Will Archer idly poked one of the array of keys which studded the wings of his control chair. The pattern of stars which sprayed into a twelve-foot black bowl from a knobbed projector above his head winked out and was promptly replaced by the rounding, yellow-green bulk of Vega VII, less than two diameters away.

He was not sorry that its image was receding steadily. Faria, as it was called in the Vega system, was about the size of Earth and its atmosphere was tolerable to humans—there the resemblance all but ended. For its weather was insufferably hot, its topography fantastically tortuous, and its life-forms, both animal and vegetable—and yes, mineral!—were of a general aspect that only a biologist could gaze on with fondness.

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