Gradually, though, his mind cleared; he remembered the past, and he no longer was afraid of the men who visited him from time to time. But there was a strangeness about the men that he could not fathom; they refused to talk about anything, any subject, other than the actual running of the great ship. Always, when he asked his eager questions, they mumbled and drifted away. And then in his third week on the rescue ship, he went to sleep one night while peering from the port hole at the blue ball of Earth swimming in the blackness of space. He slept and he dreamed of the years he had spent by himself in the drifting, lifeless hulk of the _Mary Lou_. His dreams were vivid, peopled with men and women he had once known, and were horrible with the fantasies of terror that years of solitary brooding had implanted deep in his mind. * * * * * He awoke with a start and a cry of alarm ran through him as he thought that perhaps he might still be in the _Mary Lou_. The warm, smiling face of a man quickly reassured him. "I'll call the captain," the space man said. "He said to let him know when you came to." Willard could only nod in weak and grateful acceptance. It was true! He pressed his head back against the bed's pillows. How soft! How warm! He yawned and stretched his arms as a thrill of happiness shot through his entire body. He would see Earth again! That single thought ran over and over in his mind without stopping. He would see Earth again! Perhaps not this year and perhaps not the next--for the ship might be on some extra-Plutonian expedition. But even if it would take years before it returned to home base Willard knew that those years would fly quickly if Earth was at the end of the trail. Though he had aged, he still had many years before him. And those years, he vowed, would be spent on Earth and nowhere else. The captain, a pleasant old fellow, came into the room as Willard stood up and tried to walk. The gravity here was a bit different from that of his ship, but he would manage. "How do you feel, Space Man Willard?" "Oh, you know me?" Willard looked at him in surprise, and then smiled, "Of course, you looked through the log book of the _Mary Lou_." The captain nodded and Willard noticed with surprise that he was a very old man. "You don't know how much I suffered there," Willard said slowly, measuring each word. "Years in space--all alone! It's a horrible thing!" "Yes?" the old captain said. "Many times I thought I would go completely mad. It was only the thought and hope that some day, somehow, an Earth-ship would find me and help me get back to Earth. If it was not for that, I would have died. I could think of nothing but of Earth, of blue green water, of vast open spaces and the good brown earth. How beautiful it must be now!" A note of sadness, matched only by that of Willard's, entered the captain's eyes. "I want to walk on Earth just once--then I can die."