It was too bad. They had landed twice before in the scout-ship. They had established contact with the natives who were grotesquely huge, but mild and unaggressive. It was obvious that they had once owned a flourishing technology, but hadn’t faced up to the consequences of such a technology. It would have been a wonderful market.

And it was a tremendous world. The Merchant, especially, had been taken aback. He had known the figures that expressed the planet’s diameter, but from a distance of two light-seconds, he had stood at the visi-plate and muttered, “Unbelievable!”

“Oh, there are larger worlds,” the Explorer said. It wouldn’t do for an Explorer to be too easily impressed.

“Inhabited?”

“Well, no.”

“Why, you could drop your planet into that large ocean and drown it.”