e."

At the poles of the planet snow gleamed, and cloud masses drifted across
the equator. And the people looked, and pointed, their voices growing
loud with eagerness.

"Why don't we land the world now?" Trina cried. "Why wait for the ship
to bring people up here?"

"Landing the world would take a lot of power," Elias said. "It would be
foolish to do it unless we planned on staying for quite a while." He
sighed. "Though I would like to go down there. I'd like to see a really
Earth type planet."

He looked at Max, and Max smiled. "Well, why not?" he said.

Elias smiled too. "After all, I've been in space once. I'll go again."
He turned and pushed his way through the people.

Trina watched him go. Somehow he seemed a symbol to her. Old and stable,
he had been head of the council since she was a child. And he had gone
into space with her father....

"Please come, Trina," Max said. "There's nothing to be afraid of."

With both Max and Elias along, certainly it couldn't be too bad. Max was
right. There was nothing, really, to be afraid of. She smiled up at him.

"All right," she said. "I'll go."

And then she was walking with Max Cramer toward the ship and trying not
to remember her father crying in his sleep.

* * * * *

The ship rose, and Trina cried out as she felt the heaviness wrench her
back against the cushions. Max reached over to her. She felt the needle
go into her arm again, and then sank back into the half sleep that he
had promised would last until they were ready to land.

When she awoke the planet was a disk no longer, but a great curving mass
beneath the ship, with the mountains and valleys and towns of its people
plainly visible. But the planet's sky still lay below, and around them,
in every direction except down, space stretched out, blacker than any
night on the world. The world. Trina moaned and closed her eyes, glad
she hadn't seen it, somewhere tiny and insignificant behind them.

Max heard her moan and reached toward her. She slept again, and woke
only when they were down and he was tugging the straps loose from around
her. She sat up, still numbed by the drug, still half asleep and unreal
feeling, and looked out about her at the planet's surface.

They were in a field of some sort of grain. Beyond the scorched land
where they had come down the tall cereal grasses rippled in the soft
wind, a great undulating sea of green, reaching out toward the far off