"But I can't take her back," West protested, "unless I know where she came from. You have to tell me that." The man waggled a finger. "From far away," he croaked, "and yet not so very far. Not so very far if you know the way." West eyed Annabelle with the gorge rising in his throat. "I will take her," he said. "But you have to tell me where." "Thank you, Guest," said the man. He lifted the bottle and let it gurgle. "Not Guest," said West, patiently. "My name is--" The man toppled forward off the bed, sprawled across the floor. The bottle rolled crazily, spilling liquor in sporadic gushes. West leaped forward, knelt beside the man and lifted him. The whiskers moved and a whisper came from their tangled depths, a gasping whisper that was scarcely more than a waning breath. "Tell Louis that his painting--" "Louis?" yelled West. "Louis who? What about--" The whisper came again. "Tell him ... someday ... he'll paint a wrong place and then...." Gently West laid the man back on the floor and stepped away. The whisky bottle still rocked to and fro beneath a chair where it had come to rest. * * * * * Something glinted at the head of the cot and West walked to where it hung. It was a watch, a shining watch, polished with years of care. It swung slowly from a leather thong tied to the rod that formed the cot's head, where a man could reach out in the dark and read it. West took it in his hand and turned it over, saw the engraving that ran across its back. Bending low, he read the inscription in the feeble light. To Walter J. Darling, from class of '16, Mars Polytech. West straightened, understanding and disbelief stirring in his mind. Walter J. Darling, that huddle on the floor? Walter J. Darling, one of the solar system's greatest biologists, dead in this filthy hut? Darling, teacher for years at Mars Polytechnical Institute, that shrunken, liquor-sodden corpse in shoddy underwear? West wiped his forehead with the back of his space-gloved hand. Darling had been a member of that mysterious government commission assigned to the cold laboratories on Pluto, sent there to develop artificial hormones aimed at controlled mutation of the human race. A mission that had been veiled in secrecy from the first because it was feared, and rightly so, that revelation of its purpose might lead to outraged protests from a humanity that could not imagine why it should be improved biologically. A mission, thought West, that had set out in mystery and ended in mystery, mystery that had sent whispers winging through the solar system. Shuddery whispers. Louis? That would be Louis Nevin, another member of the Pluto commission. He was the man Darling had tried to tell about just before he died. And Nevin must still be out here on Pluto, must still be alive despite the message that had come to Earth.