spark of
light that was Torlos' home planet. "Keep your eyes on that, Torlos.
Watch it grow when we use our space control drive."

Arcot pushed the little red switch to the first notch. The air around
them pulsed with power for an instant, then space had readjusted itself.

The point that was Nansal grew to a disc, and then it was swiftly
leaping toward them, welling up to meet them, expanding its bulk with
awesome speed. Torlos watched it tensely.

There was a sudden splintering crash, and Arcot jerked open the circuit
in alarm. They were almost motionless again as the stars reeled about
them.

Torlos had been nervous. Like any man so effected, he had unconsciously
tightened his muscles. His fingers had sunk into the hard plastic of the
arm rest on his chair, and crushed it as though it had been put between
the jaws of a hydraulic press!

"I'm glad we weren't holding hands," said Wade, eyeing the broken
plastic.

"I am very sorry," Torlos thought humbly. "I did not intend to do that.
I forgot myself when I saw that planet rushing at me so fast." His
chagrin was apparent on his face.

Arcot laughed. "It is nothing, Torlos. We are merely astonished at the
terrific strength of your hand. Wade wasn't worried; he was joking!"

Torlos looked relieved, but he looked at the splintered arm rest and
then at his hand. "It is best that I keep my too-strong hands away from
your instruments."

The ship was falling toward Nansal at a relatively slow rate, less than
four miles a second. Arcot accelerated toward the planet for two hours,
then began to decelerate. Five hundred miles above the planet's surface,
their velocity cut the ship into a descending spiral orbit to allow the
atmosphere to check their speed.

The outer lux hull began to heat up, and he closed the relux screens to
cut down the radiation from it. When he opened them again, the ship was
speeding over the broad plains of the planet.

Torlos told Arcot that by far the greater percentage of the surface of
Nansal was land. There was still plenty of water, for their seas were
much deeper than those of Earth. Some of the seas were thirty miles deep
over broad areas--hundreds of square miles. As if to compensate, the
land surfaces were covered with titanic mountain ranges, some of them
over ten miles above sea level.

Torlos, his eyes shining, directed the Earthmen to his home city, the
capital of the world-nation.

"Is there no traffic between the cities h