SKIT-TREE PLANET

By MURRAY LEINSTER

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

The communicator-phone set up a clamor when the sky was just beginning to gray in what, on this as yet unnamed planet, they called the east because the local sun rose there. The call-wave had turned on the set. Bob Wentworth kicked off his blankets and stumbled from his bunk in the atmosphere-flier, and went sleepily forward to answer. He pushed the answer-stud.

"Hello, what's the trouble?" he said wearily. "Talk louder, there's some static. Oh—No, there's no trouble. Why should there be? The devil I'm late reporting! Haynes and I obeyed orders and tried to find the end of a confounded skit-tree plantation. We chased our tails all day long, but we made so much westing that we gained a couple of hours light. So it isn't sunrise yet, where we are."

Wentworth yawned as he listened.

"Oh, we set down the flier on a sort of dam and went to sleep," he answered. "No, nothing happened. We're used to feeling creepy. We thrive on it. Haynes says he's going to do a sculpture group of a skit-tree planter which will be just an eye peeking around a tree-trunk. No! Hang it, no!

"We photographed a couple of hundred thousand square miles of skit-trees growing in neat rows, and we photographed dams, and canals, and a whole irrigation system, but not a sign of a living creature. No cities, no houses, no ruins, no nothing. I've got a theory, McRae, about what happened to the skit-tree planters."

He yawned again.

"Yeah. I think they built up a magnificent civilization and then found a snark. Snark! SNARK. Yes. And the snark was a boojum." He paused. "So they silently faded away."

He grinned at the profanity that came out of the communicator-speaker. Then—back at the irreverently nicknamed Galloping Cow which was the base ship of the Extra-Solarian Research Institute expedition to this star-cluster—McRae cut off.

Wentworth stretched, and looked out of the atmosphere-flier's windows. He absently noticed that the static on the communication-set kept up, which was rather odd on a FM receiver. But before the fact could have any 

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