Nothing happened visibly upon the planet during many days. There were nights in which the hoarfrost glistened whitely, and days in which the frozen waterfall thawed and splashed valiantly. The sluggish, stupid animals ignored the space-ship. It was motionless and they took it for a rock. Only twice did its two occupants emerge, to gather the vegetation which was raw material for their food-synthesizer. On the second expedition, Kim seized upon an animal to add to the larder, but its helpless futile struggles somehow disgusted him. He let it go. "I prefer test-tube meat," he said distastefully. "We've food enough anyhow for a long, long time. At worst we can always come back for more." They went into the ship and stored the vegetable matter in the synthesizer-bins. They returned, then, to the control-room. "I think it's right," Kim said soberly, as he took the seat before the control-panel. "But nobody ever knows. Maybe we have a space-ship now which makes matter-transmitters absurd. Maybe we've something we can't control at all, which will land us hundreds of millions of light-years away, so that we'll never be able to find even this galaxy again." "Maybe we might have something which will simply kill us instantly," Dona said quietly. "That's right, isn't it?" He nodded. "When I push this button we find out." She put her hand over his. She bent over and kissed him. Then she pressed down his finger on the control-stud. Incredible, glaring light burst into the viewports, blinding them. Relays clicked loudly. Alarms rang stridently. The _Starshine_ bucked frantically, and the vision-screens flared with a searing light before the light-control reacted.... There was a sun in view to the left. It was a blue-white giant which even at a distance which reduced its disk to the size of a water-drop, gave off a blistering heat. To the right, within a matter of a very few millions of miles, there was a cloud-veiled planet. "At least we traveled," Kim said. "And a long way, too. Cosmography's hardly a living science since exploration stopped, but that star surely wasn't in the cluster we came from." He cut off the alarms and the meteor-repeller beams which strove to sheer the _Starshine_ away from the planet, as they had once driven it backward away from Alphin III. He touched a stud which activated the relay which would turn on overdrive should a fighting-beam touch its human occupants. He waited, expectant, tense. The space-ship was no more than ten million miles from the surface of the cloud-wreathed world. If there were an alarm-system at work, the detectors on the planet should be setting up a terrific clamor, now, and a fighter-beam should be stabbing out at any instant to destroy the two occupants of the _Starshine_. Kim found himself almost cringing from anticipation of the unspeakable agony which only an instant's exposure to a pain-beam involved.