The _Cerberus_, once landed, should have waited here. It was not only a police regulation; it was common sense. When a ship broke down in space, the exclusive hope for that ship's company lay in a refuge planet for ships in that traffic lane. Even lifeboats could ordinarily reach some refuge planet, for picking up later. They couldn't possibly be located otherwise. With three dimensions in which to be missed, and light-years of distance in which to miss them--no ship or boat had ever been found as much as a light-week out in space. No ship with a crippled drive could possibly be helped unless it got to a specified refuge world where it could be found. No ship which had reached a refuge planet could conceivably want to leave it. There was also the fact that no ship which had made such a landing would have extra rockets with which to take off for departure. The _Cerberus_ had landed. Timmy's girl was on it. It had taken off again. It was either an impossible mass suicide or something worse. It certainly wasn't routine. Patrolman Willis asked hesitantly: "D'you think, sergeant, it could be Huks sneaked back--?" Sergeant Madden did not answer. He went back to the squad ship and armed himself. Patrolman Willis followed suit. The sergeant boobied the squad ship so no unauthorized person could make use of it, and so it would disable itself if anyone with expert knowledge tried. Therefore, nobody with expert knowledge would try. The two cops began a painstaking quest for police-type evidence to tell them what had happened, and how and why the _Cerberus_ was missing, after a clumsy but safe landing on Procyron III and when all sanity demanded that it stay there, and when it was starkly impossible for it to leave. * * * * * Sergeant Madden and Patrolman Willis were, self-evidently, the only human beings on a planet some nine thousand miles in diameter. It was easy to compute that the nearest other humans would be at least some thousands of thousands of millions of miles away--so far away that distance had no meaning. This planet was something over nine-tenth rolling sea, but there were a few tens of thousands of square miles of solid ground in the one archipelago that broke the ocean's surface. It was such loneliness as very few people ever experience. But they did not notice it. They were busy. They went over the ground immediately about the landing place. Rocket flame had splashed it, both at the _Cerberus'_ landing and at the impossible take-off. There was nothing within a hundred yards not burned to a crisp. They searched outside that area. Sergeant Madden rumbled to his companion: "Where'd the other ship land?" Patrolman Willis blinked at him. "There had to be another ship!" said Sergeant Madden irritably. "To bring the extra rockets. The other ship had to've brought 'em. And it had to have rockets of its own. There's no spaceport here!"