Calhoun's mouth dropped open. A Med Ship was welcome everywhere, these days. The Interstellar Medical Service was one of those overworked, understaffed, kicked-around organizations which is everywhere taken for granted. Like breathable air, nobody thought to be grateful for it--but nobody was suspicious of it, either. The suspicion and the weird co-ordinates and the ribbon in space combined to give Calhoun a highly improbable suspicion. He looked forward with great interest to this landing. He had not been ordered to land here, but he suspected that a Med Ship landing was a long, long time overdue. "I forgot to take star-pictures," he told Murgatroyd, "but a ribbon like this would have been talked about if it had been reported before. I doubt star-pictures would do us any good. The odds are our only chance to find out where we are is to ask." Then he shrugged his shoulders. "Anyhow this won't be routine!" "_Chee!_" agreed Murgatroyd, profoundly. II "An unsolvable but urgent problem may produce in a society, as in an individual, an uncontrollable emotional tantrum, an emotional denial of the problem's existence, or purposive research for a solution. In olden days, the first reaction produced mass-tantrums then called 'wars.' The second produced frenziedly dogmatic ideologies. The third produced modern civilization. All three reactions still appear in individuals. If the first two should return to societies, as such...." _The Practice of Thinking_ Fitzgerald The descent, at least, was not routine. It was nerve-racking. The force-field from the planet's giant steel landing grid reached out into space and fumbled for the Med Ship. That was clumsily done. When it found the ship, it locked on. And that was awkwardly handled. The rest was worse. Whoever handled the controls, aground, was hopelessly inept. Once the Med Ship's hull-temperature began to climb, and Calhoun had to throw on the spacephone and yelp for caution. He did not see as much of the nearing planet as he'd have liked. At fifty miles of height, the last trace of blue sea vanished around the bulge of the world. At twenty miles, the mountain chains were clearly visible, with their tortured, winding ice rivers which were glaciers. At this height three patches of green were visible from aloft. One, directly below, was little more than a mile in diameter and the landing grid was its center and almost its circumference. Another was streaky and long, and there seemed to be heavy mist boiling about it and above it. The third was roughly triangular. They were many miles apart. Two of them vanished behind mountains as the ship descended.