* * * * * "Confidentially," said the Com Ambassador to the Coordinator of the WDA, "confidentially I agree that it is a trivial matter. But we are a new nation. Our people lack perspective. They rejoice in the strength and vigor of the nation of which they are citizens. They will not allow that nation to display what they consider weakness in any matter. One has to allow for a certain exuberance in the people of a nation newly freed from the tyranny of capitalists and warmongers such as still enslave the people of your countries. We cannot yield in this matter." The Coordinator said: "To be confidential in my turn, we both know that what you just said simply isn't true. Your government decides what its public shall think. It makes sure they don't think anything it doesn't want them to." The Com Ambassador shrugged his shoulders. He was very polite. He did not even pretend to resent being called a liar. "Now, my country intends to move forward in this matter in ten days," he observed. "And it would be deplorable if our soldiers were fired on." II It turned out that it wouldn't have mattered if the _Lotus_ had sent screaming notifications of its presence throughout all nearby space. There were detectors out, of course, but they reported absolutely nothing as the _Lotus_ moved on toward Planet Three. There was static from storms upon the planet. It grew louder as the survey ship approached. But there was no sign of anything alive. The _Lotus_ cruised some two hundred miles above seas and cloud masses and desert, photographing as she followed a search pattern that covered all the sunlit hemisphere. There were mountains in the tropics which by all the rules of meteorology should have had rain forests at their feet. They didn't. There was a river system which ran like the Nile for a thousand miles or more, through deserts like those of Egypt. There should have been at least a ribbon of vegetation along its banks. There wasn't. Where it reached the sea was an enormous delta. A drone went down and reported temperatures and humidity and the composition of the atmosphere, and the radiation background count. One would have thought the records those of Earth. The background count was a trifle high--3.9 instead of 3.6--but there was eighteen per cent of oxygen in the atmosphere. The only oddity, there, was nearly a full per cent of helium. When the drone came up it brought samples of soil and sea water. There was no life in either. The soil was mostly mineral dust, but an electron microscope disclosed abraded fractions of pollen grains and the like. The sea water sample had evidently been picked up by the drone's dredge from some shallow. There were tiny, silicious shells in it. Plankton. They had been alive, but were so no longer. "I think," said Nolan, "that I make a landing. Right?"