"Marn, I want you and Gramp to watch the road this afternoon. Floring might come back. Carlin, you and I haven't a moment to lose."

Carlin strode after the limping youngster into the workshop, and Jonny there rapidly explained what remained to be done.

"The kickback feed-pipes to the beam-head have to be hooked up, the cooling coils to solidify the copper are not yet in place, and the whole dredge has to be fastened in its frame so it'll be ready to swing aboard the truck tonight."

Carlin was appalled by the amount of work that remained, for two pairs of hands. But Jonny added an encouraging qualification.

"Loesser and Harb and the others can help in the ato-welding and cable work if we set it up for them. They're all veteran spacemen and know how to handle ordinary tools."

Carlin plunged into the work with Jonny. But as they toiled to set up the coils and feed-pipes of the massive mechanism, an inward aghastness at what he was doing oppressed Carlin's mind.

Why was he doing it, breaking Control law and endangering his certificate and even his liberty? Why under heaven should he be sharing the risks of these men for a planet he hadn't even seen until a few weeks ago?

"I must still be star-sick, unstable," he thought dismally. "Or I'd never have got mixed up in this mad business. Sun-mining!"

Blind reaction was dominating him. Curse it, he wasn't the type to join Quixotic forlorn hopes. He was Laird Carlin, sober, hard-working engineer, who ought right now to be far across the galaxy at the job to which he belonged.

And all the time Carlin's mind spun miserably to this whirl of self-reproach and foreboding, he was working with Jonny at topmost speed, squeezing into the frame of the great dredge where the lame youngster could not go, fastening Veer-clamps, hooking self-sealing leads to the flat Markheim filters.

The sound of ato-trucks rocked the noon air, and Harb Land came running heavily into the workshop.

"I got the others—Loesser's bringing in the big truck now," panted Harb. "What do you want us to do, Jonny?"

Loesser, and Vito, and the other four young Earthmen who came hastening after Harb were dominated by excitement. Loesser's broad red face was shining with emotion as he 

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