He packed the lab kit back into his pack, which contained food for the two of them for about a week. "Come along!" he said bitterly. He started off. Ten minutes later he stopped. "What I said was impossible. But it happened, so it mustn't have been what I said. I must have stated it wrongly. He could eat, because he did. He did eat, because of the cobs left. He did digest it. So why did he die of starvation? Did he stop eating?" "_Chee!_" said Murgatroyd, with conviction. * * * * * Calhoun grunted and marched on once more. The man had not died of a disease--not directly. The tissue analysis gave a picture of death which denied that it came of any organ ceasing to function. Was it the failure of the organism--the man--to take the action required for living? Had he stopped eating? Calhoun's mind skirted the notion warily. It was not plausible. The man had been able to feed himself and had done so. Anything which came upon him and made him unable to feed himself-- "He was a city man," growled Calhoun. "And this is a long way from the city. What was he doing away out here, anyhow?" He hesitated and tramped on again. A city man found starved in a remote place might have become lost, somehow. But if this man was lost, he was assuredly not without food. "If there was a ground-car," Calhoun considered, "it wouldn't mean anything. If he dared go back to the city he might have used it, but he wouldn't have been where I found him if he hadn't wanted or needed to leave the city. Hm-m-m--He walked out into the middle of the field. He was hungry--why didn't he have food?--and he ate. He stayed there for days, judging by the amount of food he ate _and_ digested. Why did he do that? Then he stopped eating and died. Again why?" He crossed over the top of a rounded hillock some three miles from the shallow grave he'd made. He began to accept the idea that the dead man had stopped eating, for some reason, as the only possible explanation. But that didn't make it plausible. He saw another ridge of higher hills ahead. In another hour he came to the crest of that farther range. It was the worn-down remnant of a very ancient mountain-range, now eroded to a mere fifteen hundred or two thousand feet. He stopped at the very top. Here was a time and place to look and take note of what he saw. The ground stretched away in gently rolling fashion for very many miles, and there was the blue blink of sea at the horizon. A little to the left he saw shining white. He grunted.