ting."

Ten hours! No more, if we did not find some way to destroy these leeches
of space before they destroyed the _Ertak_.

* * * * *

During the next half hour little was said. We were drawing close to our
tiny, uninhabited haven, and both Correy and Kincaide were busy with
their navigation. Working in reverse, as it were, from the rough
readings of the television disk settings, an ordinarily simple task was
made extremely difficult.

I helped Correy interpret his headings, and kept a weather eye on the
gauges over the operating table. We were slipping into the atmospheric
fringe of N-127, and the surface-temperature gauge was slowly climbing.
Hendricks sat hunched heavily in a corner, his head bowed in his hands.

"I believe," said Kincaide at length, "I can take over visually now." He
unshuttered one of the ports, and peered out. N-127 was full abreast of
us, and we were dropping sideways toward her at a gradually diminishing
speed. The impression given us, due to the gravity pads in the keel of
the ship, was that we were right side up, and N-127 was approaching us
swiftly from the side.

"'Vegetation of heroic size' is right, too," said Correy, who had been
examining the terrain at close range, through the medium of the
television disk. "Two of the leaves on some of the weeds would make an
awning for the whole ship. See any likely place to land, Kincaide?"

"Nowhere except along the shore--and then we'll have to do some nice
work and lay the _Ertak_ parallel to the edge of the water. The beach is
narrow, but apparently the only barren portion. Will that be all right,
sir?"

"Use your own judgment, but waste no time. Correy, break out the
breathing masks, and order the men at the air-lock exit port to stand
by. I'm going out to have a look at these things."

"May I go with you, sir?" asked Hendricks sharply.

"And I?" pleaded Kincaide and Correy in chorus.

"You, Hendricks, but not you two. The ship needs officers, you know."

"Then why not me instead of you, sir?" argued Correy. "You don't know
what you're going up against."

"All the more reason I shouldn't be receiving any information
second-hand," I said. "And as for Hendricks, he's the laboratory man of
the _Ertak_. And these things are his particular pets. Right,
Hendricks?"

"Right, sir!" said my third officer grimly.

Correy muttered under his breath, something which sounded very much like
profanity, but I l