"Think she's got the stuff, skipper?" he asked Emerson.
"The spectroscope'll tell us. Break it out."
"You bet."
The ship rocked gently as Emerson set it down on a flat, rocky plain between two high, craggy mountains that rose abruptly from the tiny valley. It was just lighting as the faint rays of the suns that served this planet nosed their way above the peaks. Like a silver needle on a floor of black rock, the spacecraft bounced once, twice; then lay still.
Within her gleaming walls, four men bent with hard faces over gleaming bands of color on a spectroscopic screen. With quivering fingers, Emerson twisted dials and switches.
"Hell!" exploded Mussdorf. "I might have known it. Not a trace."
Emerson touched his forearm gently, and shuddered.
Nichols bit his lips, and thought of Marge and the kids; Gunn licked his lips with a dry tongue and kept looking at Emerson.
With one sweep of his brawny arm, Mussdorf sent the apparatus flying against the far wall to shatter in shards.
No one said a word.