"Why, damn you, come out of there! Grab him, Jim!" And Carruthers' grim, quiet voice: "I've got him--" They came clattering up into the starlit turret, dragging a man between them. Numbly Dr. Livingston and I stared. The face we had seen that night, peering at us through the laboratory window--wild-eyed, pallid, with a stubble of beard! We saw now that it was a thin, youthful face, with rumpled curly black hair above it. A boy, certainly no more than sixteen or seventeen. He was clad in tattered, dirty clothes, his whole appearance unkempt, his figure thin, almost emaciated as though he had been long without adequate nourishment. He cowered between Duroh and Carruthers, shaking with terror. "Don't--don't kill me," he gasped. "I'll do what you want--I'll help on the trip. I just want something to eat and drink--" "Cast him loose," I said. I swung on him. "Who in the devil are you--" "Alan Grant," he gasped. "Oh, I guess you've heard of me, all right." He stood wild-eyed, trembling as Carruthers and Duroh let go of him. "Where are we? We've left the earth, haven't we? Well, that's all right--but don't you take me back. I'm not going to let anybody take me back--" Alan Grant. We knew him then. For months televised images of the lad had been flung around the world. A wanted man--wanted for multiple murder--with a price of a decimar on his head for anyone who would take him, dead or alive! III "You think we should approach from this side, John?" Dr. Livingston said. I shrugged. "How can you tell?" "True enough. If only those damnable clouds would act decently and open up now." Dr. Livingston and I were seated in the turret, bathed in the brilliant sunlight. Zura at which we were rushing broadside, so to speak, was now, even to the naked eye, a huge full-round disc, with the sunlight gleaming turgid in its sullen, swirling cloud-masses of atmosphere. By a queer mischance, we had had no break in the Zurian clouds since leaving earth. At which side had we best approach? Our only purpose was to land near some deposit of the Xalite. But there was so much that we did not know. Were deposits of the precious metal widespread over the little asteroid? Would it be found only in a gaseous state, perhaps, so that we could not secure it? This atmosphere--would we be able to breathe it; or would our air-masks be necessary? So much that we did not know, but there were many things about the strange little world which already we had learned. Apparently it was of a very great density. Dr. Livingston had calculated that back on earth. Its gravity, despite its five hundred-mile diameter, was, he thought, perhaps not much less than that of earth. And we knew now that it was not presenting one side always to the sun, but was rotating on its axis. A swift procession of days and nights, each some three or four hours long.