Young Seymour hesitated, but his freckled face was blazing. "Yes, sir." He replied mechanically. But his fists were balled and he advanced angrily on Durk. "You can't do it! Captain's got more brains than the whole bunch of you!" "Shut up, Squirt!" Young Seymour lunged at Durk and pounded his fists again the alligator toughness of the underofficer. Durk deftly cuffed the cabin boy and knocked him into a corner. Seymour rose slowly, wiping the blood from the cut on his lips. He charged again with head lowered and balled fists. Durk gave him a brief glance. "Throw him in irons." Two hard space men grabbed Seymour by the arms and hauled him, kicking, out of the cabin. The boy's words came floating back. "You're goin' to be sorry, Durk--" Rawson stared at his underofficer stonily. "Well?" Durk scratched his chin reflectively. "Hmmm, guess we won't need to put you in irons. You won't try to run away in all that white sand." Between several of the crew Rawson climbed out of the space-port. He jerked his crane-like body almost double as he bent into a heavy, hot searing wind like a breath from hell. Toward one side the white, slimy ooze pond stretched like an oily sheet of death between the steep white cliffs that pitted it. It was about five times the width of the space ship and lay utterly lifeless, yet Rawson had a feeling of danger lurking beneath its surface. * * * * * Rawson was the third man in the single file that fought its way on the slippery, glassy surface of the narrow neck of rock that lay at the tip of a finger of morass pointing at the slimy pool. "We're gonna keep yah in one of them caves over there." Durk pointed beyond the line of cliffs that hemmed in the morass. In back of these, as far as Rawson's eyes could see, stretched white, bleak sand dunes. A strong odor of swamp came to Rawson's nose. Swamp gas. Mixed with it was the alkaline taste of the sand that the hot wind drove into their mouth, eyes and nose. Rawson carefully balanced himself on the isthmus of rock and stared with misgiving into the pool. The crew man ahead of Rawson slipped. He clutched wildly at Rawson, missed him, and rolled down the glassy slope into the pool. The ooze parted heavily, with effort, and then surrounded him like a huge, sucking mouth. The man screamed. "Quicksand! Help! It's sucking me down----eeeeeh--" With horror Rawson saw the white, slimy mess suck him down--down-- Rawson's voice screamed against the shriek of the wind. "Throw him a line!" The man's struggling head sank below the surface. A frantic hand fought against the ooze, sank steadily deeper. The hand disappeared. Bubbles from the man's dying breath broke the surface. The slime drifted together again and was smooth and liquid again with the peace of death. Rawson shuddered. He stared at Durk who was looking dumbfounded into the pool. One of the crew had been lost under Durk's command. Would there be others?