It was nothing like anything that he had seen on any of the other worlds that he had visited or seen elsewhere. He could not get if it was the strange environment about him or all the strange stars blanketing the sky, or something strange existing there, or the universe that they were in, or a combination of them that created different reactions. Strange vapor clouds shifted about their sides, always following, shadowing them, at a distance – probing them, and analyzing them for some purpose. He had stopped wondering if they had intelligence a few miles back, when he had proved they had, he had seen Major Ripley realize it too, and he vaguely watched it linger over deep meteorite craters in the mind-bending landscape. He watched it now to find out what form of life it was. What did it use to exist? What was it doing? He felt like getting some samples from it, but decided to wait until he was with the others, and they could check if it was dangerous. A peculiar whisper of something came from an unknown place far away, and he considered if it was from the clouds or something else, and what else it could be.
