"Yeah," Soriki echoed, "looked like we might be sandwich meat there
for a while. The kid knows his stuff after all."

Raf grinned a little sourly, but he did not answer that. He _ought_ to
know his trade. Why else would he be along? They were each specialists
in one or two fields. But he had good sense enough to keep his mouth
shut. That way the less one had to regret minutes--or hours--later.

The land on the south side of the mountains was different in character
to the wild northern plains.

"Fields!"

It did not require that identification from Lablet to point out what
they had already seen. The section below was artificially divided into
long narrow strips. But the vegetation growing on those strips was no
different from the northern grass they had seen about the spacer.

"Not cultivated now," the scientist amended his first report. "It's
reverting to grassland--"

Raf brought the flitter closer to the ground so that when a domed
structure arose out of a tangle of overgrown shrubs and trees they
were not more than fifty feet above it. There was no sign of life
about the dwelling, if dwelling it was, and the unkempt straggle of
growing things suggested that it had been left to itself through more
than one season. Lablet wanted to set down and explore, but the
captain was intent upon reaching the city. A solitary farm was of
little value compared with what they might learn from a metropolis.
So, rather to Raf's relief, he was ordered on.