Bill's last comforting thought was the Multi-Energon screen. Nothing, his superb mind conceived, could possibly penetrate that. A crash was imminent, he knew, but against that they were prepared. He tried to contact whatever it was that had sent the polyglot vibrations and had managed to grip the Neptunian's brain, and only a confused disorder, as of many minds abandoning their temporary union came to him, and then ... the profound illimitable darkness of complete oblivion. * * * * * None aboard saw the fantastic scene as the cruiser neared Saturn and was trapped by the hungry pull of the planet. None witnessed the macabre sight of stupendous mountains rising to impale them as they struck its atmosphere. Uncannily, the cruiser began to decelerate as the robot control went into action, activated by the atmospheric pressure. In a great swinging arc, the super-spacer settled lower and lower, until at last, immense lateral fins shot out of its sides, and secondary rockets belched forth, braking the headlong rush. Beneath them, a world of light and shadows shimmered under the unearthly loveliness of the great rings, as if illumined by a sidereal current of glowing jewels. Three of the nine moons were in transit, phantasmal in their silent loveliness as they hovered over the parent world. Beneath, the liquid sparkle of an unknown ocean undulated softly, twinkling with myriad star points as if spangled with stardust. At last the inter-planetary cruiser came to rest, ploughing up immense furrows in the glittering sands of the shore, in a partial crash-landing. The robot controls, magnetically activated to decelerate in direct ratio with the proximity of land, had held true. The almost incandescent tertiary-outer hull of the ship, began to cool to a dull silvery hue. In the near distance, a glorious city of towering spires and prismatic domes, was like a fairy scene on a colossal scale. But no fingers of light issued from its towers and domes. No living beings issued from its portals to investigate the arrival of these voyagers of space. Only the querulous susurration of the spumeless waves of the great shining sea disturbed the eternal silence of Saturn. The silence of a dead world had enveloped the Terran ship, even as within it, the unconscious members of its heterogeneous crew were wrapped in the silence of oblivion. The wheeling moons, one blue, one palest amber, and one, the largest like a glowing ruby of the skies, passed on, while time marched on in its endless cavalcade. * * * * *