d. "No ship, no wreckage. It could be a
trick. They could be holding a cloak."

"A trick?" said Bellaver. "I doubt it. Anyway, we're running low on
fuel, and I'm not going to go into that cluster and risk my own neck to
find out. If by any chance they do come out again later on, we'll deal
with them."

But they both watched the cluster until it had whirled on out of sight.
And neither eye nor instrument nor Vernon's probing mind could
distinguish any sign of life.

CHAPTER VIII

Titan lay below them in the Saturn-glow, under the fantastic glory of
the Rings. A bitter, repellent world of jagged peaks and glimmering
plains of poison snow. The tiny life-raft dropped toward it, skittering
nervously as it hit the thin atmosphere. Hyrst clung hard to the
handholds, trying not to retch. He was not habituated to space anyway,
and the skiff had been bad enough. Now, without any hull around him and
nothing but a curved shield in front of him, he felt like an ant on a
flying leaf.

"I don't like it either." Shearing said. "But it gives us a fifty-fifty
chance of getting through unnoticed. Radar usually isn't looking for
anything so small."

"_I_ understand all the reasons," Hyrst said. "It's my stomach that's
obtuse."

He could make out the pattern of the refinery now, a million miles of
vertigo below him. The Lazarite ship was somewhere up and out behind
them, hiding in the Rings. The trick had worked with Bellaver out there
in the Belt, and they hoped now that it would work with Bellaver's
observers on Titan. There was no need for any fake explosions this time,
to give the impression of destruction. Secrecy was the watch-word, all
lights out and jet-blasts muffled to a spark. Later, when Hyrst and
Shearing had accomplished their mission, the ship would drop down fast
and take them off, with the Titanite, before any patrol craft would have
time to arrive.

They hoped.

The buildings of the refinery were dark and cold, drifted out of shape
by an accumulation of the thin, evil snow. The spiderweb of roads had
faded from the plain, and the landing field was smooth and unmarked.
Around its perimeter the six stiff towers of the hoists stood up like
lonely sentinels, hooded and cloaked.

Hyrst felt a sudden tightening of his throat, and this was a thing he
had not expected. A refinery on Titan was hardly a thing to be
sentimental about. But it was bound up so intimately with other things,
with hopes for a future