The port closed silently upon its soft-faced gasket; it was gas-tight when no pressure was applied. And Chet stumbled and reached blindly till he fell beside the huge inner compression port, while the breath of gas that had touched him tore with ripping talons at his throat. More measureless time--whether hours or minutes Chet could never have told--and he sat upright and tried to believe the utterly incredible story that his eyes were telling. A short passage and a control room beyond! It was just as they had left it; was it days or years before? The shattered control cage was there, the familiar instrument board, the very bar of metal with which he had wrought such havoc in that wild moment of demolition; it was all crystal clear under the flooding light of the nitron illuminator! * * * * * Yes, it was true! He, Chet Bullard, was staring wide-eyed at his own control-room, in his own ship--his and Walt's--and he was alone! The remembrance of Walt and Diane, and the realization that now, by some miracle, he might be of help, brought him to his feet. He sprang toward a lookout where the last light of day was gone and a monstrous moon shone down upon a world of ghastly green. Yet, through the gas, every detail of the world outside showed clear; even the giant fumerole that had been the funeral pyre of a man of science; even the mound of ashes at its top which the moving air was blowing in dusty puffs until spouting mud fell back to hide them from sight. Chet cursed the gas for the dimness that clouded his eyes, and he rubbed at them savagely as he turned and walked to a side lookout. Through the riot of impressions of the fight outside the port, he had known that there was a human body over which he stumbled at times. He saw it now--the body of Schwartzmann's henchman, killed these long weeks before but preserved in the ceaseless flow of gas. But now, sprawled across it, was another and bulkier shape. Sightless eyes stared upward from a face turned to the cruel gas clouds and the hideous green moon above. The mouth sagged open in a black, bearded face, and one hand still clutched a pistol. It would have shattered his human opponent had the man been given an instant more, but against the enemy that rolled down and overwhelmed him in billowing clouds no weapon could prevail. Herr Schwartzmann had fought his last fight. * * * * * The package--the last gift of Kreiss--was still securely wrapped. It lay on the metal floor. Chet stooped to lift it, to work at the knotted vines and lay off the thick wrappings of fibrous leaves, until he stood at last, under the white glare of the bubbling nitron bulb, to stare and stare wordlessly at the cage of metal bars in his hand.