The Saarga set down on a world of emerald heat. Besides the starship the landing field contained half a dozen battered interplanetary craft, brought out piecemeal by the Vardda and operated by them between the wild planets of the system. The great stockaded factory was one of the largest Trehearne had seen and the strangest.
SaargaThe “logs” that formed the stockade and made the walls of the warehouses were of crystal, cut from the crystalline forests that covered much of the land. Trehearne thought of them as trees and forests, simply because they had stems and branches, but they were inorganic, the glittering proliferation of sublimated alien chemicals. They glowed and flashed under the fierce green sun, showing glints of weird color where a prism formation broke the light. And also, in
