l put it as far as possible from the
landing-pattern of ships coming in to the spaceport. You'll put it on
the opposite side of the planet. And you'll want it to stay out of the
way, where anybody can know it is at any time of the day or night
without having to calculate anything.

"So you'll put it out in orbit so it will revolve around Weald in
exactly one day, neither more nor less, and you'll put it above the
equator. And then it will remain quite stationary above one spot on
the planet, a hundred and eighty degrees longitude away from the
landing-grid and directly over the equator."

He scribbled for a moment.

"Which means forty-two thousand miles high, give or take a few
hundred, and--here! And I was hunting for it in a close-in orbit!"

He grumbled to himself. He waited while the solar-system drive pushed
the Med Ship a quarter of the way around the bright planet below. The
sunset line vanished and the planet's disk became a complete circle.
Then Calhoun listened to the monitor earphones again, and grunted once
more, and changed course, and presently made a noise indicating
satisfaction.

He abandoned instrument control and peered directly out of a port,
handling the solar system drive with great care. Murgatroyd said
depressedly, "_Chee!_"

"Stop worrying," commanded Calhoun. "We haven't been challenged, and
there is a beacon transmitter at work, just to make sure that nobody
bumps into what we're looking for. It's a great help, because we do
want to bump, but gently."

Stars swung across the port out of which he looked. Something dark
appeared, and then straight lines and exact curvings. Even Maril,
despairing and bewildered as she was, caught sight of something vastly
larger than the Med Ship, floating in space. She stared. The Med Ship
maneuvered very cautiously. She saw another large object. A third. A
fourth. There seemed to be dozens of them.

They were spaceships, huge by comparison with _Aesclipus Twenty_. They
floated as the Med Ship did. They did not drive. They were not in
formation. They were not at even distances from each other. They did
not point in the same direction. They swung in emptiness like
derelicts.

Calhoun jockeyed his small ship with infinite care. Presently there
came the gentlest of impacts and then a clanking sound. The appearance
out the vision port became stationary, but still unbelievable. The Med
Ship was grappled magnetically to a vast surface of welded metal.

C