless saddle were three fat Dryland birds. He would eat well tonight. The rough fare of cereals and preserved fish had palled. Five years of roaming the blistering plains and mountains with sun-hardened prospectors and hunters had given Hardan Synn a taste for Dryland flesh. So it was that he quitted the camp when the day's trek was done and rode out in search of game. The maar's long black ears cupped forward, searching the source of some discordant sound. Hardan's keen green eyes snapped back to the reality of the camp sprawling half-in, half-out of the muddy bluish river. Men were fighting, fists and clubs smashing into the down-furred flesh of their fellows. The sound of their enraged bellowing and the shrill screams of pain and agony grew louder even as he forced his maar down the steep path to the bluff's base. "Nitka Porn again," Hardan Synn spat out savagely as the blue dust swirled about him. "Always he seeks to stir up trouble among the _sarifs_." His sun-darkened face was a gaunt mask as he neared the river, but his slitted green eyes were hot with growing rage. He could not leave the eighty great wagons with their cargos of two hundred Wetlanders and their meager supplies for so short a time as a _turev_ of the water dial without trouble arising. Hardan sprang off his mount and elbowed his way into the thick of the melee, his broad hard shoulders tossing soggy-padded men aside. His hard fists smashed one scowling-faced Wetlander's nose, and then he was through into the rude square formed by the inner ring of six-wheeled wagons. "Nitka Porn!" he shouted, his voice a knife-thrust of sound above the tumult. The fighting men separated slowly, some weaving on their legs unsteadily, bleeding, and others kneeling and groaning. A half-dozen, most of them wearing the short green capes of the nobles' personal servants, sprawled limply in their own reddish-brown blood.