"The mine," he observed, "was found by members of a hunting party,
killing wild cattle for sport."

Even a small planet has many millions of square miles of surface, and
a single human installation on a whole world will not be easy to find
by random search. But there were clues to this one. Men hunting for
sport would not choose a tropic nor an arctic climate to hunt in. So
if they found a mineral deposit, it would have been in a temperate
zone.

Cattle would not be found deep in a mountainous terrain. The mine
would not be on a prairie. The settlement on Orede, then, would be
near the edge of mountains, not far from a prairie such as wild cattle
would frequent, and it would be in a temperate climate.

Forested areas could be ruled out. And there would be a landing-grid.
Handling only one ship at a time, it might be a very small grid. It
could be only hundreds of yards across and less than half a mile high.
But its shadow would be distinctive.

Calhoun searched among low mountains near unforested prairie in a
temperate zone. He found a speck. He enlarged it manyfold. It was the
mine on Orede. There were heaps of tailings. There was something which
cast a long, lacy shadow: the landing-grid.

"But they don't answer our call," observed Calhoun, "so we go down
unwelcomed."

He inverted the Med Ship and the emergency rockets boomed. The ship