“I was just going to ask you the same question, George,” answered Zip. “Let’s get the men together and make some plans.” George called the miners together. Zip delivered a short speech, informing them that he, Joe, and Mark were Starmen and gave a brief summary of their assignment. With a nod, Zip asked Mark to tell what he had seen during the night. Then a number of men began to ask questions. All at once the room dimmed. The voices stopped suddenly. After a few seconds, one of the corridors lit up with a soft, pleasant light. “That’s the way we go, I think,” said Zip. “Pack up the food.” The contents of the remaining cartons were distributed among the men and Zip led the way. He felt more hopeful than he had since the Starmen had landed on Z25. The corridor extended for several hundred yards in a straight line. Many doors and other passages led off in different directions, each marked with one or more figures, none of which was familiar. The passageway was plain and utilitarian. After more than five minutes of walking, the men came to an intersection of passages in a large, faintly illuminated room. The lights in the corridor faded behind them. Across the room was a row of elevator doors. A row of lights lit up over one of them. Zip strode boldly across the floor to the elevator that had been indicated, and the others followed without a word. When he was within twenty feet of the door, it opened. After the men entered the compartment and laid down their burdens, the door closed. On a control panel, one light gleamed and Zip pressed it. When he had done so, another light went on. He pressed that one. After he had pressed six lights, no more came on, and the elevator began to descend. After about a minute, the movement stopped and a door behind the men slid open, opposite to that through which they had entered. The men turned and inhaled sharply. “Oh my! Oh my!” exclaimed Zip, but no one heard him. In front of the men was a power plant of impossibly immense size, in dusky darkness. There were low murmurs as of engines pulsing far away or of winds passing through trees, but they were quiet sounds. The ceiling was out of view, lost in blackness above them. A seamless iron floor, perfectly level, stretched out before the men as far as they could see. The left wall was beyond their vision; the right wall was about thirty yards away. Lights were located sparsely throughout the facility. Gargantuan tubes, gleaming silver in the lights and ribbed like a torso of a dragon, snaked through a heavy latticework of girders. Iron pipes a foot in diameter ran by the dozens through the open spaces. There were catwalks, elevators, and enclosed spiral staircases in strategic places. Great metal containers bearing dials and lights of various colors took up much of the space.