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The Aldeb‘s skipper pushed a button and the Precinct Atlas came out of its slot. The skipper punched keys and the atlas clicked and whirred. Then its screen lighted. It showed a report on a solar system that had been fully surveyed.

“Uh-uh,” grunted the sergeant. “A survey woulda showed up if a planet was Huk-occupied. What’s next nearest?”

* * * * *

Again the atlas whirred and clicked. A single line of type appeared. It said, “Sirene, 1432. Unsurveyed.” The galactic co-ordinates followed. That was all.

“This looks likely!” said the sergeant. “Unsurveyed, and off the ship lanes. It ain’t between any place and any other. It could go a thousand years and never be landed on. It’s got planets.”

It was highly logical. According to Krishnamurti’s Law, any sol-type sun was bound to have planets of such-and-such relative sizes in orbits of such-and-such relative distances.

“Willis and me,” said the sergeant, “we’ll go over and see if there’s Huks there and if they’ve got the Cerberus. You better get this stuff on a message-torp ready to send off if you have to. Are you going to come over to this–Sirene 1432?”

The skipper of the Aldeb shrugged.

“Might as well. Why go home and have to come back again? There could be a lot of Huks there.”

“Yeah,” admitted Sergeant Madden. “I’d guess a whole planet full of ’em that laid low when the rest were scrapping with the Force. The others lost and went clean across the galaxy. These characters stayed close. I’m guessing. But they hid their mine, here. They could’ve been stewing in their own juice these past eighty years, getting set to put up a hell of a scrap when somebody found ’em. We’ll be the ones to do it.”

He stood up and shook himself.

“It’s not far,” he repeated. “Our boat’s just fast enough we ought to get there a couple of days after the Cerberus sets down. You’d ought to be five-six hours behind us.” He considered. “Meet you north pole farthest planet out this side of the sun. Right?”

“I’ll look for you there,” said the skipper of the Aldeb.

Sergeant Madden and Patrolman Willis went out of the salvage ship and trudged to the squad ship. They climbed in.

“You got the co-ordinates?” asked the sergeant.

“I copied them off the atlas,” said Willis.

Sergeant Madden settled himself comfortably.

“We’ll go over,” he grumbled, “and see what makes these Huks tick. They raised a lot of hell, eighty years ago. It took all the off-duty men from six precincts to handle the last riot. The Huks had got together and built themselves a fightin’ fleet then, though. It’s not likely there’s more than one planetful of them where we’re going. I thought they’d all been moved out.”

He shook his head vexedly.

“No need for ’em to have to go, except they wouldn’t play along with humans. Acted like delinks, they did. Only proud. Y’don’t get mad fighting ’em. So I heard, anyway. If they only had sense you could get along with them.”

He dogged the door shut. Patrolman Willis pushed a button. The squad ship fell toward the sky.

Very matter-of-factly.

* * * * *

On the way over, in overdrive, Sergeant Madden again dozed a great deal of the time. Sergeants do not fraternize extensively with mere patrolmen, even on assignments. Especially not very senior sergeants only two years from retirement. Patrolman Willis met with the sergeant’s approval, to be sure. Timmy was undoubtedly more competent as a cop, but Timmy would have been in a highly emotional state with his girl on the Cerberus and that ship in the hands of the Huks.

Between naps, the sergeant somnolently went over what he knew about the alien race. He’d heard that their thumbs were on the outside of their hands. Intelligent nonhumans would have to have hands, and with some equivalent of opposable thumbs, if their intelligence was to be of any use to them. They pretty well had to be bipeds, too, and if they weren’t warm-blooded they couldn’t have the oxygen-supply that highgrade brain cells require.