s own fate. For a while, it had seemed almost
certain that he would survive long enough to build a communicator--for
the instruments had already told him and his brother that the system ahead
was inhabited by creatures of reasoning power, if not true intelligence,
and it would almost certainly be possible to get the equipment he needed
for them. Now, though, it looked as if the ship would not survive a
landing. He had had to steer it away from a great gas giant, which had
seriously endangered the power plants.

He did not want to die in space--wasted, forever undevoured. At least, he
must die on a planet, where there might be creatures with the compassion
and wisdom to give his body the proper ingestion. The thought of feeding
inferior creatures was repugnant, but it was better than rotting to feed
monocells or ectogenes, and far superior to wasting away in space.

Even thoughts such as these did not occupy his mind often or for very
long. Far, far better than any of them was the desire--and planning for
survival.

* * * * *

The outer orbits of the gas giants had been passed at last, and the Nipe
fell on through the asteroid belt without approaching any of the larger
pieces of rock-and-metal. That he and his brother had originally elected
to come into this system along its orbital plane had been a mixed
blessing; to have come in at a different angle would have avoided all the
debris--from planetary size on down--that is thickest in a star's
equatorial plane, but it would also have meant a greater chance of
missing a suitable planet unless too much reliance were placed on the
already weakened power generators. As it was, the Nipe had been able to
use the gravitational field of the gas giant to swing his ship toward the
precise spot where the third planet would be when the ship arrived in the
third orbit. Moreover, the third planet would be retreating from the
Nipe's line of flight, which would make the velocity difference that much
the less.

For a while, the Nipe had toyed with the idea of using the mining bases
that the local life form had set up in the asteroid belt as bases for his
own operations, but he had decided against it. Movement would be much
freer and much more productive on a planet than it would be in the Belt.

He would have preferred using the fourth planet for his base. Although
much smaller, it had the same reddish, arid look as his own home planet,
while the third