o land that will be the set of values for our speed.
Naturally the thousand miles a minute will smash us flat, but the zero
speed will let us down easy."

"And so?" Hugh asked suspiciously.

"No matter how we go in," Ren smiled, "we'll smash the ship and kill
everybody--and we'll land safely."

"Are you crazy?" Hugh snorted.

"I--I'm not quite sure," Ren said seriously. "I think that we've run
across a bit of matter that works from different basics than what we are
used to. You might call it a different metaphysics. That's what it
really amounts to."

A pain of remembrance appeared on his face.

"That's why I didn't get my degree," he said softly. "I insisted that it
might be possible there were no absolute rules underlying all reality,
but only relative rules that might be changeable. In other words, I
questioned the validity of asserting that natural law was universal.
They flunked me in stability."

"Yes, I know," Commander Dunnam said sympathetically. "One of the most
unjust rules of modern education in the opinion of many, but no way of
changing it unless the educators themselves did it. Since they all
passed O.K. in stability, they think everyone else should. Maybe they're
afraid they would be considered unstable if they wanted to make such a
major change."

* * * * *

Ren glanced toward the screen that showed the magnified image of the
interstellar wanderer, and back again to the commander.

"Of course," he said, "I'm trying to use ordinary basics transposed onto
the basics of this system, which is wrong. Or it may be right. It might
be better if we just turned around and went back. There's no way of
knowing ahead of time whether we'd be killed on landing or not."

"Look, Ren," the commander said seriously. "I like you. You--you're just
about like my son would have been today if he had lived. I'm just a
spaceman. I depend on instruments. They don't work here. All of us are
just as helpless as if we didn't know the first thing about our trade.
We can't go back without landing on this stray planet. If we tried to
tell them the reasons, I'd be retired and the whole crew would be stuck
on various routine tub runs. Suppose you unofficially take charge. If we
get killed--we all expect to end that way in our trade. If we don't,
we'll be able to take back something with us to prove what we've run
into. Maybe it will vindicate you and make you a reputation. You'll get
all the c