be afraid of us then?  But I turned it down because we haven’t got a helicopter.  We couldn’t stage enough different shows from this planet to keep it going the minimum six weeks for a contest like that.  Instead, we’re taking off in a couple of hours.  Jones agrees.  The astronomers back home have picked out another Sol-type star that ought to have planets.  We’re going to run over and see what pickings we can find.  Not too far—­only twenty-some light-years!”

He regarded Holden quizzically to see how the last phases affected him.  Holden didn’t notice it.

“A contest—­It doesn’t make sense!”

“I know it isn’t sense!” said Cochrane.  “It’s public-relations!  I’m beginning to get my self-respect back.  I see now that a space-exploration job is only as good as its public-relations man!”

He went zestfully to find Babs to tell her to leave the communicator-set and let queries go unanswered as a matter of simple business policy.

The sling which swung out of the airlock now became busy.  They had landed on this planet, and they were going to leave it, and there had been a minimum of actual contact with its soil.  So Jamison took his leggings—­put on for the show—­and he and Bell went down to the ground and foraged through the woods.  Jamison carried one of Johnny Simms’ guns, which he regarded with acute suspicion, and Bell carried cameras.  They photographed trees and underbrush, first as atmosphere and then with fanatic attention to leaves and fruits or flowers.  Bell got pictures of one of the small, furry bipeds that Cochrane and Holden had spied when Babs was with them.  He got a picture of what he believed to be a spider-web—­it was thicker and heavier and huger than any web on Earth—­and rather fearfully looked for the monster that could string thirty-foot cables as thick as fishing-twine.  Then he found that it was not a snare at all.  It was a construction at whose center something undiscoverable had made a nest, with eggs in it.  Some creature had made an unapproachable home for itself where its young would not be assailed by predators.

Al, the pilot, went out of the lock and descended to the ground and went as far as the edge of the ash-ring.  But he did not go any farther.  He wandered about unhappily, pretending that he did not want to go into the woods.  He tried to appear quite content to view half-burnt trees for his experience of the first extra-terrestrial planet on which men had landed.  He did kick up some pebbles—­water-rounded—­and one of them had flecks of what looked like gold in it.  Al regarded it excitedly, and then thought of freight-rates.  But he did scrabble for more.  Presently he had a pocket-full of small stones which would be regarded with rapture by his nieces and nephews because they had come from the stars.  Actually, they were quite commonplace minerals.  The flecks of what looked like gold were only iron pyrates.

Jones did not leave the ship.  He was puttering.  Nor Alicia.  Holden urged her to take a walk, and she said quietly: