..._"

There was a sensation as if all the universe had turned itself inside
out, and Calhoun's stomach tried to follow its example. He gulped, and
the feeling ended, and the vision screens came alight. Then there were
ten thousand myriads of stars, and a sun flaming balefully ahead, and
certain very bright objects nearby. They would be planets, and one of
them showed as a crescent.

Calhoun checked the solar spectrum as a matter of course. This was the
sun Tallien. He checked the brighter specks in view. Three were
planets and one a remote brilliant star. The crescent was Tallien
Three, third out from its sun and the Med Ship's immediate
destination. It was a very good breakout; too good to be anything but
luck. Calhoun swung the ship for the crescent planet. He
matter-of-factly checked the usual items. He was going in at a high
angle to the ecliptic, so meteors and bits of stray celestial trash
weren't likely to be bothersome. He made other notes, to kill time.

He reread the data sheets on the planet. It had been colonized three
hundred years before. There'd been trouble establishing a human-use
ecological system on the planet because the native plants and animals
were totally useless to humankind. Native timber could be used in
building, but only after drying-out for a period of months. When
growing or green it was as much water-saturated as a sponge. There had
never been a forest fire here, not even caused by lightning!

There were other oddities. The aboriginal microorganisms here did not
attack wastes of introduced terrestrial types. It had been necessary
to introduce scavenger organisms from elsewhere. This and other
difficulties made it true that only one of the world's five continents
were human-occupied. Most of the land surface was strictly as it had
been before the landing of men--impenetrable jungles of spongelike
flora, dwelt in by a largely unknown useless fauna. Calhoun read on.
Population ... government ... health statistics.... He went through
the list.

He had time to kill, so he rechecked his course and speed relative to
the planet. He and Murgatroyd had dinner. Then he waited until the
ship was near enough to report in.

"Med Ship _Esclipas Twenty_ calling ground," he said when the time
came. He taped his own voice as he made the call. "Requesting
co-ordinates for landing. Our mass is fifty tons. Repeat, five-oh
tons. Purpose of landing, planetary health inspection."

He waited while his