exploration stopped, but that star surely wasn't in the cluster we came from."

He cut off the alarms and the meteor-repeller beams which strove to sheer the "Starshine" away from the planet, as they had once driven it backward away from Alphin III. He touched a stud which activated the relay which would turn on overdrive should a fighting-beam touch its human occupants.

He waited, expectant, tense. The space-ship was no more than ten million miles from the surface of the cloud-wreathed world. If there were an alarm-system at work, the detectors on the planet should be setting up a terrific clamor, now, and a fighter-beam should be stabbing out at any instant to destroy the two occupants of the "Starshine." Kim found himself almost cringing from anticipation of the unspeakable agony which only an instant's exposure to a pain-beam involved.

But nothing happened. They watched the clouds. Dona trained the electron-telescope upon them. They were not continuous. There were rifts through which solidity could be glimpsed, sometimes clearly, and sometimes as through mist.

She put in an infra-red filter and stepped up the illumination. The surface of the planet came into view on the telescope-screen. They saw cities. They saw patches of vegetation of unvarying texture, which could only be cultivated areas providing raw material for the food-synthesizers. They saw one city of truly colossal size.

"We'll go in on planetary drive," Kim said quietly. "We must have gone beyond news of us, or they'd have stabbed at us before now. But we'll be careful. I think we'd better sneak in on the night-side. We'll turn on the communicator, by the way. We may get some idea of the identity of this sun."

He put the little ship into a power-orbit, slanting steeply inward in a curve which would make contact with the planet's atmosphere just beyond the sunset-line. He watched the hull-thermometers for their indications.

They touched air very high up, and went down and down, fumbling and cautious. The vision-screens were blank for a long time, but the instruments told of solidity two hundred miles below, then one hundred, then fifty, twenty-five, ten—

Suddenly the communicator-speaker spoke in a gabble of confusing voices. Dona tuned it down to one. All the galaxy spoke the same language, of course, but this dialect was strangely accented. Presently they grew accustomed and could understand.

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