A few feet more, he staggered and stumbled into a dank pool. He took off the space helmet and drank deeply and crammed some concentrated food pills into his mouth. His muscles were sore and weary. He knew he had to rest. He found the coolness of a cave. Hardly had he dropped to the sandy floor when he fell into an exhausted sleep. * * * * * For hours he lay and his body regenerated its youthful vitality. He stirred restlessly in his sleep when he felt the pressure of another hand on his. He sat up abruptly, on guard. A freckled boy's face was looking down on him with wonder in the blue eyes. "Captain Rawson, sir," Seymour said. "I was explorin' and found you here. Gee, sir, how did you escape out of the quicksand?" Rawson regarded the young man with wonder. "Sit down, Mr. Seymour." Rawson explained about the borax and his escape. "But what about you and Durk?" The boy made circles in the sand with his foot. His eyes avoided the captain's. "I couldn't stand it, sir. My conscience. It wasn't right. You're the captain, no matter what Durk says." "Thanks. Okay, let's get going." Purposely they strode across the sand toward the space ship. But as they neared the top of the hill beyond which lay the space ship, they heard a series of loud explosions. Rawson recognized those sounds. With a rush he was on top of the hill and staring at the space ship. The explosions came from there. The ports were closed and there was no one on the bridge. The ship was taking off! Rawson's skeleton-like body shuddered in dismay. He yelled but he knew it was futile. No one could hear him above the roar of the rockets. And if they did? Durk might find it convenient to report that the captain had been lost on the expedition. For once in his life, Rawson admitted fear to himself--to be deserted on this waste planet! The space ship quivered under the impact of the rockets. And Rawson noticed a queer thing about that vibration--it was normal in itself, but it was never intended to occur on a glassy cliff that sloped into a quicksand. The vibration loosed the pull of gravity of the ship--its steadiness on the ridge--it slipped sideways. It slipped sideways into the quicksand. The space ship moved sideways over the edge of the cliff and started to sink beneath the lake of quicksand. As the bottom half of the hull disappeared below the surface of the ooze, the top ports opened and the crew began leaping from the hull onto the cliff. Rawson counted them. They were all there. All sixty--there should be sixty-one. But one had been lost in the quicksand at the first landing. The crew stood huddled in a bunch and watched the top of the hull disappear below the quicksand. Rawson's crane-like legs carried him toward the crew. Their faces showed repentance. It was a miserable bunch of men that faced him, and the most miserable of all was Underofficer Durk.