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the exploration of strange planets. But, as Mauris told himself lightly, the United Space Corporation would not begin to exist even in its own galaxy for another sixteen hundred thousand years.
    Casting discretion aside, Captain Mauris made his way aft toward the airlock. He seized a combination pressure suit and climbed into it impatiently. Then he entered the pressure chamber. He closed the door behind him and threw the switch. The needle remained steady, indicating that the external pressure—the planetary atmosphere —was at par.
    Captain Mauris was surprised. He began to feel that it was part of some obliging dream. He pressed a luminous button on the bulkhead, and a heavy door of the entry-port swung open. The Captain took a nylon ladder from  its locker and secured one end to the stanchions of the entry-port. He tossed out the bundle of ladder and watched it drop through the misty atmosphere. Then slowly he climbed down.
    Captain Mauris stood still and gazed at the terrain through a deceptive half-light. What he could see of it was so reassuringly normal as to be quite improbable. It might have been country in the temperate zones of Earth.
    He tried to think of the fantastic chances against landing on such a planet after the Santa Maria had crippled both her stellar and planetary drives in the extragalactic jump. Logically there was no chance. What had happened was merely impossible.
    “Luck,” thought Captain Mauris. “Or is it something else?”
    With sudden inexplicable determination, he tried to tempt Fate for the last time. He released the safety valve on his pressure suit. Nothing happened. With an audible laugh of triumph and amazement, he began to take off the headpiece. Presently he stepped out of the pressure suit, his oxygen cylinder unneeded.
    Captain Mauris stood on an unknown planet and took in the unmistakable scents of summer. He felt drunk— drunk on the sheer fantasy of reality. As he gazed about him he saw, over a patch of woodland, gray streaks of light pushing back the darkness, dulling the stars. And fifty yards from the spaceship, he discerned the edge of a stream whose quiet murmur seemed suddenly to communicate with his awakened sense of hearing.
    Giving a wild cry of pleasure, Mauris forgot all about space-frame physicists and the extragalactic jump. He ran swiftly to the banks of the stream, knelt down, and splashed the warm, living water over his face. Then, impatiently, he tore off his stale clothes and waded into the dark, refreshing water.
    And as he bathed, the intensity of light grew over the distant trees.
    At last he came out of the stream, refreshed and exhilarated. He felt a warm breeze against his body, felt the blood coursing more rapidly through his veins.
    He did not bother to dress, but walked wonderingly toward the increasing light.
    The vault of darkness was being pushed slowly back,  while the stars seemed to slip behind an invisible curtain.
    Captain Mauris watched the landscape come quietly to life. Then he looked up at the sky.
    “And darkness,” said Captain Mauris as he gazed at the fading stars, “darkness was upon the face of the deep.”
    He stood there, feeling the years roll back, feeling the vitality of youth drive back some secret winter. At length he turned around to look at the spaceship, to assure himself of the reality of the journey. There was nothing to be seen. The thin vein of water flowed quietly through vacant land.
    Surprised at his own calmness, his lack of distress, he turned again toward the patch of trees. And from the direction that he would learn to call east, there rose the crimson edge of a new sun.
    He remembered then and suddenly understood the message of a woman’s voice in a dream of absolute stillness.

THE ENLIGHTENED ONES

    Lukas threw a rapid glance at the bank of instruments on the navigation panel. Velocity had stabilized at thirty thousand kilometers, with a constant altitude of three