Naik Shannon had never heard of Newman's world, or if he had, the memory lay buried too deeply. And at the moment, he had other things on his mind. The survivors of the Marcum-Lauries colonies, his present charge, were scattered and in disarray. His own ship was too badly damaged to lend assistance; he was running with a price on his head; and of his own forces perhaps a hundred still lived. Shin, his second in command, had radioed that he was trying to gather sufficient escort from the remnants of the fleet to take the civilian ships to safety in Soviet Space. Where the others had turned in the wake of the dismal defeat he could not guess. His head was pounding and he felt old and though he wanted to it was hard to care. Never had he felt so helpless. After the death of the ore-planet the Canton assault had been swift and overpowering. The Laurian wings had fought well enough, considering their numbers and outdated equipment. But they were no match for the grim machination thrown against them. He had seen almost at once how the battle would go. But while there was any chance at all..... The red-brown planet loomed closer. It had a somewhat ominous look: the knotted lacing of deep-cut ravines, the jagged mountains, so massive their outlines were visible even from here. THEY ALL LOOK STARK AND ALIEN AT FIRST. But this one was something peculiar, no denying. Almost it had an aura of strangeness. If he hadn't been so desperately short of oxygen he might have kept searching..... For a moment he had forgotten the Cantons. Again he studied the star system readout on the ship's console, switched to the more detailed graphic of Centaurus III, Newman's Planet. Touching the fingerboard, he summoned all the relevant data his computer possessed. The cursor darted back and forth across the screen. Centaurus III