fate of former ships: Ship intact.

Phoebus reached port according to orders. All hands safe.

Ship intact

Yes, Pickens looked calm enough, thought Healey, except for his eyes. The rest of his face was bland, unemotional, but the eyes had a fierce, eager fire in their blue depths.

"Lieutenant," he said, and he could not keep the jubilance out of his voice, "we are here!"

Then he said proudly: "Lieutenant, you will take a party of six men and plant the World Council flag."

With nervous fingers Healey fastened up his bulky pressure-suit, led his men into the air-lock, marched up an outcropping of granite with the feel of the Moon-substance under his feet, put the flagpole into a crack and wedged it there with loose rocks, while the honor guard stood at attention. He stepped back and saluted the flag, then they went to the Phoebus.

He wedged the flagpole into a crack while the honor guard stood at attention.

The entire ship's company stood at attention when Healey marched in from the air-lock, and he could read on every face the thrill of knowing that they were on non-terrestrial soil. In a lot of faces, too, mostly those of the younger men, he saw the hope that had been with them all from the start—that this was it, that the Air Marines couldn't ignore them any longer.

Two hours later Healey took out the rocket-gyro runabout and investigated the three wrecks of previous flights. The bodies had mummified from the lack of air and moisture. They gathered the ship's logs from two of the wrecks. The other ship had exploded and burned—or, rather, it had fused. It was one solid mass of metal, like ice cream melted down in the sun.

They took out all the bodies they could recover, for burial back on Earth. They left a cache of supplies for future travelers; they gathered information; they painted an enormous aluminum cross on the rock that the 100-inch-'scopes back on Earth could see, so that even the most skeptical of their critics back home would be unable to deny that Pickens' ship had landed.

At the very last, Healey painted a small face making a long nose.

"That," he said judiciously, "ought to give the 

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