"I be late!" panted the man.
He twisted out of Kim's grasp and ran to join the swarming folk now approaching the great building.
They hurried inside. The quadrangle was again empty. Kim scowled. Then other workers came out of the factory and plodded wearily toward the dwelling-units. Kim waylaid a man and shot questions at him. His speech was slurred with fatigue. Dona could not understand him at all. But he gazed at the Starshine, and groped heavily for answers to Kim's questions, and at the end trudged exhaustedly into a doorway.
Kim came into the ship, scowling. He seated himself at the control-board. The ship lifted once more. He headed toward the curve of the plant's bulging form.
"What did you learn, Kim?"
"This is the work continent," said Kim shortly. "The factories and the workmen are here. The owners live in a place of their own. I have to talk to one of the more important merchants. I need information."
Time passed and the ship went on over the rim of the planet. Orbital speed was impossible. The Starshine stayed almost within atmosphere and moved eastward at no more than fifteen hundred miles an hour.
"Here it is," said Kim, at last.
The ship settled down once more. There was a thin, hazy overcast here, and clear vision came suddenly as they dropped below it. And the coast and the land before them brought an exclamation from Dona. The shoreline was magnificent, all beautiful bold cliffs with rolling hills behind them. There were mountains on farther yet and splendid vistas everywhere. But more than the land or the natural setting, it was what men had done which caused Dona to exclaim.
The whole terrain was landscaped like a garden. As far as the eye could reach—and the Starshine still flew high—every hillside and every plain had been made into artificial but marvelous gardens. There were houses here and there. Some were huge and gracefully spreading, or airily soaring upward, or simple with the simplicity of gems and yet magnificent beyond compare. There was ostentation here, to be sure, but there was surely no tawdriness. There was no city in sight. There was not even a grouping of houses, yet many of the houses were large enough to shelter communities.