Four of us were sitting on the triangle of the _X-87's_ bow deck--the towering, swaggering Martian Set Mokk, slumped in his chair, wrapped in his great cloak with his hairy brown legs like huge pillars of strength crossed beneath it, revealed by its flair; the weazened, morose-looking Dr. Frye, and Ollog Torio. I had just met this Venusian. Like most of them from our sister planet, Torio was slender, graceful, with the characteristic finely chiseled features, grayish skin and heavy black brows. He seemed a man of perhaps forty. Romantic in dress and bearing. His hair was sleek and black, with gray streaks in it. His pointed face, accentuated by a pointed, waxed beard, was pallid. His robe was white and purple, with a white ruff at his slender throat. He was, I understood, a wealthy man, a retired capitalist from Grebhar. It was now, by the established ship-time, what might be termed mid-evening. The passengers had had two meals, and a normal time of sleep. They were dispersed about the little vessel, gathered in groups, gazing with a natural awe through the side bull's-eyes at the wonders of the great dome of the Heavens, spread now around us. My first trip into Space. It would be out of place here for me to describe that queer, awed, detached feeling everyone gets, especially at his first view of the vast blackness of Interstellar Space with its blazing white stars. Behind us, the Earth hung, a great dull red ball, blurred and mottled with cloud-banks. The stern deck triangle gleamed dull-red. But up here in the bow the Moon hung round and white. We were still in the cone of the Earth's shadow. The moonlight here drenched the deck like liquid silver. In romance, moonlight shimmers and sparkles to inspire a lover's smile. But the reality of the Moon is cold, bleak and desolate. Even without a telescope now, I could see the etched heights of the great lunar mountains. Archimedes, Copernicus and Kepler lay in full sunlight. The heights glared; the depths of the barren, empty seas were black pools of inky shadow. The great Mare Imbrium was solid, mysterious darkness. I had been awed by the wonders of Space. But the feeling was past now, engulfed by the sense of disaster which more than ever was upon me. The Earth-light on our rear deck seemed to symbolize it. Red--as though already that deck were bathed in blood. I found myself shuddering. Somewhere on board--I had no idea where--a treasure of the precious T-catalyst was hidden. Had that fact leaked out? Why was the beautiful little Nina Blake so flooded with secret terror? What was the huge coffin-like trunk, which sounded like a time-bomb? The box, I knew, had been placed in her sleeping cubby.... And back in the S.S. Building my superior, Jamison, had said something which damnably now hung in my memory: "You keep your eyes and ears open, Fred. Things are not likely to be what they seem, on that voyage."