glared at her. He didn't know how to take the comment. He said
to Holden:

"Tomorrow we'll try to figure out some sort of test and try the air.
I'll go out in a space-suit and crack the face-plate! I can close it
again before anything lethal gets in. But there's no use stepping out
into a bed of coals tonight. I'll have to wait till morning."

Holden smiled at him. Babs regarded him with intent, enigmatic eyes.

Neither of them said anything more. Cochrane finished his meal. Then he
found himself without an occupation. Gravity on this planet was very
nearly the same as on Earth. It felt like more, of course, because all
of them had been subject only to moon-gravity for nearly three weeks.
Jones and the pilot had been in one-sixth gravity for a much longer
time. And the absence of gravity had caused their muscles to lose tone
by just about the amount that the same time spent in a hospital bed
would have done. They felt physically worn out.

It was a healthy tiredness, though, and their muscles would come back
to normal as quickly as one recovers strength after illness--rather
faster, in fact. But tonight there would be no night-life on the
space-ship. Johnny Simms disappeared, after symptoms of fretfulness akin
to those of an over-tired small boy. Jamison gave up, and Bell, and Al
the pilot fell asleep while Jones was trying to discuss something
technical with him. Jones himself yawned and yawned and when Al snored
in his face he gave up. They retired to their bunks.

There was no point in standing guard over the ship. If the bed of hot
ashes did not guard it, it was not likely that an individual merely
sitting up and staring out its ports would do much good. There were
extremely minor, practically unnoticeable vibrations of the ship from
time to time. They would be volcanic temblors--to be expected. They were
not alarming, certainly, and the forest outside was guarantee of no
great violence to be anticipated. The trees stood firm and tall. There
was no worry about the ship. It was perfectly practical, and even
necessary simply to turn out the lights and go to sleep.

But Cochrane could not relax. He was annoyed by the soreness of his
muscles. He was irritated by the picture given him of the expedition as
a group of heedless ignoramuses who'd taken off without star-charts or
bacteriological equipment--without even apparatus to test the air of
planets they might land on!--and who now were sternly warned not to make