The mighty space-liner descended majestically through the atmosphere, spurting before and beside her the puffs of flame that steadied her unerring course, loomed over the port, and settled with a splendid flourish upon a group of warehouses, which she totally incinerated, to land, swaying slightly at first, at a jaunty angle; when the dust and smoke had settled, the great ship seemed to preside over the port like a new and loftier tower of Pisa. She had about as much hope as that tower of taking off again; most of her business end had paid its tribute to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. A philosophic mind might have rejoiced in the opportunity to repeat, on a new planet, the alleged experiments of Galileo. Nothing, regrettably, was further from the thoughts of the captain, who sat in his cabin gibbering with incoherent emotion. In fairness to this worthy officer, let it be known at once that his computations had been faultless-except in one respect: as this was his first visit to the world, he had made the mistake of relying upon Ground Control. It was a fitting introduction to the space-port of Methonium, pinnacle of technology and civilization