"It's infernally simple," Calhoun told Murgatroyd, distastefully. "The regular landing-grid hooks onto something in space and pulls it to the ground. This thing hooks onto something on the ground and pushes itself out into space. It'll travel by Lawlor or overdrive, and when it gets somewhere it can lock onto any part of another world and pull itself down to that and stay anchored to it. Then it can land the fleet that traveled with it. It's partly a floating dry dock and partly a landing craft, and actually it's both. It's a ready-made spaceport anywhere it chooses to land. Which means that it's the deadliest weapon in the past thousand years!"

Murgatroyd climbed on his lap and blinked wisely at the screens. They showed the surroundings of the now-grounded Med ship, standing on its tail. There were innumerable stars overhead. All about, there was the whiteness of snow. But there were lights. Ships at rest lay upon the icy ground.

"I suspect," growled Calhoun, "that I could make a dash on emergency rockets and get behind the horizon before they could catch me. But this is just a regular military base!"

He considered his recent studies of historic wars, of battles and massacres and looting and rapine. Even modern, civilized men would revert very swiftly to savagery once they had fought a battle. Enormities unthinkable at other times would occur promptly if men went back to barbarity. Such things might already be present in the minds of the crews of these spaceships.

"You and I, Murgatroyd," said Calhoun, "may be the only wholly rational men on this planet. And you aren't a man."

"Chee!" shrilled Murgatroyd. He seemed glad of it.

"But we have to survey the situation before we attempt anything noble and useless," Calhoun observed. "But still—what's that?"

He stared at a screen which showed lights on the ground moving toward the Med ship. They were carried by men on foot, walking on the snow. As they grew nearer it appeared that there were also weapons in the group. They were curious, ugly instruments—like sporting rifles save that their bores were impossibly large. They would be—Calhoun searched his new store of information. They would be launchers of miniature rockets, capable of firing small missiles with shaped charges which could wreck the Med ship easily.

Thirty yards off, they separated to surround the ship. A single man advanced.

"I'm going 

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