Jim approached very silently. He stood unmoving by Kaarji's side. Now he almost felt it too, an eerie feeling as though ghostly, insistent fingers were tugging at his brain. Almost, a fascinating wisp of a voice created an urgency within him. But that was imagination! He knew it, even as he drew back. For a full minute they stood there in silence. Then Kaarji, without even glancing at him, spoke in his curiously clipped monnotone: "So you feel it too, Jim Landor." "I--I thought I felt something." "The same thing that I have felt. But I have felt it stronger." Stretching out below was a long gentle decline, and beyond were the familiar vastnesses of the Polar wastes. Now Jim found himself scanning the far horizon. He felt on the very verge of something strange--and momentous. Kaarji leaned tensely, suddenly forward. Not the slightest show of emotion was in his voice as he stated: "It is coming. I know it. It will be here very soon." Jim did not ask what was coming. He knew. He had known all the time. He stared outward, following Kaarji's gaze, but could see nothing. He waited impatiently as the Martian never once removed his eyes from the horizon. Minutes passed. * * * * * Then ... much nearer and so clear that even Jim could not mistake it, a dot of light flashed across their vision. Immediately it was gone, hugging the terrain closely as though it had dipped behind an ice dune. It appeared again in the near distance, moving swiftly, unerringly toward them. It resolved itself into a penetrant beam of bluish light, the forward light on a speeding ghostly vehicle. Abruptly it slowed. It crept silently to the very foot of the slight slope below them. Breathless with wonderment, Jim waited for something to happen. Nothing happened except that the bluish light blinked abruptly off. No door opened. No one nor nothing emerged. Even at this close distance the conveyance was discernible only as a grayish, ghostly shape. Then Kaarji was running down toward it. Jim was suddenly torn between two desires. He stared after Kaarji and then back at the camp. He shouted to Conley and the others, and saw them look up and start toward him; then he was dashing madly after Kaarji who had almost reached the ghostly conveyance now. When Jim reached there, Kaarji was staring at a dark, narrow entrance in the metal hull. "It was already open," the Martian murmured. Then, as though it were expected of him, he stepped unhesitatingly inside. Jim waited for a single instant during which he surveyed the hull of the vessel. It was not any type of sled, as he had thought; indeed it did not touch the surface at all, but hovered a full foot above the ground. He heard a gentle humming as though of ionization beams. He followed Kaarji inside. There were no sort of controls that he could see; only a long row of seats filled the entire space. Kaarji had found a button that turned on some overhead lights. Still nothing happened.