Emotion seemed to quiver through her. For a moment she remained silent, her lips slightly parted. Then more words came in a rush. "The ship lies on an island in a forking river. Above it the foliage is charred, blackened. There are three rivers and just below the island the water is white with foam. There's a tremendous cataract about five miles below the island. It's the largest cataract I've ever seen." There was an eagerness on Langford's face, but he remained silent. "There's a man swimming in the river above the cataract," Joan went on. "A brown-skinned man with straggly hair, his shoulders gleaming in the sunlight. I'm going to try to read his mind." Langford did not move. For a moment there was no sound in the room save Joan's harsh breathing. Then, suddenly, she straightened and ripped the bandage from her eyes. "Brazil!" she exclaimed, exultantly. "Darling, I've located the ship for you. That island is in the interior of Brazil, in the deep jungle, close to the headwaters of the Amazon!" Langford stood very still, scarcely daring to breathe. In his mind's gaze he saw a slender space cruiser lying unguarded in a suburban hanger close to the dark waters of the great Northwestern Canal. Commander Gurney's own private cruiser, the _White Hawk_! How much of his mental audacity was inspired by sheer desperation Langford could not guess. But he suddenly saw himself climbing out of a thrumming jet plane in deep shadows and running straight toward the cruiser with Joan at his side. He saw the cruiser ascending, saw himself at the controls, with the red disk of Mars dwindling beyond the viewport. He saw the myriad stars of space and the rapidly expanding disk of the Earth pierced by wavering banners of light. And then it dawned on him that in some strange way Joan had seen the vision first and was sharing it with him. He knew then that he could not fail. 4 Beneath the descending cruiser the roof of the forest gleamed in russet and emerald splendor above a labyrinth of wooded archipelagoes. It still seemed a little like a dream to Langford, but he knew that it wasn't. The vision that he had experienced three days before, standing beside his wife in a white-walled room, had taken on the bright, firm texture of reality. He stood before the controls, with a thrumming deck under him, and studied the shifting landscape through the _White Hawk's_ viewport. He had never before flown directly over the Amazon Basin, and a river of shining wonder seemed to flow into his mind as he stared. It was Joan who broke the spell. She tugged gently at his arm, her face anxious. "I don't see any sign of the three rivers!" she exclaimed. "Do you?" Langford swung about. "We haven't passed the great cataract of Itamaraca yet," he said. "It rushes straight along for five or six miles. Then it becomes the most impressive waterfall in South America. A few miles below the falls the river spreads out into a lake."