The Raiders of Saturn's Ring
the scientist, swept his arms out toward the fields. Waving there in the bright artificial sunshine, was a tattery green host of plants, that men of Earth had known and lived with, with considerable discomfort but scant real harm for countless ages.

Was it just the wind that blew that host, making it sway and undulate with a simple grandeur, while huge Saturn looked on? Or was the unseen spirit of Arne Reynaud, the old horticulturist, the old fool, the dreamer and the wizzard, stirring them, too?

Ron Leiccsen scowled, still lost and bogged down with the enigma, as were most of the other listeners. "I guess you've got to draw me a diagram, Anna," he grumbled, shaking his head ruefully. "I know a lot about machinery and space ships and Saturn's Rings, but it looks as though this biological problem goes beyond my depth."

Anna Charles smiled a faint, twisted little smile. "We've been through a lot together, Ronnie," she said wistfully, not caring if the others heard. "We've quarreled a lot, learned an awful lot together, and I think at last found that life could be beautiful for us both. So I can afford to be patient. Now look—"

She bent down. Her little fists clutched a tall, tattery plant, that grew nearby in the grass. Tugging vigorously, she pulled it out. From its top, where there was a cluster of homely golden nodules, there dusted a fine, yellowish powder. Pollen.

Anna's nose wrinkled. Suddenly she sneezed very hard.

"Somebody ought to write some music about this plant, now," she said at last. "It is commonly known as—Ragweed. Some Terrestrials are terribly alergic to it, though nothing like the poor Acharians from flowerless Achar, of course. Its dry pollen, drifting with the summer breeze, causes more—and more violent—hay-fever, than anything else known on Earth!"

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