It was angry. He could tell that from its color. Then suddenly the anger was drowned in a swirl of golden motes. It was laughing. The Sun-child was laughing. Falken fought down a sharp despair. A terrible fear of falling oppressed him. He heard Sheila scream. The world closed in again. Sheila Moore looked at him from between two writhing trees. He hadn't felt her go. But she was there. Hairy branches coiled around her, tore her vac-suit. She shrieked.... Falken cried out and went forward. Something held him. He fought it off, driven by the agony in Sheila's cry. Something snapped thinly. There was a flaring shock inside his helmet. He fell, and staggered up and on, and the hungry branches whipped away from the girl. She stood there, her thin white body showing through the torn vac-suit, and laughed at him. He saw Miner Hilton crawling dazed on the living ground, toward the thing that looked like Sheila and laughed with mocking golden motes in its eyes. A vast darkness settled on Falken's soul. He turned. Sheila Moore crouched where he had thrown her from him, in his struggle to help the lying shell among the trees. He went and picked her up. He said to Miner Hilton, "Can we fix these broken wires?" Hilton shook his head. The shock of the breaking seemed to have steadied him a little. "No," he said. "Too much burned out." "Then we're beaten." Falken turned a bitter, snarling face to the green sky, raised one futile fist and shook it. Then he was silent, looking at the others. Sheila Moore said softly, "This is the end, isn't it?" Falken nodded. And Miner Hilton said, "I'm not afraid, now." He looked at the trees that hung over them, waiting, and shook his head. "I don't understand. Now that I know I'm going to die, I'm not afraid." Sheila's green eyes were soft and misty. She kissed Hilton, slowly and tenderly, on the lips. Falken turned his back and stared at the twisted ugly trees. He didn't see them. And he wasn't thinking of the Unregenerates and the world he'd won and then lost. * * * * * Sheila's hand touched him. She whispered, "Eric...." Her eyes were deep, glorious green. Her pale starved face had the brittle beauty of wind-carved snow. She held up her arms and smiled. Falken took her and buried his gypsy face in the raw gold of her hair. "How did you know?" he whispered. "How did you know I loved you?" "I just--knew." "And Hilton?" "He doesn't love me, Eric. He loves what I stand for. And anyway ... I can say this now, because we're going to die. I've loved you since I first saw you. I love you more than Tom, and I'd have died for him." Hungry tree branches reached for them, barely too short. Buds were shooting up underfoot. But Falken forgot them, the alien life and the wheeling suns that were only a monstrous dream, and the Sun-child who dreamed them. For that single instant he was happy, as he had not been since Kitty was lost.