ding was more than enough for the building
of the gigantic, spidery, half-mile-high structure which would handle
this planet's interstellar commerce. There was no excuse for an
emergency! A boat landing was nonsensical!

But he surveyed the contents of his cabin. Most of the cargo of the
_Warlock_ was smelter equipment which was to complete the outfitting of
the colony. It was to be unloaded first. By the time the ship's holds
were wholly empty, the smelter would be operating. The ship would wait
for a full cargo of pig metal. Bordman had expected to live in this
cabin while he worked on the survey he'd come to make, and to leave
again with the ship.

Now he was to go aground by boat. He fretted. The only emergency
equipment he could possibly need was a heat-suit. He doubted the urgency
of that. But he packed some clothing for indoors, and then defiantly
included his specbook and the volumes of definitive data to which
specifications for structures and colonial establishments always
referred. He'd get to work on his report immediately he landed.

He went out of the passenger's lounge to the boat-blister. An engineer's
legs projected from the boat port. The engineer withdrew, with a strip
of tape from the boat's computer. He compared it dourly with a similar
strip from the ship's figurebox. Bordman consciously acted according to
the best traditions of passengers.

"What's the trouble?" he asked.

"We can't land," said the engineer shortly.

He went away--according to the tradition by which ships' crews are
always scornful of passengers.

* * * * *

Bordman scowled. Then Aletha came, carrying a not-too-heavy bag. Bordman
put it in the boat, disapproving of the crampedness of the craft. But
this wasn't a lifeboat. It was a landing boat. A lifeboat had Lawlor
drive and could travel light-years, but in the place of rockets and
rocket fuel it had air-purifiers and water-recovery units and
food-stores. It couldn't land without a landing grid aground, but it
could get to a civilized planet. This landing boat could land without a
grid, but its air wouldn't last long.

"Whatever's the matter," said Bordman darkly, "it's incompetence
somewhere!"

But he couldn't figure it out. This was a cargo ship. Cargo ships
neither took off nor landed under their own power. It was too costly of
fuel they would have to carry. So landing grids used local power--which
did not have to be lifted--to heave