Jerry was barely thirty, but his thick shock of hair was almost totally white and his mouth a firm line which never curled in a smile nor twisted in a frown. At the edge of the clearing, his bronzed flesh glowing ruddily in the failing sunset light of Arcturus, he stood and waited. Off in the distance behind him, Daniel Peters started across the clearing from the sunset-red gleaming of the sleek metal spaceship. He drew abreast of the solitary figure, and said respectfully, "All in readiness, sir." The words reached Jerry as from across a void. He turned slowly to face the other man, focusing his will with the effort it always took just to use his voice. "Thank you, Captain," he said. That was all he said, but as he followed Peters across the clearing toward the scorched circle where the great ship had descended on its column of fire, the pilot could not suppress a shudder. Jerry's voice was oddly disconcerting to the nervous system of the listener. It seemed like the "ghost-voice" of a medium at a seance. The mind that was Jerry Norcriss was only utilizing a body for the purpose of speaking. It did not actually belong there. And that was true enough. Jerry and the others of his kind no longer lived in their bodies. They merely existed there, waiting painfully for the next occasion of Contact. * * * * * Beside the ship's ladder, hooked to an external power-outlet beneath a metal flap on one towering tailfin, was the couch and the helmet Jerry Norcriss would use. Jerry lay back with the ease of long habit and adjusted the helmet-strap beneath his chin, as Peters read to him mechanically. The data came from the translated resumé of the roborocket that had gathered data on Arcturus Beta for the six months prior to the landing of the spaceship. "... three uncatalogued species," his voice droned on. "An underground life-pulse in the swamp-lands near the equator; the creature could not be spotted from the air.... A basically feline creature, also near the equator, but in a desert region, metabolism unknown.... And pulses of intelligent life, and of some unfamiliar lower animal life, on the northern seas.... All other life-forms on the planet conform to previously discovered patterns, and can be dealt with in the prescribed manners."