The tele-view screen, the controlroom, the universe itself seemed to melt beneath him, so that for a full, terrible moment he felt himself to be without support, plunging toward the spinning, twisting mass of the approaching planet. Clouds and skies, the blueness of seas and the harsher greens and browns of vegetation spun vertiginously as he stared and became a tortured nightmare to his inflamed senses. Crying out again, he sank to the floor and sobbed his bitter loneliness to the darkness of the long night. It must have been hours later when consciousness returned to him. He lay on the floor, obscurely aware of the muffled throb of the powerful engines vibrating through the ship, and grateful for that awareness. Finally his faculties steadied and he got weakly to his feet, only to be reminded again that he had but a few short hours left. In the tele-view screen he could see the new planet plainly, its bulk swelling the view screen with its nearness. All at once his true position became clear to him. It had seemed for an instant as if this strange world might offer some release from his suffering. But, now, he realized that the hope was a mockery and a snare. What would it matter if he succeeded in landing safely and the planet’s atmosphere could support his kind of life? His fate was already decided. A few brief hours of freedom and then--death, swift and remorseless. There was no known cure for his disease. And the chances of the inhabitants of an alien planet possessing such a cure, or even being familiar with the disease itself, seemed infinitely remote. His face set in hard lines. He thought of the plague sweeping the green world like some ravening specter of the night. In his mind he could picture the inhabitants dying in agony, crying out in bitter despair as the terrible vertigo came upon them. To the right of the televiewing screen was the small control-unit which regulated the output of the atomic generators. It was an output that could be doubled and tripled--that could turn the ship into a flaming mass of raw energy and destroy it, or bring it to a controlled and gentle landing. Deliberately, gently, he reached out and shifted the control handle-- * * * * * In a green valley far below, a girl with spun-gold hair raised her head from her companion’s shoulder. “Robert,” she murmured, contentedly. “Isn’t it beautiful?” The boy’s arm tightened around her slender waist. “It’s only a shooting-star, darling,” he said. “It doesn’t mean a thing--” In the distance a steeple bell started chiming, and the twilight deepened above the green hills and valleys of Earth. Transcriber’s note: This etext was produced from Fantastic Universe, May 1955 (Vol. 3, No. 4.). Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Obvious errors have been silently corrected in this version, but minor inconsistencies have been retained as printed.