ships out into space, and again used
local power to draw them to ground again. Therefore ships carried fuel
only for actual space-flight, which was economy. Yet landing grids had
no moving parts, and while they did have to be monstrous structures they
actually drew power from planetary ionospheres. So with no moving parts
to break down and no possibility of the failure of a power
source--landing grids couldn't fail! So there couldn't be an emergency
to make a ship ride orbit around a planet which had a landing grid!

The engineer came back. He carried a mail sack full of letter-reels. He
waved his hand. Aletha crawled into the landing-boat port. Bordman
followed. Four people, with a little crowding, could have gotten into
the little ship. Three pretty well filled it. The engineer followed them
and sealed the port.

"Sealed off," he said into the microphone before him.

The exterior-pressure needle moved halfway across the dial. The
interior-pressure needle stayed steady.

"All tight," said the engineer.

The exterior-pressure needle flicked to zero. There were clanking
sounds. The long halves of the boat-blister stirred and opened, and
abruptly the landing boat was in an elongated cup in the hull-plating,
and above them there were many, many stars. The enormous disk of a
nearby planet floated into view around the hull. It was monstrous and
blindingly bright. It was of a tawny color, with great, irregular areas
of yellow and patches of bluishness. But most of it was the color of
sand. And all its colors varied in shade--some places were lighter and
some darker--and over at one edge there was blinding whiteness which
could not be anything but an ice cap. But Bordman knew that there was no
ocean or sea or lake on all this whole planet, and the ice cap was more
nearly hoarfrost than such mile-deep glaciation as would be found at the
poles of a maximum-comfort world.

"Strap in," said the engineer over his shoulder. "No-gravity coming, and
then rocket-push. Settle your heads."

Bordman irritably strapped himself in. He saw Aletha busy at the same
task, her eyes shining. Without warning, there came a sensation of acute
discomfort. It was the landing boat detaching itself from the ship and
the diminishment of the ship's closely-confined artificial-gravity
field. That field suddenly dropped to nothingness, and Bordman had the
momentary sickish dizziness that flicked-off gravity always produces. At
the same time his hea