ected
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
fortunate in being 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 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 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 planet was three quarters drowned in water. But
there were two factors that weighed so heavily against that choice that
they rendered it impossible. In the first place, by far the greater
proportion of the local inhabitants' commerce was between the asteroids
and the third planet. Second, and even more important, the fourth world
was at such a point in its orbit that the energy required to land would
destroy the ship beyond any doubt.

It would have to be the third world.

As the ship fell inward, the Nipe watched his pitifully inadequate
instruments, doing his best to keep tabs on every one of the ships that
the local life-form used to move through space. He did not want to be
spotted now, and even though the odds were against these beings having
any instrument highly developed enough to spot his own craft, there was
always the possibility that he might be observed optically.

So he squatted there in his ship, a centipede-like thing about five feet
in length and a little less than eighteen inches in diameter, with eight
articulated limbs spaced in pairs along his body, each limb ending in a
five-fingered manipulatory organ that could be used equally well as hand
or foot. His head, which was long and snouted, displayed two pairs of
violet eyes that kept a co