He reached out and Murgatroyd put the tiny object in his hand. He refilled it and passed it back. "But watch yourself," he advised. "We're landing on Tallien Three. It's just been transferred to us from another sector. It's been neglected. There's been no Med Service inspection for years. There could be misunderstandings." Murgatroyd said, "_Chee!_" and squatted down to drink. Calhoun looked at a clock and opened his mouth to speak again, when a taped voice said abruptly: "_When the gong sounds, breakout will be five seconds off._" There was a steady, monotonous _tick, tock, tick, tock,_ like a metronome. Calhoun got up and made a casual examination of the ship's instruments. He turned on the vision screens. They were useless in overdrive, of course, Now they were ready to inform him about the normal cosmos as soon as the ship returned to it. He put away the coffee things. Murgatroyd was reluctant to give up his mug until the last possible lick. Then he sat back and elaborately cleaned his whiskers. Calhoun sat down in the control chair and waited. * * * * * "_Bong!_" said the loud-speaker, and Murgatroyd scuttled under a chair. He held on with all four paws and his furry tail. The speaker said, "_Breakout in five seconds ... four ... three ... two ... one ..._" There was a sensation as if all the universe had turned itself inside out, and Calhoun's stomach tried to follow its example. He gulped, and the feeling ended, and the vision screens came alight. Then there were ten thousand myriads of stars, and a sun flaming balefully ahead, and certain very bright objects nearby. They would be planets, and one of them showed as a crescent. Calhoun checked the solar spectrum as a matter of course. This was the sun Tallien. He checked the brighter specks in view. Three were planets and one a remote brilliant star. The crescent was Tallien Three, third out from its sun and the Med Ship's immediate destination. It was a very good breakout; too good to be anything but luck. Calhoun swung the ship for the crescent planet. He matter-of-factly checked the usual items. He was going in at a high angle to the ecliptic, so meteors and bits of stray celestial trash weren't likely to be bothersome. He made other notes, to kill time. He reread the data sheets on the planet. It had been colonized three hundred years before. There'd been trouble establishing a human-use ecological system on the planet because the native plants and animals were totally useless to humankind. Native timber could be used in building, but only after drying-out for a period of months. When growing or green it was as much water-saturated as a sponge. There had never been a forest fire here, not even caused by lightning!