The Code was rigid—no fraternization with the peoples of other planets! Earth wanted no "shotgun weddings" of the worlds of space! "Split" Campbell and I brought our ship down to a quiet landing on the summit of a mile-wide naked rock, and I turned to the telescope for a closer view of the strange thing we had come to see. It shone, eighteen or twenty miles away, in the light of the late afternoon sun. It was a long silvery serpent-like something that crawled slowly over the planet's surface. Th