n got out. Patrolman Willis followed him. This was a duly surveyed
and recommended refuge planet. There was no need to check the air or
take precautions against inimical animal or vegetable life. The planet
was safe.

They clambered over small rocky obstacles until they came to the end of
the scorched line. They surveyed the state of things in silence.

A ship had landed here recently. Its blue-white rocket flames had melted
gulleys in the soil, turned it to slag, and then flung silky, gossamer
threads of slag-wool over the rocks nearby.

At the end of the melted-away hollows, twin slag-lined holes went down
deep into the ground. They were take-off holes. Rockets had burned them
deeply as they gathered force to lift the ship away again.

Sergeant Madden scrambled to the edge of the nearest blast-well. He put
his hand on the now-solidified, glassy slag. It wasn't warm, but it
wasn't cold. The glass-lined hole a rocket leaves takes a long time to
cool down.

"She landed here, all right," he grunted. "But she took off again before
the torp arrived to tell us about it."

Willis protested:

"But, sergeant! She only had one set of rockets! She couldn't have taken
off again! She didn't have the rockets to do it with!"

"I know she couldn't," growled the sergeant. "But she did."

The _Cerberus_, once landed, should have waited here. It was not only a
police regulation; it was common sense. When a ship broke down in space,
the exclusive hope for that ship's company lay in a refuge planet for
ships in that traffic lane. Even lifeboats could ordinarily reach some
refuge planet, for picking up later. They couldn't possibly be located
otherwise. With three dimensions in which to be missed, and light-years
of distance in which to miss them--no ship or boat had ever been found
as much as a light-week out in space. No ship with a crippled drive
could possibly be helped unless it got to a specified refuge world where
it could be found. No ship which had reached a refuge planet could
conceivably want to leave it.

There was also the fact that no ship which had made such a landing would
have extra rockets with which to take off for departure.

The _Cerberus_ had landed. Timmy's girl was on it. It had taken off
again. It was either an impossible mass suicide or something worse. It
certainly wasn't routine.

Patrolman Willis asked hesitantly:

"D'you think, sergeant, it could be Huks sneaked back--?"

Sergeant Madden did no