Then it turned out to be an anticlimax; Connie was about as dangerous as Kansas. Before any human went outside the ship other than encased in a quarantine suit we exposed rats and canaries and hamsters to natural atmosphere; they loved it. When the first party went ashore, still in quarantine suits but breathing Connie's air after it had passed through electrostatic precipitators, two more experimental animals went with them-Bernhard van Houten and Percival the Pig.

Van had been down in the dumps ever since his twin was killed; he volunteered and I think Dr. Devereaux urged the Captain to let him. Somebody had to do it; you can make all the microscopic and chemical tests you like—the day comes when a living man has to expose his. skin to a planet to find out if it is friendly. As Dr. Babcock says, eventually you must climb the tree. So Van went ashore without a quarantine suit, wearing shorts and shirt and shoes and looking like a scoutmaster.

Percival the Pig did not volunteer, but he thought it was a picnic. He was penned in natural bush and allowed to forage, eating anything from Connie's soil that he thought was fit to eat. A pig has advantages as an experimental animal; he eats anything, just as rats and men do, and I understand that his metabolism is much like ours—pigs even catch many of the same diseases. If Percival prospered, it was almost certain that we would, particularly as Percy had not been given the inoculations that we had, not even the wide-spectrum G.A.R. serum which is supposed to give some protection even against diseases mankind has never encountered before.

Percy got fat, eating anything and drinking brook water, Van got a sunburn and then tanned. Both were healthy and the pioneer party took off their quarantine suits. Then almost everybody (even Percy) came down with a three-day fever and a touch of diarrhea, but everybody recovered and nobody caught it twice.

They rotated after that and all but Uncle Steve and Harry and certain ones whom they picked swapped with someone in the ship. Half of the second party were inoculated with serum made from the blood of those who bad recovered from three-day fever; most of these did not catch it. But the ones who returned were not allowed back in the ship at once; they were quarantined on a temporary deck rigged above the top bulge of the Elsie.

I don't mean to say that the planet was just like a city park—you can get killed, even in Kansas. There was a big, lizardlike carnivore who was no bargain. One of those got Lefty Gomez the first time our people ran into one and the beast would have killed at least two more if Lefty had been the kind of man who insists on living forever. I would never have figured Lefty as a hero—he was assistant pastry cook and dry-stores keeper back in the ship—but Uncle Steve says that ultimate courage is the commonest human virtue and that seven out of ten are Medal of Honor men, given the circumstances.

Maybe so. I must be one of the other three. I don't think I would have stood my ground and kept poking away at the thing's eyes, armed only with a campfire spit.

But tyrannosaurus ceti was not dangerous enough to give the planet a down check, once we knew he was there and what he was. Any big cat would have been much more dangerous, because cats are smart and he was stupid. You had to shoot first, but an explosive bullet made him lie down and be a rug. He had no real defense against men and someday men would exterminate him.

The shore party camped within sight of the ship on the edge of beautiful Babcock Bay, where we were anchored. The two helicopters patrolled each day, always together so that one could rescue the men in the other if it went down, and never more than a few hundred miles from base. Patrols on foot never went more than ten miles from base; we weren't trying to conquer the country, but simply trying to find out if men could conquer and hold it. They could... at least around Babcock Bay... and where men can get a toe hold they usually hang on.

My turn did not come until the fourth rotation and by then they were even letting women go ashore; the worry part Was over.

The oddest thing about being outdoors was the sensation of weather; I had been in air-conditioning for two years and I had forgotten rain and wind and sunshine in your face. Aboard the Elsie the engineer on watch used to cycle the temperature and humidity and ozone content on a random schedule, which was supposed to be good for our metabolisms. But it wasn't weather; it was more like kissing your sister.

The first drop of rain I felt startled me; I didn't know what it was. Then I was running up and down and dancing like a kid and trying to catch it in my mouth. It was rain, real rain and it was wonderful!

I couldn't sleep that night. A breeze on my face and the sounds of others sleeping around me and the distant noises of live things outside our snooper fences and the lack of perfect darkness all kept me awake. A ship is alive, too, and has its noises, but they are different from those outdoors; a planet is alive in another way.

I got up quietly and tip-toed outside. In front of the men's quarters about fifty feet away I could see the guardsman on watch. He did not notice me, as he had his head bent over dials and displays from the inner and outer fences and from the screen over us. I did not want to talk, so I went around behind the hut, out of sight of even the dim light from his instruments. Then I stopped and looked up.

It was the first good view of the sky I had had since we had left Earth and the night was clear. I stood there, dazzled and a little drunk from it.

Then I started trying to pick out constellations.

It was not hard; eleven light-years is just down the street for most stars. The Dipper was overhead, looking a little more battered than it does from Earth but perfectly recognizable. Orion blazed near the horizon ahead of me but Procyon had moved over a long way and Sirius was not even in sight—skidded below the skyline, probably, for Sirius is even closer to the Earth than is Tau Ceti and our position would shift him right across the sky. I tried to do a spherical triangle backwards in my head to figure where to look for Sirius and got dizzy and gave up.

Then I tried to find Sol. I knew where he would be, in Boötes, between Arcturus and Virgo—but I had to find Bootes, before I could look for Father Sol.

Boötes was behind me, as close to the skyline as Orion was on the other side. Arcturus had shifted a little and spoiled the club shape of Bootes but there was no doubt in my mind.

There it was! A yellow-white star, the color of Capella, but dimmer, about second magnitude, which was right, both position and magnitude. Besides, it had to be the Sun, because there hadn't been any star that bright in that location when Pat and I were studying for our astrogation merit badge. It was the Sun.

I stared at it, in a thoughtful melancholy, warm rather than sad. I wondered what Pat was doing? Walking the baby, maybe. Or maybe not; I couldn't remember what the Greenwich ought to be. There he was, thirty years old and a couple of kids, the best part of his life behind him... and here I was, just old enough to be finishing my sophomore year in college if I were home.

No, I wouldn't be; I'd be Pat's age.

But I wasn't thirty.

I cheered up and decided that I had the best break after all, even if it had seemed not so good at first. I sighed and walled around a bit, not worrying, for not even one of those lizard brutes could get close to our night defenses without bringing thunder and lightning down around his ears. If he had ears. Percy's pen was not far in that rear direction; he heard me and came to his fence, so I walked up and scratched his snout. "Nice place, eh, boy?" I was thinking that when the Elsie did get home—and I no longer believed Uncle Steve's dire predictions—when I did get back, I would still be in my early twenties, just a good age to emigrate. And Connie looked like a fine place to come back to.