e had been nothing in the manuals about this.

Lance stared at the meaningless phenomenon for a long time despite the
fact it made his brain ill. At last, he decided it was harmless,
whatever was causing it. He shook his head slowly and closed the ports
down. He hoped Groombridge 34 would be less taxing.

* * * * *

The system was.

After the ship reverted to normal space in the vicinity of Groombridge
34, Lance hovered about it exactly twelve hours, following all the
instructions in his manual to the letter. He started up the cameras and
other recording instruments. All went well, there were no incidents, no
vessels disturbed him; though had the two components of the binary been
at periastron, it would have simplified the work with the position
micrometer. If anything else of interest had been detected, it would
have to be deciphered from the film and tapes later. You can get as
close as four billion miles to an Earth-sized planet in space--and it'll
still show up fainter than a fourteenth magnitude star.

Somewhere in the galaxy, Lance supposed, there must be other races
building spaceships and guiding them from sun to sun. But thus far, the
scout ships from Terra--for all their magnified caution--had never run
into signs of any.

The old veteran hype-pilots had the best philosophy after all. Earth was
the choicest hunk of mud you were going to find. _Enjoy it, brethren._

Well, he would certainly live it up when he got back, Lance swore. He
would have his wedding; import Casey from the Club to spike the punch;
and, perhaps after he'd gotten in his required number of scout-missions,
he might even settle for a chair-borne exec's billet, himself.

Exactly twenty-eight days and twelve hours from the time of his
departure from Earth, Lance Cooper was back home again. The _Cosmos XII_
re-materialized out of hyperspace in the neighborhood of the Solar
System with its fuel tanks scarcely a third depleted, but its pilot a
drained man. Lance, truthfully, not only felt weary and torpid, but a
great deal disappointed.

He contacted Traffic, asked for and got a landing trajectory. A few
hours later, he had coasted home and the trip was over.

He scrambled down out of the ship, hungry for Carolyn.

The base hadn't changed any in a month, that he could see. A couple of
new floodlights put in, perhaps. Some brass were emerging from the
control bunker. Colonel Sagen, several others. He recog