In the early morning of August 15, 2151, the cloudless sky was a brilliant violet, and the sun was rising like a bowl of molten gold. Marshal and Averette North, a retired couple, had climbed to the top of the crater wall to enjoy the sunrise. Six miles away was the atmosphere plant, gleaming in the newly-risen sun. They were the only ones to see what happened next, but it happened so quickly that there was almost nothing to see. In the thin atmosphere, there was only a slight vapor trail and a short-lived but powerful whine; then with a dull, gut-churning thud a ball of black and orange flame slammed obliquely into the desert floor within a quarter of a mile of the atmosphere plant. An enormous wave of pinkish-ochre sand rose up in front of the impact site like a great wall. The shock wave quickly blew the wall of sand upward and outward, so that it sparkled like luminous rain until the sand particles became too scattered to be seen. The shock wave struck the atmosphere plant and shoved it aside as if a giant, invisible hand were violently clearing a table of unwanted crockery. The crater wall where the Norths were standing rocked and heaved as if in an earthquake. The shock wave passed them, blowing their hair and rippling their clothing as if it were a pleasant breeze that died away as quickly as it had come. The elderly couple stood frozen in shock and watched the cloud of dust gradually fill the entire eastern sky. After several minutes, the dust was thin enough to reveal a horseshoe-shaped crater almost a mile across. On the southwestern edge of the crater, where it trailed off into the desert without a sharp boundary, was the place where the atmosphere plant had been. Now the plant was broken into many thousands of pieces and the wreckage was scattered for three or four miles in a wide fan across the sand. 13: The Brink of Disaster THE ALIEN SPACECRAFT was beautifully designed and well equipped. The Starmen had spent more than two days exploring it fully and tracking its electronics systems. It was planned for a crew of twenty. The galley was not stocked, but Zip assigned some of St. George’s men to store their food in it. The storage area inside the ship included spacesuits for the entire crew. The suits were shaped slightly differently from what the Earthmen were used to. They squeezed a little in the chest and were somewhat baggy between abdomen and knee, especially for the shorter men, but they could be used.