* * * *

With a scarcely perceptible jar, he landed on the small sphere that, he
hoped, was to be his future home. Before opening his man-hole lid, he
went from panel to panel of the Dart and cautiously reconnoitered. He
had elected to land beside the little lake that was set like a three
hundred-acre gem on the surface of Z-40, and it was more than possible
that the enemy had its den nearby.

However, a careful survey of the curved landscape in all directions
failed to reveal a glimpse of anything remotely threatening. He donned
his oxygen concentrator--in appearance a simple tube of a thing,
projecting about six inches above his forehead, and set in a light metal
band that encircled his head. Adjusting his gravity regulator so he
wouldn't inadvertently walk clear off into empty space--he calculated
his weight would be less than a twentieth of an ounce here--he stepped
out of the Dart and gazed around at the little world.

Before him was the tiny lake, of an emerald green hue in the flashing
sunlight. Around its shores, and covering the adjacent, softly rolling
countryside as far as eye could reach, was a thick growth of
carmine-tinted vegetation: squat, enormous-leaved bushes; low, sturdy
trees, webbed together by innumerable vines. To left and right,
miniature mountains reared ragged crests over the abbreviated horizon,
making the spot he was in a peaceful, lovely valley.

He sighed. There was everything here a man could wish for--provided he
could win it! Loosening his ray-pistol in its holster, he started to
walk slowly around the lake to choose a site for the house he intended
to build. On the opposite shore he found a place that looked suitable.

A few yards back from the water's edge, curling in a thick crescent like
a giant sleeping on its side, was a precipitous outcropping of rock;
curious stuff, rather like granite, that gleamed with dull opalescence
in the brilliant sunlight. With that as a sort of natural buttress
behind the house, and with the beautiful lake as his front dooryard,
he'd have a location that any man might envy.

He returned to his Dart, hopped back across the lake in it, and unloaded
his Sco drill[1]. With this he planned to sink a shaft that would serve
in the future as the cellar for his villa, and in the present as an
entrenchment against danger.

But now the swift night of Z-40 was almost upon him. The low slant of
the descending sun warned him that he ha