The chairman was the first to wring my hand, and it was from him that I learned first how Sarto Sen had planned to save us, duplicating in his own laboratories the force-ray of the globe-men and speeding out with it in our old cruiser to Alto, accompanied only by Nar Lon and his devoted assistants. He carried out his plan under the imputation of cowardice, as Mur Dak told me with working face, because he knew that that plan meant death for himself and knew that I would have insisted on sharing that death. But now the shouting of the great throng outside the Hall of Planets was becoming insistent, and they were calling for Jan Tor. Already the Council members were passing out of the landing-court with the crews of the surviving cruisers, passing through the building to the crowd outside, which greeted them with a mighty roar of applause. Mur Dak alone remained, with Hal Kur and me, and in a moment he left us also, with our promise to follow in a few minutes. I could not, just then, face those rejoicing, welcoming masses. Beside me, I knew, there would have stood, invisible to them, the shade of another, the shadow of a thin, spectacled youth to whom all this was due. So I stood in the quiet landing-court, gazing up into the jeweled skies once more--gazing up toward two tiny spots of red light, far-separated already, which gleamed above us. A mist seemed to come across my eyes, blurring and obscuring the two far points of light at which I gazed. From beside me, then, came the deep voice of Hal Kur. "I know, Jan Tor," he was saying. "He was my friend, too." He gestured toward the battered cruisers beside us, then up into the light-jeweled heavens. "It was from this Earth that the first man went out, Jan Tor. Out to planet after planet, until a universe was theirs. And now that Sarto Sen has saved that universe, and has given us these cruisers, how far will man go, I wonder? Out--out--universe after universe, star after star, constellations, nebulæ--out--out--out...." He paused, a dark, erect figure beside me there, his arm flung up in superb, defiant promise toward the brilliant, thronging stars. THE END