Startled into action, Jim Landor straightened in his seat. He peered eagerly through the forward visiplate of the tiny rocket-plane. From the Martian metropolis that nestled in the opposite hemisphere, thirteen hundred miles away, he had taken the poorly-mapped, wearisome, rocket-course of the Polar route in order to save time. Thus he avoided being hampered by the magnetic storms raging over the Red Desert at this season. At least, so he'd told his friends. But the real, the all-important reaso