One moment and we could see the moving lines of traffic, the glowing windows even. Then there just wasn't anything at all on the screen. Jim scanned for the other cities. But there was just darkness, impenetrable darkness. We did see a searchlight break through, a moving finger, raking through for a split second. Then it, too, vanished. From the relief Shadrak spoke. His voice was strangely gentle. "Look no more, Jim Drake and Jerry Kos. Turn back to your charts. Spor is gone. You did your best. We know that. It was not your fault. Look forward. Within thirty minutes you will find the first star to give you speed." It wasn't real, that flight from Maj, with Noir flowing beyond the sixth planet, its crescent outrider seeking new stars to black out, and leave dry, lifeless masses in a black universe. On schedule we picked up our star, and at sight of it we felt the first return of sanity. We sped back by Orion's family, and into a familiar bit of space, with Shadrak coming to the screen at intervals, and at other times sending us transcribed news events from Earth. And thus we crossed the sky, thrilled by the sight of Neptune, Saturn and his rings, and at last the disks of Mars and Earth, beneath our own sun, so free of the black menace. We made a routine landing, settling a short distance from Shadrak's place. He was there to welcome us, with other Martians. And Jim walked up to him slowly, holding the tiny, wriggling pup we had brought along. "The last survivor of Spor," he said. Martians dislike dogs, although they admire any member of the cat family. But Shadrak reached out, studied the tiny specimen from Spor. The pup licked his hand and Shadrak smiled. "Take him back to Earth," he said. "They will appreciate the animal, better than we." Shadrak tapped each of us in the Martian way of showing deep affection. "Never reproach yourselves, because you took a ship to Spor large enough to return a thousand persons, and returned with this poor animal. "I think," he added with a sigh, "we forget too often we are instruments of a divine power none of us, Earthmen or Martians, or any other world, can ever understand. It was granted us the privilege of rescuing men and women of Atlantis and removing them to Spor. It was denied us, the chance to save them a second time."