Slowly the locks opened. Through the door, unhelmeted, unprotected by a spacesuit, came Ghor. "He's alive!" Ghor smiled--that same crooked, half mysterious smile. He lifted his hand and held a microphone close to his lips. "I hoped you wouldn't come back. I didn't want you to know I was a failure." "A failure! Man, you're a hero!" Mick said. "I'm not a man. If I had been a man, I would have died. But, you see, I am not a man. I am a product of my father's botany. You see, I, like all of the things that look like terrestrial things on this planet, was developed from the lowly Ngye. It had been my hope that I was no longer a plant, but a man. I had read men's books; studied his pictures; learned his arts. But I am not a man. I am a failure." From the door came another being--an identical image of Ghor. "This," Ghor said, "is my son. The result of my wound yesterday." Mick walked forward and took the hands of the two asteroid men. "If you're not men," he said, "you're something greater." End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Dead Man's Planet, by R. R. Winterbotham