o that the planetary
features stood out sharply now, even through the dense clouds that
rose off the oceans. But although the continental land masses and the
islands were clearly defined, they were as unrecognizable as the star
constellations had been.

"That must be North America," Amos Carhill said dully. "It's smaller
than the continent on the night side...."

"It might be anywhere," Hugh McCann said. "We can't tell. The oceans
look bigger too. There's less land surface."

He stared down at the topography thousands of miles below them.
Mountains rose jaggedly. There were great plains, and crevasses, and a
rocky, lifeless look everywhere. No soil. No erosion, except from the
wind and the rains.

"There's no chlorophyll in the spectrum," Haines said. "It seems to
rule out even plant life."

"I don't understand." Martha Carhill turned away from the screen.
"Everything's so different. But the moon looked just exactly like it
always did."

"That's because it has no atmosphere," Hugh said. "So there's no
erosion. And no oceans to sweep in over the land. But I imagine that
if we explored it we'd find changes. New craters. Maybe even new
mountains by now."

"How long has it been?" Carhill whispered. "And even if it's been
millions of years, what happened? Why aren't there any plants? Won't
we find anything?"

"Maybe there was an atomic war," the pilot said.

"Maybe." Carhill had thought of that too. Probably all of them had.
"Or maybe the sun novaed."

No one answered him. The concept of a nova and then of its dying down,
until now the sun was just as it had been when they left, was too
much.

"The sun looks hotter," Carhill added.

The ship dropped lower, its preliminary circle of the planet
completed. It settled in for a landing, just as it had done thousands
of times before. And the world below could have been any of a thousand
others.

They dropped quickly, braking through the atmosphere, riding it down.
The topography came up to meet them and the general features blurred,
leaving details standing out sharply, increasing in sharpness as if
the valleys and mountains below were tiny microscopic crystals under a
rapidly increasing magnification.

The pilot picked their landing place without difficulty. It was a
typical choice, a spot on the broad shelving plain at the edge of the
ocean. The type of base from which all tests on a planet could be run
quickly, and a report written up, and the files of anot