When the chill winds of night came, Rawson was sitting inside a cave that looked down on the sink hole. Rawson was carefully, meticulously, studying the crew and the lay of the land, like a general studies the ground before a battle. He looked down into the depression which was like a huge inside-out face. The ridge on which the space ship rested looked like a monstrous nose between the two giant eyes--the farther eye the quicksand pool and the nearer a shallow swamp over which hung the swamp gas. The crew was camped by a small fire near the swamp. Near them lay young Seymour, with his hands and feet bound. Even in the cave the wind moaned incessantly and drove the bitter sand into Rawson's mouth. It blasted across the glassy ridge and whipped the fires beside the space ship. If I can rescue Seymour, Rawson thought, we'll control the ship, if we manage to hold the control room. But he realized the difficulty. Between the cave and the whipping fires of the crew, Rawson could see the mist that hung low over the swamp, just out of the reach of the wind. Sometimes a little of the mist was carried away and brought to his nose--swamp gas. On silent feet, Rawson crept toward the swamp. The guard did not look up. Rawson lay beside the soft, decayed soil and vegetation. Under cover of his body he snapped his automatic lighter. He hurled the blazing light into the swamp. He leaped back. Immediately a flame flashed across the swamp and leaped toward the sky and the roar of the explosion brought the entire crew to their feet with their flame ray weapons in their hands. They stampeded toward the safety of the space ship. Under cover of the explosion, Rawson rushed toward Seymour, picked him up and fled with him into the darkness of the sandy desert, beyond the hills. "Gee, sir!" the boy said after he recovered from his astonishment, and they lay in hiding on top of a tall hill and looked down on the excited bustle of the camp. "Did you do that?" Rawson smiled grimly. "Nothing to it. Swamps create marsh gas, or methane gas, which is highly inflammable. A little fire will make a stagnant pocket of the gas go up with a bang." Young Seymour looked at the lights of the camp with troubled eyes. "I'm sorry you rescued me, sir." "What's this, Mr. Seymour?" The young fellow avoided his captain's eyes. "I been thinking, sir, that--well, maybe, Underofficer Durk is right." "So Durk's been talking to you, convincing you that I haven't enough experience to command a space ship!" "I feel miserable about the whole thing, sir. It's--oh, gee, captain. Durk's got the ship and the men and he's had twenty-five years in the spaceways. He ought to know what's doing." Rawson's voice was suddenly raw as Jovian liquor. "All right, Mr. Seymour. I understand. Get going!" * * * * *