A sobbing wail arose from outside the ship, swelling into a roar of many waterfalls. The spaceship throbbed and trembled, and every machine man realized that they had penetrated into the atmosphere at a tremendous speed. Anxiously, they consulted their instruments. Their mad fall was checked but slightly, and they realized their doom, for in the hundred miles or more left them, there was no possible chance of braking their speed to a safe maximum even with the increasing density of the atmosphere to help them. It was in the professor's mind that a few of them might survive the crash--but to what purpose? What would there be left for a few machine men on a giant world with an irreparably wrecked spaceship and dead companions? Mechanically crippled, they would await the coming of the nova with the end it would bring. Such an outlook was even more dismal than direct annihilation. A few of the machine men stared down from the falling ship at the fast approaching destruction, yet they were comparatively calm. Here was none of the terrified hysteria characteristic of organic creatures. Most of them had lived many lifetimes compared to their original existence. Down they swept to inevitable doom, their reverse charges beating helplessly against the awful drag of the planet's bulk. Professor Jameson, engrossed in gloomy introspection, was suddenly swept off his feet and crashed against 744U-21 and 6W-438, who fell with him against the wall and into a corner. For a moment, they believed that the crash had come, but those who had been looking down at the giant world knew better. There remained but a few miles between the ship and the surface. Machine men were sent tumbling in every direction. The gravity had changed suddenly from the floor of the ship to one side. The ship had turned over. Evidently 20R-654 had lost control. Their last hope, the continued expulsion charges from the ship, was gone! Slowly, the gravity again changed to still another side of the ship, rolling them along into tangled piles. Expecting it at any moment, to the machine men it seemed that the crash was infinitely delayed. When it came, Professor Jameson felt himself hurled with terrific force against the opposite wall, and his consciousness left him in a bright glare of inner light as his head struck the wall. * * * * * His first thought on regaining consciousness was surprise that he had done so. Was he the only one left? There must have been others, a few at least. Active thought waves probed his brain, and he knew that he was not alone in having survived. A clattering and scraping of metal reached him as a machine man came limping and stumbling over several quiet companions. It was 41C-98. Above him, the professor could see a side wall of the spaceship. "Come, 21MM392, you do not seem badly damaged other than having bent a leg. Arise." "How bad are things? How many of us are alive?"