"Well, maybe in your suit you'd be safe." Once suited up, Jak went outside and across the short distance to where the balls seems to be slightly closer together. He tried first one way and then another to catch one, but at his lightest touch they burst and deflated. After several unsuccessful attempts, though, he called excitedly through his suit-sender. "Jon, you read me?" "Coming through." "I'm going to try fanning one toward the air-analyzer. I want to see if we can get an idea of what's inside. I've got a screwy hunch." "Right, I'll switch the light away from them, up into the air." Carefully Jak herded one of the globes near the ship, and was finally successful in getting it close to the hull-vent of the air-analyzer. When it was almost touching the ship's side, he reached out and touched it, and it promptly broke. "Get anything?" he yelled. "Yes, gas of some sort. Taking the reading now. It seems to be mostly nitrogen." "Hah, that's it, then! I'm coming in." When Jak was back inside, Jon helped him remove his helmet, then demanded curiously, "What's it all about, Owl?" "I'm not positive, of course, but I bet those things take the place of bees for pollinating, and also furnish the fertilizer for the ground when they burst and their nitrogen gets into the soil some way." 8 Later that evening Jon Carver sat for nearly an hour, studying intently from one of his reelbooks, and the frown on his face grew deeper and deeper. Jak had been working over their father. He had given him a careful sponge bath, then fed him another intravenous dosage of the combined liquid protein, salt, sugar and glucose. Even though their mother had been able to spoon-feed her husband small amounts of food each day, the young hoped-to-be doctor felt additional nourishment was necessary. When he finished his task and started to seek a comfortable seat in the living quarters of the space yacht, to relax with a little reading of his own, he noticed his brother's intent look and worried face. "What's the matter, Jon?" "Eh?" The younger boy looked up, startled, from his deep study. Then, as Jak repeated the question, he answered unhappily, "I just don't know enough, Owl. I can't figure out why Pop found such strong spectroscopic lines of that new element while we were billions of miles away, and yet we can't find any traces of it anywhere on these planets, except what we found in that cache." "Maybe it's in the sun." "I tried that when we were out there, but 'Annie' didn't even peep." The elder brother studied the problem a moment. "Could it be so strong that even the little bit we found would have shown those lines?" "Maybe," doubtfully, "but I don't think so. Tomorrow morning, when the sun comes up, I'm going to try to take a new reading from here. I tried to read Two, but couldn't get anything. However, I'm not so hot with the regular spectrograph, and that's why I'm boning up on it."