The planet was airless, waterless, desolate; a chaotic jumble of huge and jagged fragments of various metals in a nonmetallic continuous phase. It was as though some playful child-giant of space had poured dipperfuls of silver, of iron, of copper, and of other granulated pure metals into a tank of something else--and then, tired of play, had thrown the whole mess away! Neither the metals nor the nonmetallic substances were either hot or cold. They had no apparent temperature, to thermometers or to the "feelers" of the suits. The machines which these men had built so long before had not changed in any particular. They still functioned perfectly; no spot of rust or corrosion or erosion marred any part. This, at least, was good news. Inertialess machines, extravagantly equipped with devices to keep them inertialess, were taken "ashore"; nor were any of these ever to be returned to the ship. Kinnison had ordered and reiterated that no unnecessary chances were to be taken of getting any particle of nth-space stuff aboard _Space Laboratory XII_, and none were taken. Since men cannot work indefinitely in spacesuits, each man had periodically to be relieved; but each such relief amounted almost to an operation. Before he left the planet his suit was scrubbed, rinsed, and dried. In the vessel's air lock it was air-blasted again before the outer port was closed. He unshelled in the lock and left his suit there--everything which had come into contact with nth-space matter either would be left on the planet's surface or would be jettisoned before the vessel was again inerted. Unnecessary precautions? Perhaps--but Thorndyke and his crew returned unharmed to normal space in undamaged ships. Finally the Bergenholm was done--by dint of what improvisation, substitution, and artifice only "Thorny" Thorndyke ever knew; at what strain and cost was evidenced by the gaunt bodies and haggard faces of his overworked and under-slept crew. To those experts, and particularly to Thorndyke, the thing was not a good job. It was not quiet, nor smooth. It was not in balance, statically, dynamically, or electrically. The chief technician, to whom a meter jump of one and a half thousandths had always been a matter of grave concern, swore feelingly in all the planetary languages he knew when he saw what those meters were doing. He scowled morosely. There might have been poorer machines built sometime, somewhere, he supposed--but if so he had never seen any! But the improvised Berg ran, and kept on running. The planet became inertialess and remained that way. For hours, then, Thorndyke climbed over and around and through the Brobdingnagian fabrication, testing and checking the operation of every part. Finally he climbed down and reported to his waiting crew.