In silent obedience she followed, but he turned at the top to lower at her. "Is Miss Bertrand at Vulhan City?" he demanded. "If she is, and you bring her here to look at ... at me...." The girl looked down at the glittering sunlight on the sea. "Nancy isn't at the City." He sighed gustily with relief. "I thought plenty of her myself," he admitted, slumping down against a thick tree-trunk. "The best I...." He paused; then looked out to sea himself, fingering his whiskers. "The best stewardess you ever had," she completed. Taking off the huge, floppy hat affected by tourists in the Martian heat, she looked down thoughtfully at him. "She's dead, you know." He stiffened, "Nancy?" "Yes. A meteor in the tubes, they said. And the pilot couldn't land anywhere but on Io--and not good even there. There weren't many left. She's buried there, by a little green lake. I went there first this spring. I--I wish I hadn't. And just now, when Mr. Atlee named you, I thought of a space-pilot who wouldn't have left those stones on Io. The best pilot International ever had." His lean, dirty fingers wrung aimlessly together. His heel ploughed a recurrent furrow in the shadows. "That pilot is as dead--as Nancy. Poor little kid." He gnawed his lip. It would not do to go maudlin. Not now. "You are Geoffrey Thorne, International?" she insisted, sitting on a fallen trunk and dropping her hat at her side. Leaning forward, she watched his pallor darken. "You are the pilot who pioneered the Jupiter and Pluto runs, who rescued the Argonaut expedition, who broke up the Wind River and Merton gangs?" * * * * * He looked at her and she shrank from the pain in his glare. "You heard Atlee. I'm Thorne, if that's anything. You saw him, a green space-kid fresh from the Lunar way-stations with two-year ratings on his pretty red uniform ... saw him drag a sodden bum from what passes for a gutter here. He was nice to me, Atlee. They're all nice to me. But I can't even enter Vulhan City any more. One of the worst sink-holes in the System and I can't get in ... I can't get in ..." his voice trailed away aimlessly and he picked at a thread dangling from his burst tunic. "But--is there anything for you?" she asked. "It _is_ a sink-hole. I suppose that's why Mr. Atlee was detailed to take us out to these caves on the stop-over. But there's no work there, no good chance for a pilot such as you." He laughed. It was a better effort than the one he had achieved on the beach, but she preferred the former. "No chance, indeed! But there's t'ang. There's always t'ang!" he laughed, then caught at his ribs as a shuddering spasm tore at him. "Please!" She touched him, ever so slightly, shaking his trembling body. "You mustn't! Is there nothing you can do? Nothing? Can you not go home?"