The Hard Way Up / The Veiled World

THE HARD WAY UP by Bertram Chandler: Delta Sextans IV was not a pretty world. They sky was grey, with a paler blur that marked the passage of the hot sun across it. The river was grey. The fleshy-leaved vegetation was grey, with the merest hint of dull green. There was little distinction between blossom and foliage as far as a non-botanist like Grimes was concerned. Suddenly he found something, something the others had missed - a game trail. It led through the jungle to the water's edge. And here, too, something had died or been killed. There was a rib cage, which must have run the entire length of a cylindrical body. And an almost spherical skull. Suddenly Grimes stiffened. Something was coming along that trail through the jungle - something that rustled and chattered.. THE VEILED WORLD (Shamryke Odell 2) by Robert Lory: The floor beneath me moved suddenly and I was standing in midair. Standing? Falling. It was a soft landing. A squooshy kind of soft. And in the flickering light which illuminated my getting to my feet I saw that I was in a great cavern carved from rock. But I saw that only incidentally. Most of all my seeing was reserved for the thing that had been my landing pad. There gleaming under and around my feet were more than a dozen eyes, all imbedded in a spongy gelatinous pancake-shaped sea of gently rocking waves. My spine blinked as I readied the blaster - still in my hand - to do its work. But do its work here? Where would a shot be most effective? Where, indeed. That was the thought that spun through my brain as I realized that the light around me had gotten brighter - and was cast by some forty wood-burning torches held in hands which were connected to arms which in turn - My stomach tightened to keep from retching. And then someone - something - spoke. "Food. Food from the god."