Among The Scented Ones

By BASIL WELLS

To Besan Wur this backward planet of stampeding monstrosities and stinking humanoids was Sanctuary. Here he could be free—until they discovered he gave off no odor....

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1947. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

A vast dark flood spread across the matted green of the broad Saaaran plain. It rolled westward relentlessly, its outer flanks washing around and over the lower hills and lapping deep into the fringes of the jungle. A rolling endless thunder of countless pounding feet went before its tossing crest.

Past the ruins of a score of ancient cities the stampeding herd of green-crested saurians thundered. It seemed a world devoid of intelligent life that they traversed in their unreasoning terror. Only the jungle-grown walls and splintered streets showed that man had once been here....

The great salmon-hued sun was directly overhead as the maddened denars poured through a five-mile gap between twin ranges of low hills. Twelve miles further their thundering progress was checked.

And along the line of the northern cluster of hills a giant tube of unrusting metal mesh was laid. Lianas and other vegetation half-swallowed its forty-foot diameter, but inside there was a smooth hard-surfaced roadway where thirty-foot wheels, with cabins for passengers between their twin tires, raced swiftly.

Even as a group of twenty wheels spun eastward through the tube the stampeding denars crashed through the stout metal mesh guarding the highway....

Besan Wur shouted, terror-stricken, as an avalanche of huge green-crested saurians surged toward them through the disintegrating sides of the tubeway. He tasted the salt of bitten lips.

The giant double tires smoked as Nard Rost, the gray-haired Garro at the controls, spun the wheel tightly about and sent it hurtling back along the way they had come.

"That was—close!" Besan's voice was shrill. His fingers were biting into the back of his seat as he peered backward at the hissing horde of denars.

"Ras Thib—Walof Jemar—all the others!"

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