Traders Risk by Roger Dee, Science Fiction, Fantasy

Of the ship's social quartet, Chafis One and Two were asleep at the moment, dreaming wistful dreams of conical Ciriimian cities spearing up to a soft and plum-colored sky. The Zid raged into their communal rest cell, smashed them down from their gimbaled sleeping perches and, with the ravening blood-hunger of its kind, devoured them before they could wake enough to teleport to safety. Terrible creatures, the Canthorian Zid -- and that was just the start