When he left his shack, however, he did so cautiously, carrying a small telescope salvaged from the crack-up of his own ship. This planet was so far beyond the Terran sphere of exploration that he feared the new-comers might not be human.
He was surprised to sight the spaceship settling about half a mile away, in the vicinity of the wreck. The lines seemed to be Terran.
"They picked that spot on purpose," he muttered. "Couldn't be somebody after me, could it?"
There was no lack of good reason for the law to be after him. In the first place, the battered hull out there had not belonged to him. In the second, the authorities might be trying to find out what had become of the original crew. Quasmin could not answer that even if he wanted to—a corpse was difficult to locate in interstellar space.
He took advantage of the cooling period after the ship had touched down to make his way through the scrubby growth that resembled a forest except for the purplish color of the drooping fronds. He found a good spy point on a low hill and settled down to watch.
In due time, the airlock within Quasmin's view opened. A single space-suited figure climbed clumsily down the ladder, paused to glance about, and walked a circuit of the ship as if to survey the terrain.
Apparently deciding that nothing dangerous flew or crept in the vicinity, the spacer returned to the base of the ladder to remove his suit. He dropped it there, hitched at his belt—suggesting to Quasmin the weight of a weapon—and began to stroll across the turf of springy creepers toward the wreck. Quasmin followed as sneakily as he could.
Passing the strange ship, some instinct told him that it was now unoccupied. The whole attitude of the spacer had suggested a man as much alone as Quasmin himself. The latter temporarily abandoned his skulking pace to walk boldly where he might be seen by any crew members on watch. No activity resulted.
Keeping one eye on the distant figure, Quasmin moved toward the spacesuit at the foot of the ladder. Just as he was about to reach out for it, the air took on the resiliency of sponge-covered springs and thrust his outstretched hand right back at him.
"Force shield!" he growled. "Damn! Probably set to his voice or some such code. Well, I can't get closer, but it proves he must be alone."