From near the Administration Building a two-place autogiro was rising, silhouetted for a moment between the horns of the reddish crescent of big Jupiter just above the horizon. As he walked across the field toward headquarters, Mart surveyed the familiar scene. Three squat freighters were up on the racks, their ugly black bottoms over the ash-filled blasting pits; four others were on dollies ready to be serviced. All seven were ready for their regular weekly Callisto-Jupe hop, ready to pick up more ore. And, as usual, they'd go out today to clear the field for the sleeker, faster, long-haul ships that would arrive from Earth tomorrow for the smelted metal. Mart glanced at his wrist-chronometer. Eight o'clock now; in an hour and a half, _Freighter One_, right on schedule, would start testing its rocket tubes for the ten o'clock hop. And an hour later, _Freighter Two_ would start to warm up for the eleven o'clock blasting-off. And then the others, every hour on the hour. At his desk in the Administration Building, Mart picked up the familiar sheaf of clearance papers waiting for his attention, and glanced through them. Initialing them was mere routine; they'd never cleared a minute early or a minute late since he'd been there. Director Barrow saw to that. The door opened. Mart put down the papers and glanced up. * * * * * One of the workmen from the smelting plant, a tall black-haired fellow wearing tinted glasses, stood looking into the office. Mart didn't remember ever seeing him before--but with several hundred workmen, you couldn't remember all of them. "Director Barrow in?" Mart glanced up at the wall clock before he answered. "He'll be here in twenty-one minutes. Sit down and wait if you're off duty." He turned back to the papers and finished initialing them, grinning inwardly at being able to say that the Director would arrive in twenty-one minutes exactly. It wasn't everywhere that one could make so accurate a prediction about anyone's arrival time, but Barrow was something of a chronometer himself. He tossed the papers toward the back of the desk and threw the switch of the communicator on his desk, leaned forward slightly. "Dispatcher Wells calling Police Autogiro." "Autogiro, Captain Wayne," came the reply. "Go ahead. Mart." "I was the one who reported seeing the spaceship, Cap--if it was one. Found it? If not, I can--" "Thanks, Mart, but we've sighted it all right. We're now circling, looking for a spot to come down. It doesn't take much, but damned if we can perch on a ridge like a canary. Neither could that space-speedster down there. "Wrecked? What's it look like?" "Ummm. Offhand one of the single-place jobs that Venusians bought from Earth before the war. Full armament, too." "What? You sure, Cap? After the Earth-Venus twenty-two eighty treaty, we reclaimed and destroyed all the armed--"