Presently the fire came to the surface. I realize now that it was eating its way downward as well as upward until the entire vicinity of the cave was glowing with molten, burning rocks. The ground all around the cave-mouth soon fell inward. A seething crater was exposed where the cave had been—a bottomless pit of lurid, licking flames with black smoke rolling up from it, and the hissing of steam below. We took instant flight, swimming through the air over our tiny world, until, on its opposite hemisphere we found sanctuary. There was no evidence of the fire here. We were pleased. We would find another cave, another river, and build our home anew. We were both famished. I caught a lizard and we ate it—uncooked, for we were both afraid to unleash again the monster that had all but overcome us. Then we slept; and again, when two of the meteor’s brief days and nights were passed, and Saturn was sinking below the horizon to give place to dawning sunlight, we searched for a new cave. No cave was to be found. But there was water. A river several hundred yards wide bubbled up from the ground and flowed in a broad shallow stream toward the horizon. We followed it to a tiny line of hills. Into a hole in a cliff-face it plunged downward with an impetuous current. Here we decided to build our home. There were blue rushes along the river bank. Nona gathered them; she would dry them, plait them into robes for our couch. Once I flew back to the fire. I could not get very close to it, for the air choked me. The fire seemed to be burning itself out. It was dull, with flickering puffs of flame in the midst of a thick pall of smoke which hung motionless in the still air. I returned to Nona. “The fire-monster is dying,” I said. “But it has eaten our cave.” * * * * * I know now what was happening. The fire was being smothered for lack of fresh air to sustain its combustion. Had there been any wind I do not doubt but that the entire surface of the meteor would have been consumed. An almost equally great danger threatened us, however—and presently we were made aware of it. The smothering, smouldering fire gave off steadily a tremendous volume of unconsumed gases. Even without any wind they diffused themselves throughout the meteor’s atmosphere, it was so small a world, with so thin a blanket of air about it—an infinitesimal fraction of the air that envelopes your Earth. Rapidly it became polluted with poisonous gases from the half-smothered fire—polluted throughout its entire extent. For a day we were uneasy. Then we grew frightened. There was little evidence of smoke—only a blue haze. But the air seemed to choke us. It was the poisonous breath of the fire-monster come to make us sick. We tried to go somewhere to escape it. But we were on the opposite side of the world from it already, and no matter which direction we took, inevitably we approached it.