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Wheezing a little, Sergeant Madden pulled away large stones and small ones. An opening appeared behind them. He grunted and continued his labor. Nothing happened. The mouth of a mine shaft appeared, going horizontally into the cliff.

Puffing from his exertions, Sergeant Madden went in. It was necessary if he were to make a routine examination.

* * * * *

The Aldeb came in a full day later. It descended, following the space beacon the squad ship sent up from its resting place. The Aldeb was not an impressive sight, of course. It was a medium-sized police salvage ship. It had a crew of fifteen, and it was powerfully engined, and it contained a respectable amount of engineering experience and ability, plus some spare parts and, much more important, the tools with which to make others. It came down in a highly matter-of-fact fashion, and Sergeant Madden and Patrolman Willis went over to it to explain the situation.

“The Cerberus came in on rockets,” rumbled the sergeant, in the salvage ship’s skipper’s cabin. “She landed. We found signs that some of her people came out an’ strolled around lookin’ for souvenirs and such. I make a guess that there was a minin’ man among them, but it’s only a guess. Anyhow somebody went over to where there’s some parti-colored cliffs, where the sea comes away inland. And when they got to that place … why … there was a ship there. Then.”

He paused, frowning.

“It would’ve been standing on an artificial shoal place, about thirty yards from a shaft that was the mouth of a mine. Uranium. And there’s been a lot of uranium taken outta there! It was hauled right outta the mine shaft across the beach to the ship that was waitin’. And there’s fresh work in that mine, but not a tool or a scrap of paper to tell who was workin’ it. It must’ve been cleaned up like that every time a ship left after loadin’ up. Humans wouldn’t’ve done it. They wouldn’t care. Huks would. There’s not supposed to be any of them left in these parts, but I’m guessing the mine was dug by Huks, and the Cerberus was taken away by them because the humans on the Cerberus found out there was Huks around.”

Patrolman Willis said: “The sergeant took a chance on the mine being booby-trapped and went in, after sending me out of range.”

The sergeant scowled at him and went on.

“How it happened don’t matter. Maybe somebody spotted the ship from the Cerberus as it was comin’ down. Maybe anything. But whoever run the mine found out somebody knew they were there, so they rushed the Cerberus–there prob’ly wasn’t even a stun-pistol on board to fight with–and they put new rockets on her.”

* * * * *

The skipper of the salvage ship Aldeb nodded wisely.

“A ship comin’ to load up minerals where there wasn’t any spaceport,” he observed, “would have a set of rockets to land on, empty, and a double set to take off on, loaded. Yeah.”

“They must’ve figured,” said Sergeant Madden, “that we just couldn’t make any sense out of what we found. And if we hadn’t turned up that mine, maybe never would. But anyhow they sent the Cerberus off and covered everything up and went off to stay, themselves, until we gave up and went home.”

“I wonder,” said the skipper of the Aldeb, “where they took the Cerberus? That’s my job!”

“Not far,” grunted Sergeant Madden. “They had to be taking the Cerberus somewhere. If they just wanted to wipe it out, after they rushed it, they coulda just set off its fuel like it’d happened in a bad landing. And that landing was bad! If there’d been a fuel-explosion crater at the end of that burnt line on the ground, nobody’d ever’ve looked further. But there wasn’t. So there’s a place they’re takin’ the Cerberus to. But it’s got a brokedown drive. It can only hobble along. They can’t try to get but so far! What’s the nearest sol-type star?”