The tension within the spacer mounted perceptibly. Yet interminably the hours dragged on and on. All screens were down, save those for meteorite protection, as if deliberately inviting an attack. Every member of the heterogeneous crew knew their assigned tasks so that mechanically they would spring to their stations at the least warning. Saturn grew immense, glorious beyond belief, until Bill Nardon was forced from the Electronoscope by the intolerable light. It was then that some one laughed. Rather, it was a cachinnation sounding eerily in their midst. Abruptly, Bill Nardon tensed, his preternatural faculties alert. He swung slowly from the eye piece of the 'scope and faced the emissaries--scientists-explorers all, of the six planets. It was the Neptunian who had laughed. He was shaking silently now, as if some hidden mirth convulsed him. "We're close to the last planetary outpost," he observed, "and, nothing yet! This isn't an expedition, Nardon ... it's a farce! What can you expect to find in Saturn? A frozen waste of solid, glassy hydrogen and helium, an infinite wilderness of 'hot-solid' gases under unimaginable pressure. You know Saturn has an atmosphere of at least twenty thousand miles in depth!" "I know nothing of the kind," Bill answered evenly, with studied calm. "Saturn has never been properly 'correlated.' Liquids and solids don't compress; besides, even if Saturn were as you say a frozen waste with a temperature of say 180° C. below zero, that would still be too hot for hydrogen, which cannot exist as a liquid at that temperature. I needn't mention helium which requires a temperature lower still for liquefaction." "You're leading us," the Neptunian hissed through clenched teeth, "into gales of methane and ammonia roaring around a dead world of frightful cold; into a frozen hell where if the atmosphere doesn't crush us, we'll never escape the overwhelming gravitational pull.... You ... you fiend." The last words were a shriek just as he launched himself in a tigerish leap straight for the throat of the Terran "Correlator." And Bill sprang aside, his left hook instinctively catapulting to the unprotected chin of the Neptunian. But it failed to stop him. Off balance, slightly stunned by the blow, the maddened delegate from Neptune whirled on the Terran, aiming a staggering blow that whizzed past Bill's head with savage force. Off balance, the Neptunian staggered forward, his lean features contorted by bestial rage and the lust to kill. He was like a man possessed.