it's none of my business," Carlin yawned. "There isn't much in this little system for them to get into trouble about. Nothing but eight or nine small planets and one medium sun."

Carlin suddenly sat bolt upright in bed as his mind dwelt on that last thought.

"The Sun? Good glory, that's what they're up to! It must be! Sun-mining!"

He was dismayed, horrified by the sudden flash of revelation. The disquieting mystery that had puzzled him since his first coming here suddenly shaped clearly as pieces fell together in his mind.

"They wouldn't be so crazy as to try it, surely! Yet it all fits together—the heat-screens on their ship, the secrecy about it all. And that machine I saw could be a big magnetic dredge!"

Sun-mining! Most strictly forbidden of enterprises, banned by the Control Council for years since the first disastrous attempts at it had almost wrecked certain planetary systems.

Visions of frightening possibilities crowded Carlin's mind, of a desperately reckless attempt unchaining catastrophe on the inner planets of this little system.

"But Jonny Land wouldn't try it! He's a CE, he knows what would happen."

Carlin could not convince himself. He remembered only too clearly Jonny's intense obsession with Earth's copper shortage, his quiet determination.

And Floring must suspect something of the truth! That was what had made the Control Officer give his grave hinted warning.

Carlin got up and feverishly dressed. He had to find out the truth, now, at once. If the Land brothers and their friends were really bent on such a mad enterprise, it would have to be stopped even if it meant his informing Control Operations.

"If I could get one good look at the inside of that machine of theirs, I could soon tell whether it's really a magnetic dredge," he thought.

He went quietly down through the dark house and out into the starlight. Light and sounds of activity still came from the workshop.

Carlin crept toward it. He hated this spying. But he had to know. He couldn't permit a crazy attempt to unloose disaster here.

The workshop was closed, and there were no windows. But as he stood irresolute, the big front 

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