routine
gesture. I rang the corridor bells, and the normal signals came
promptly back.

I turned to Hahn. "Get along, won't you? Tell Miko that things are all
right here."

Hahn's small dark figure, lithe as a leopard in his tight fitting
trousers and jacket with his robe now discarded, went swiftly down the
spider incline and across the deck.

"Moa, where is Snap? By the infernal--if he has been injured--"

Up on the radio room bridge, the brigand guard still sat. Then I saw
that Snap was out there sitting with him. I waved from the turret
window, and Snap's cheery gesture answered me. His voice carried down
through the silver moonlight: "Land us safely, Gregg. These weird
amateur navigators!"

Within the hour I had us dropping into the asteroid's atmosphere. The
ship heated steadily. The pressure went up. It kept me busy with the
instruments and the calculations. But my signals were always promptly
answered from below. The brigand crew did its part efficiently.

At a hundred and fifty thousand feet I shifted the gravity plates to
the landing combinations, and started the electronic engines.

"All safe, Gregg?" Moa sat at my elbow; her eyes, with what seem a
glow of admiration in them, followed my busy routine activities.

"Yes. The crew works well."

The electronic streams flowed out like a rocket tail behind us. The
_Planetara_ caught their impetus. In the rarefied air, our bow lifted
slightly, like a ship riding a gentle ground swell. At a hundred
thousand feet we sailed gently forward, hull down to the asteroid's
surface, cruising to seek a landing space.

A little sea was now beneath us. A shadowed sea, deep purple in the
night down there. Occasional verdurous islands showed, with the lines
of white surf marking them. Beyond the sea, a curving coastline was
visible. Rocky headlines, behind which mountain foothills rose in
serrated, verdurous ranks. The sunlight edged the distant mountains;
and presently this rapidly turning little world brought the sunlight
forward.

It was day beneath us. We slid gently downward. Thirty thousand feet
now, above a sparkling blue ocean. The coastline was just ahead; green
with a lush, tropical vegetation. Giant trees, huge-leaved. Long,
dangling vines; air plants, with giant pods and vivid orchidlike
blossoms.

I sat at the turret window, staring through my glasses. A fair, little
world, yet obviously uninhabited. I could fancy that all this was
newly sprung vegeta