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hundred and fifty. Down below—and it was certainly a relief to use the concept “below” once again after several thousand hours of star flight—the red-gold continental masses of Fomalhaut Three swung slowly along their apparent rotation.
    Soon the starship Henri Poincari would make its first free-fall transit over the night side of the planet. For all  practical purposes, this was the end of the outward journey. Allowing his gaze to return to the procession of continents and emerald-green oceans on the surface of Fomalhaut Three, Captain Lukas felt a faint surge of anticipatory pleasure.
    “Orbit maneuver concluded,” he said softly over his shoulder. “O.D. shut down.”
    Duluth, the engineer, who was standing expectantly by the control pedestal, stooped down and threw back his master switch. He watched the red power needle slowly fall to zero. Then he stood up and yawned.
    “Orbit drive shut down,” he remarked drowsily. “And now Fm going to get me some sleep. . . . Do you know how long we’ve been awake, Skipper?”
    Lukas turned from the observation screen and grinned. “What’s the matter, Joe? Feeling old?”
    Duluth stretched and yawned even more profoundly. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve been on duty more than two days. A man gets just a little fatigued after staying awake maybe sixty hours.”
    Lukas watched him with red-rimmed eyes. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I noticed.”
    At that moment they heard steps on the companion ladder. A couple of seconds later, Alsdorf, the geophysicist, poked his head through the hatch. He looked fresh, almost bursting with energy, but then he hadn’t needed to stay awake for the maneuvers.
    “You two look like death,” said Alsdorf pleasantly. “Come on down to the mess deck. Tony is fixing cocoa and sandwiches.”
    “The hell with sandwiches,” said Duluth. “I want to sleep.”
    Alsdorf beamed. “Cocoa first, then a sedative. You will need it with all those action tablets you have taken.”
    Lukas said, “Well, we got here, Kurt. Now you can earn your living. From here on, I’m a spectator.”
    The intercom crackled. “What’s the matter?” complained an indignant voice. “There’s a gallon of hot cocoa waiting for you. Want me to recycle it?”
    “Recycle yourself,” growled Duluth. “O.K. We’re on our way, Tony.”
    With Alsdorf leading, they went down to the mess deck. Tony Chirico, a dapper Italian biochemist who looked as if he ought to have been a barber, greeted Lukas with a toothy smile.
    “So you got us here, Mike. Somebody ought to make a speech about it. Have a sandwich.”
    “What’s in ’em?” asked Duluth suspiciously, as he grabbed a pink flask of cocoa and anchored himself to a bench.
    “Bombay duck,” said Chirico, “same as usual.”
    Duluth gave a mirthless laugh. “Hydroponics garbage a la carte.”
    Captain Lukas sat down and sipped his cocoa. He gazed at the observation panel and saw the dark side of Fomalhaut Three tinning slowly into view.
    “We’re a fine bunch of heroes,” he remarked. “With the imaginative capacity of bedbugs. Here we knock a hole through space and find a system that nobody has ever seen before, and what do we do? We sit on our backsides, drink cocoa, and grumble about the food. For all we know, this planet we’re riding might have a civilization that’d make all Earth cultures look like a cretin nightmare.”
    “A virgin planet,” said Alsdorf with an avaricious gleam in his eye. “Trans-Solar Chemicals will set up an independent station here. . . . With one Kurt Alsdorf as director.”
    “A virgin planet,” echoed Chirico with a sardonic grin. “I think we shall awaken her—gently.”
    “Can it,” mumbled Duluth, slumping over the table. “You got virgins on the brain.”
    “You don’t think we’re going to find any intelligent owners down there?” asked Lukas.
    Alsdorf lit a cigarette. “Face the facts, Mike. In the last two decades,