“I think that’s the planet,” agreed Jamison.  “We passed close by it.  We saw it.”

“It had a moon,” observed Cochrane.  “A big one.  It looked like a world itself.  What would it be like there?”

“Cooler than this,” said Jamison promptly, “because it’s farther from the sun.  But it might pick up some heat from reflection from its primary’s white clouds.  It would be a fair world.  It has oceans and continents and strings of foam-girt islands.  But its sea is strange and dark and restless.  Gigantic tides surge in its depths, drawn by the planetary colossus about which it swings.  Its animal life—.”

“Cut,” said Cochrane dryly.  “What do you really think?  Could it be another inhabitable world for people to move to?”

Jamison looked annoyed at having been cut off.

“Probably,” he said more prosaically.  “The tides would be monstrous, though.”

“Might be used for power,” said Cochrane.  “We’ll see ...”

Then Jones spoke with elaborate casualness: 

“Here’s something to look at.  On the ground.”

Cochrane moved to see.  The dusk had deepened still more.  The smooth, green-covered ground had become a dark olive.  Where bare hillsides gave upon the sky, there were dark masses flowing slowly forward.  The edges of the hills turned black, and the blackness moved down their nearer slopes.  It was not an even front of darkness.  There were patches which preceded the others.  They did not stay distinct.  They merged with the masses which followed them, and other patches separated in their places.  All of the darkness moved without haste, with a sort of inexorable deliberation.  It moved toward the ship and the valley and the gushing fountain and the stream which flowed from it.

“What on Earth—­” began Cochrane.

“You’re not on Earth,” said Jones chidingly.  “Al and I found ’em.  You asked for buffalo or a reasonable facsimile.  I won’t guarantee anything; but we spotted what looked like herds of beasts moving over the green plains inland.  We checked, and they seemed to be moving in this direction.  Once we dropped down low and Bell got some pictures.  When he enlarged them, we decided they’d do.  So we lined up where they were all headed for, and here we are.  And here they are!”

Cochrane stared with all his eyes.  Behind him, he heard Bell fuming to himself as he tried to adjust a camera for close-up pictures in the little remaining light.  Babs stood beside Cochrane, staring incredulously.

The darkness was beasts.  They blackened the hillsides on three sides of the ship.  They came deliberately, leisurely onward.  They were literally uncountable.  They were as numerous as the buffalo that formerly thronged the western plains of America.  In black, shaggy masses, they came toward the spring and its stream.  Nearby, their heads could be distinguished.  And all of this was perfectly natural.