Quotes:

Avery had been watching the dancing lights over his shoulder. “They’re like eyes watching us...Before a colony’s sent out here, these damn things will have to be destroyed. They’d be dangerous flying loose around electricity.”

Far down the beach, Avery and Jason saw the white flash of the explosion, saw the black gullies light up in a ghastly swift glare. Then came a rolling sound and a jar of concussion.

Comment:

Two ideas in this early story I later saw elsewhere (in a book by Larry Niven, another in a book by Peter F Hamilton). (more)

Republished in Sail 25 and other stories, Spatterlight, 2012

Comments:

Wikipedia on Dragon masters:

It won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1963. The story describes a human society living under pre-industrial conditions that has bred lizard-like intelligent aliens to function as warriors, and an encounter with a ship from the alien planet, containing both the same aliens, and humans bred by them for similar purposes. (accessed 15 March 2019)

Quote:

The apartments of Joaz Banbeck, carved deep from the heart of a limestone crag, consisted of five principal chambers, on five different levels. At the top were the reliquarium and a formal council chamber: the first a room of somber magnificence housing the various archives, trophies and mementos of the Banbecks; the second a long narrow hall, with dark wainscoting chest-high and a white plaster vault above, extending the entire width of the crag, so that balconies overlooked Banbeck Vale at one end and Kergan’s Way at the other. (more)

Republished by Spatterlight, 2012: The Dragon Masters.