For a moment I do not understand; then I recognize the feel of Fragile Cargo, still clamping me to the stretcher, and I open my mouth and scream and scream. Clatter of feet. Hatch opens. Fragile Cargo goes limp. I stagger to my feet. Faint light through the hatch; B's head. I hold out the Andite stick and she turns and shouts; and a panel slides open in the wall so that the wind comes roaring in. I push the stick through and the wind snatches it away and it is gone. After that-- * * * * * After that, for a while, nothing, I suppose, though I have no recollection of losing consciousness; only without any sense of break I find I am flat on my back on one of the seats in the cabin of the hopper. I sit up and say "How--" B who is sitting on the floor beside me says that when the broadcaster was activated of course they came at once, only while they were waiting for the boat to reach land whole squads of land cars arrived and started combing the area, and some came up on top of the cliff and shone their headlights out over the sea so Mr. Yardo had to lurk against the cliff face and wait till I got into a position where he could pick me up and it was _frightfully_ clever of me to think of floating up on antigrav-- I forgot about the broadcaster. I forgot about the hopper come to that, there seemed to be nothing in the world except me and the stretcher and the enemy. Stretcher. I say, "Is M'Clare--" At which moment Mr. Yardo turns from the controls with a wide smile of triumph and says "Eighteen twenty-seven, girls!" and the world goes weightless and swings upside down. Then still with no sense of any time-lapse I am lying in the big lighted hold, with the sound of trampling all round: it is somehow filtered and far off and despite the lights there seems to be a globe of darkness around my head. I hear my own voice repeating, "M'Clare? How's M'Clare?" A voice says distantly, without emphasis, "M'Clare? He's dead." The next time I come round it is dark. I am vaguely aware of having been unconscious for quite a while. There is a single thread of knowledge connecting this moment with the last: M'Clare's dead. This is the central factor: I seem to have been debating it with myself for a very long time. I suppose the truth is simply that the Universe never guarantees anything; life, or permanence, or that your best will be good enough. The rule is that you have to pick yourself up and go on; and lying here in the dark is not doing it. I turn on my side and see a cluster of self-luminous objects including a light switch. I reach for it. How did I get into a hospital? On second thoughts it is a cabin in the ship, or rather two of them with the partition torn out, I can see the ragged edge of it. There is a lot of paraphernalia around; I climb out to have a look.