"Because you fellows are going to find out that it is the hardest thing you've ever tried to hold." "Huh?" asked Hendricks. "We're right close and there isn't the faintest shred of gravitic field." "Oh, no. Newton's Law--" "Is valid right up to the last decimal place. 'Every object in the universe attracts--' and we just ain't a part of this universe." "Doesn't seem right." "May be of exceptionally low density." "Must be zero then," grinned Rhodes. "And if so, how does it hold itself together?" "You answer that--it's your question." "How long before landing?" asked Hendricks. "Half hour. Look, chief, d'ye suppose we might find it to be contraterrene matter?" "Um. What do you think, Billy?" "If the matter here is the same as the matter back home, we'd have a fifty-fifty chance of it being contraterrene. It might even be something that was neither terrene or contraterrene for all we know." "Interesting possibility. You mean something that is neutrally charged so far as we're concerned, but which in this universe consists of oppositely charged items?" Billy nodded. "We'll find out." "It has atmosphere, and the test shell didn't result in a contraterrene indication," called the pilot of the project. "An atmosphere of what?" Rhodes grinned. "God-knows-what," he said. "If Stellor can't make head nor tail out of the spectrograph, the chances are that the atomic stuff here might not jibe with ours at all." "There is really no reason for our planeting at all," said Billy. "But I'm just curious, that's all." "We'll be there soon." * * * * * The project approached the planet, and was forced to drive all the way. By the time that they had matched the angular velocity of the planet's rotation, the project was inverted with respect to the surface--though to the men it seemed as if they were driving _up_ to a ground-surface. It gave them an eerie feeling. "I can see myself visiting a psychiatrist by the time we get back," grunted Hendricks. "We're landing--_upward_--and I'm getting the screaming terrors already from that feeling of falling upward into the sky." "What you're suffering from is the shattering of your basic faith in the solidity of solid ground," remarked Billy. "Well, the project will land upside down, and we'll take hold tight with the anchor-projectors. Long enough, at least, to scrape a sample off of Eureka, here, to take back and analyze." "If this whole space is made of the same stuff, I can see a minor industry springing up, gathering metal and stuff for gravity-proof gadgets."