60
hese diminutive equines. beautiful with their orange bodies and black or white manes and fetlock, sometimes formed immense herds that must have numbered in the hundreds of thousands. So thick were they that they looked like a bobbing sea of flashing heads and gleaming hoofs stretching clear to the horizon.
To stretch to the horizon was something on this planet. The plain was the flattest Green had ever seen. He could scarcely believe that it ran unbroken for thousands of miles. But it did, and from his high point of view he could see in a vast circle. It was a beautiful sight. The grass itself was tall and thickbodied, about two feet high and a sixteenth of an inch through. It was a bright green, brighter than earthly grass, almost shiny. During the rainy season, he was told, it would blossom with many tiny white and red flowers and give a pleasing perfume.
Now, as Green watched, something happened that startled him.
Abruptly, as if a monster mowing machine had come along the day before, the high grass ended and a lawn began. The new grass seemed to be only an inch high. And the lawn stretched at least a mile wide and as far ahead of the Bird as he could see.
"What do you think of that?" he asked Amra's son.
Grizquetr shrugged. "I don't know. The sailors say that it is done by the wuru, an animal the size of a ship, that only comes out at night. It eats grass, but it has the nasty temper of a dire dog, and will attack and smash a roller as if it were made of cardboard."
"Do you believe that?" Green said, watching him closely. Grizquetr was an intelligent lad in whom he hoped to plant a few seeds of skepticism. Perhaps some day those seeds might flower into the beginnings of science.
"I do not know if the story is true or not. It is possible, but I've met nobody who has ever seen a wuru. And if it comes out only at night, where does it hide during the daytime? There is no hole in the ground large enough to conceal it."
"Very good," said Green, smiling. Happil
