surface.
The other side was rough, bristling with jutting rock. More than
anything else it looked like a ragged mountain top, broken off at the
peak and hurled into space by an all-powerful hand.

Slowly the scout-ship moved closer, braking with its forward jets. The
pilot was expert. Carefully and surely he aligned the ship with the rock
in speed and direction. In the accelleration cot Tom could feel only an
occasional gentle tug as the power cut on and off.

Then the Lieutenant said, "I think we can make a landing now, Major."

"Fine. Take a scooter down first, and carry a guy line."

They unstrapped, and changed into pressure suits. In the airlock they
waited until the Lieutenant had touched the scooter down. Then Major
Briarton nodded, and they clamped their belts to the guy line.

One by one they leaped down toward the rock.

From a few miles out in space, the job of searching the surface had not
appeared difficult. From the rock itself, things looked very different.
There was no way, from the surface, to scan large areas, and the surface
was so rough that they had to take constant care not to damage their
boots or rip holes in their suits. There were hundreds of crevices and
caves, half concealed by the loose rock that crumbled under their feet
as they moved.

They spread out from the scooter for an hour of fruitless searching. Tom
spent most of the time pulling his boots free of surface cracks and
picking his way over heaps of jagged rock. None of them got farther than
a hundred yards from the starting place. None of them found anything
remarkable.

"We could spend weeks covering it this way," Greg said when they met at
the scooter again. "Why don't I take the scooter and criss-cross the
whole surface at about fifty feet? If I spot anything, I'll yell."

It seemed like a good idea. Greg strapped himself into the scooter's
saddle, straddling the fuel tanks, using the hand jet to guide himself
as he lifted lightly off the surface. He disappeared over the horizon of
rock, then reappeared as he moved over the surface and back.

Tom and Johnny waited with the Major. Twenty minutes later Greg brought
the tiny craft back again. "It's no good," he said. "I've scanned the
whole bright-side, came as close as I dared."

"No sign of anything?" Johnny said.

"Not a thing. The dark side looks like a sheer slab, from what my lights
show. If we only had some idea what we were looking for...."

"Maybe you weren't