ears from Sol, at the old limits of Terran expansion, and there's
no knowing what we may turn up here. Alphard's was one of the first
systems the Bees took over. It must have been one of the last to be
abandoned when they pulled back to 70 Ophiuchi."

"And I think _you_ live for the day," Farrell said acidly, "when we'll
stumble across a functioning dome of live, buzzing Hymenops. Damn it,
Gib, the Bees pulled out a hundred years ago, before you and I were
born--neither of us ever saw a Hymenop, and never will!"

"But I saw them," Stryker said. "I fought them for the better part of
the century they were here, and I learned there's no predicting nor
understanding them. We never knew why they came nor why they gave up and
left. How can we know whether they'd leave a rear-guard or booby trap
here?"

He put a paternal hand on Farrell's shoulder, understanding the younger
man's eagerness and knowing that their close-knit team would have been
the more poorly balanced without it.

"Gib's right," he said. He nearly added _as usual_. "We're on rest leave
at the moment, yes, but our mission is still to find Terran colonies
enslaved and abandoned by the Bees, not to risk our necks and a valuable
Reorientations ship by landing blind on an unobserved planet. We're too
close already. Cut in your shields and find a reconnaissance spiral,
will you?"

Grumbling, Farrell punched coordinates on the Ringwave board that lifted
the _Marco Four_ out of her descent and restored the bluish enveloping
haze of her repellors.

Stryker's caution was justified on the instant. The speeding streamlined
shape that had flashed up unobserved from below swerved sharply and
exploded in a cataclysmic blaze of atomic fire that rocked the ship
wildly and flung the three men to the floor in a jangling roar of
alarms.

* * * * *

"So the Handbook tacticians knew what they were about," Stryker said
minutes later. Deliberately he adopted the smug tone best calculated to
sting Farrell out of his first self-reproach, and grinned when the
navigator bristled defensively. "Some of their enjoinders seem a little
stuffy and obvious at times, but they're eminently sensible."

When Farrell refused to be baited Stryker turned to Gibson, who was
busily assessing the damage done to the ship's more fragile equipment,
and to Xavier, who searched the planet's surface with the ship's
magnoscanner. The _Marco Four_, Ringwave generators hu