“The Big Burn covers three quarters of this continent.  There’s no use going north—­the devastated area extends into the arctic regions.  I’d say west—­there’s some fringe settlements on the sea coast and we need to contact a frontier territory.  Now do we have it straight—?  I take the flitter, get a Medic and bring him back?”

Dane cut in at that point.  “Correct course!  You stay here.  If the Queen has to lift, you’re the only one who can take her off world.  And the same’s true for Ali.  I can’t ride out a blast-off in either the pilot’s or the engineer’s seat.  And Weeks is on the sick list.  So I’m elected to do the Medic hunting—­”

They were forced to agree to that.  He was no hero, Dane thought, as he gave a last glance about his cabin early the next morning.  The small cubby, utilitarian and bare as it was, never looked more inviting or secure.  No, no hero, it was merely a matter of common sense.  And although his imagination—­that deeply hidden imagination with which few of his fellows credited him—­shrank from the ordeal ahead, he had not the slightest intention of allowing that to deter him.

The space suit, which had been bulky and clumsy enough on the E-Stat asteroid under limited gravity, was almost twice as poorly adapted to progression on earth.  But he climbed into it with Rip’s aid, while Ali lashed a second suit under the seat—­ready to encase the man Dane must bring back with him.  Before he closed the helmet, Rip had one last order to give, along with an unexpected piece of equipment.  And, when Dane saw that, he knew just how desperate Shannon considered their situation to be.  For only on life or death terms would the Astrogator-apprentice have used Jellico’s private key, opened the forbidden arms cabinet, and withdrawn that blaster.

“If you need it—­use this—­” Rip’s face was very sober.

Ali arose from fastening the extra suit in place.  “It’s ready—­”

He came back into the corridor and Dane clanked out in his place, settling himself behind the controls.  When they saw him there, the inner hatch closed and he was alone in the bay.

With tantalizing slowness the outer wall of the spacer slid back.  His hands blundering with the metallic claws of the gloves, Dane buckled two safety belts about him.  Then the skeleton flitter moved to the left—­out into the glare of the early day, a light too bright, even through the shielded viewplates of his helmet.

For some dangerous moments the machine creaked out and down on the landing cranes, the warning counter on its control panel going into a mad whirl of color as it tried to record the radiation.  There came a jar as it touched the scorched earth at the foot of the Queen’s fins.

Dane pressed the release and watched the lines whip up and the hatch above snap shut.  Then he opened the controls.  He used too much energy and shot into the air, tearing a wide gap through what was luckily a thin screen of the matted foliage, before he gained complete mastery.