ter seldom spoke. Raf kept his attention on the
controls. Sudden currents of air were tricky here, and he had to be
constantly alert to hold the small flyer on an even keel. His glimpses
of what lay below were only snatched ones.

At last it was necessary to zoom far above the vegetation of the lower
slopes, to reach an altitude safe enough to clear the peaks ahead.
Since the air supply within the windshield was constant they need not
fear lack of oxygen. But Raf was privately convinced, as they soared,
that the range might well compare in height with those Asian mountains
which dominated all the upflung reaches of his native world.

When they were over the sharp points of that chain disaster almost
overtook them. A freakish air current caught the flitter as if in a
giant hand, and Raf fought for control as they lost altitude past the
margin of safety. Had he not allowed for just such a happening they
might have been smashed against one of the rock tips over which they
skimmed to a precarious safety. Raf, his mouth dry, his hands sweating
on the controls, took them up--higher than was necessary--to coast
above the last of that rocky spine to see below the beginning of the
downslopes leading to the plains the range cut in half. He heard
Hobart draw a hissing breath.

"That was a close call." Lablet's precise, lecturer's voice cut
through the drone of the motor.

"Yeah," Soriki echoed, "looked like we might be sandwich meat there
for a while. The kid knows his stuff after all."

Raf grinned a little sourly, but he did not answer that. He _ought_ to
know his trade. Why else would he be along? They were each specialists
in one or two fields. But he had good sense enough to keep his mouth
shut. That way the less one had to regret minutes--or hours--later.

The land on the south side of the mountains was different in character
to the wild northern plains.

"Fields!"

It did not require that identification from Lablet to point out what
they had already seen. The section below was artificially divided into
long narrow strips. But the vegetation growing on those strips was no
different from the northern grass they had seen about the spacer.

"Not cultivated now," the scientist amended his first report. "It's
reverting to grassland--"

Raf brought the flitter closer to the ground so that when a domed
structure arose out of a tangle of overgrown shrubs and trees they
were not more than fifty feet above it. There was no