Dorothy placed one small foot into his hand and swung up to his shoulders. Norman raised to his tiptoes--every inch counted. "Jump! High!" Her fingertips missed the rim of the glass two full feet and clawing the slick surface, she slid back down into Norman's arms. "Try again! We've got to get you out of here!" Again and again she placed her foot in Norman's hand, swung up, leaped high--and fell back again, her forehead bruised from bumping the glass, her fingernails broken. "You'll never make it," Norman said wearily. "We've got to think of something else." Hammering his fist into his palm, he started pacing the wall. Suddenly he dropped to his knees and started clawing the gravel. But he hadn't dug six inches when he scraped against concrete. Several different holes proved the ring of glass rested on what had been a refueling platform. "Sade would have thought of that." He started pacing the wall again, running his hand around the smooth glass. There _had_ to be a way out! The glass had been the pilot-room shell of a ship, its tapering nose sliced off. He thought of trying to rock it back and forth to turn it over. But the glass weighed tons. He turned and stared at Dorothy helplessly. She had scratched her finger in one of her falls. Proving again that only her body had grown, she immediately stuck her finger in her mouth upon the discovery of the scratch. Norman's brain seethed. He couldn't let this girl die here. Now, he realized, he faced the same problem that had been Johnny's. And he knew what withering shadow would claim Dorothy's lips if he failed. Vulcan was a hell of priceless, fleeing moments; each heartbeat a drum sounding a sickening doom of decay. Each tick of his watch was the footfall of death one step closer. The invisible terror that hovered over Vulcan was beyond the grasp of imagination--but it was real! As real as Keren's pale face under that trickle of red horror, as real as Dorothy's fresh loveliness which would soon be eaten away--unless he could get her away from here. Neither he nor Dorothy had any metal with which he might attempt Johnny's mad feat. Standing there, looking about the enclosure, Norman's heart beat quicker with each second as each second took its unseen toll upon the girl who was his responsibility. Looking at her golden hair glinting in the sunlight, Norman suddenly realized she was more than a responsibility.... Quickly he turned away. IV The glass was thick, perfectly clear. Only its glimmer in the sun said they were imprisoned. Beyond the field, the ever dying and growing jungle undulated like a green sea. Just outside the glass, the ladder lay on the gravel where the patrolman had dropped it--within arm's reach and it might as well have been light years away.