of communication, just before he'd gone out on his first field job as a Survey Candidate.

"Hm-m-m," he said with a trace of self-consciousness. "Those noises—the stuttering ones. Would they be, on the whole, of no more than two different durations? Like—hm-m-m—Bzz bzz bzzzzzz bzz?"

He felt that he lost dignity by making such ribald sounds. But Herndon's face brightened.

"That's it!" he said relievedly. "That's it! Only they're high-pitched like—" His voice went falsetto. "Bzz bzz bzz bzzzzz bzz bzz!"

It occurred to Massy that they sounded like two idiots. He said with dignity:

"Record everything you get, and I'll try to decode it." He added: "Before there was voice communication there were signals by light and sounds in groups of long and short units. They came in groups, to stand for letters, and things were spelled out. Of course there were larger groups which were words. Very crude system, but it worked when there was great interference, as in the early days. If there's some emergency, your home world might try to get through the sun's scrambler-field that way."

"Undoubtedly!" said Herndon, with even greater relief. "No question, that's it!"

He regarded Massy with great respect as he clicked off. His image faded. The plate was clear.

He thinks I'm wonderful, thought Massy wryly. Because I'm Colonial Survey. But all I know is what's been taught me. It's bound to show up sooner or later. Damn!

He dressed. From time to time he looked out the port again. The intolerable cold of Lani III had intensified, lately. There was some idea that sunspots were somehow the cause. He couldn't make out sunspots with the naked eye, but the sun did look pale, with its accompanying sun-dogs. Massy was annoyed by them. They were the result of microscopic ice-crystals suspended in the air. There was no dust on this planet, but there was plenty of ice! It was in the air and on the ground and even under it. To be sure, the drills for the foundation of the great landing-grid had brought up cores of frozen humus along with frozen clay, so there must have been a time when this world had known clouds and seas and vegetation. But it was millions, maybe hundreds of millions of years ago. Right now, though, it was only warm enough to have an atmosphere and very slight and partial thawings in direct sunlight, in sheltered spots, at midday. It couldn't 

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