There were no cities in view. There were no highways. This was an ice world with bare ground and open water at its equator only. The spaceport was placed in a snow-ringed polar valley. Near landing, Calhoun strapped in because of the awkwardness with which the ship was lowered. He took Murgatroyd on his lap. The small craft bounced and wabbled as unskilled hands let it down. Presently, Calhoun saw the angular girders of the landing grid's latticed top rise past the opened ports. Seconds later, the Med Ship bumped and slid and bounced heart-stoppingly. Then it struck ground with a violent jolt. Calhoun got his breath back as the little ship creaked and adjusted itself to rest on its landing fins after some months in space. "_Now_," said the voice in the spacephone speaker--but it sounded as if it were trying to conceal relief--"_now stay in your ship. Our weapons are bearing on you. You may not come out until we've decided what to do about you._" Calhoun raised his eyebrows. This was very unusual indeed. He glanced at the external field indicator. The landing grid field was off. So the operator bluffed. In case of need Calhoun could blast off on emergency rockets and probably escape close-range weapons anyhow--if there were any--and he could certainly get around the bulge of the world before the amateur at the grid's controls could hook on to him again. "Take your time," he said with irony. "I'll twiddle my fingers. I've nothing better to do!" He freed himself from his chair and went to a port to see. He regarded the landscape about him with something like unbelief. * * * * * The landing grid itself was a full mile across and half as high. It was a vast, circular frame of steel beams reaching heavenward, with the curiously curving copper cables strung as they had to be to create the highly special force-field which made space transportation practical. Normally such gigantic structures rose in the centers of spaceport cities. They drew upon the planet's ionosphere for power to lift and land cargo ships from the stars, and between-times they supplied energy for manufactures and the operation of cities. They were built, necessarily, upon stable bedrock formations, and for convenience were usually located where the cargoes to be shipped would require least surface transportation. But here there was no city. There was perhaps a thousand acres of greenness--a mere vague rim around the outside of the grid. There was a control-room building to one side, of course. It was solidly built of stone, but there had been an agglomeration of lean-tos added to it with slanting walls and roofs of thin stratified rock. And there were cattle grazing on the green grass. The center of the grid was a pasture!