A searing, hideous death! Trapped within fiery walls of melting rock! At that moment the regularly re-recurring flash of light came, and under pressure of his great need the phenomenon meshed with understanding in Carse's mind. That light was sunlight! It come at definite intervals as the dome side of the asteroid rotated to face the sun. And that light could reach the room only by way of some channel in the ceiling! * * * * * In the waxing glow of the rock above him, Carse swiftly found the channel--a vertical bore several feet wide, in one corner of the ceiling. Its rock sides glowed redly, and at their end was a round black patch that caused his heart to leap with hope. Outer space!--and a short, straight escape to it! In a flash he saw how Ku Sui perhaps had eluded him. The Eurasian's prepared emergency exit would also be his! He lost not a fraction of a second. Turning his glove controls to maximum acceleration, he rose with a rush into the bore. Despite his good aim the asteroid's centrifugal force threw him heavily into one red-hot side. His heart went cold; would the fabric of the suit burn through? No time for such worries--must make the frigid air outside--fast--fast--never mind bumps--quick out--and must stay conscious--_must_ stay conscious to exert repulsion against Earth! Like a projectile Hawk Carse shot out of that tunnel of hell at a tangent to the asteroid and in a direction away from Earth, and in an instant the doomed body was far below him, and streaking faster and ever faster to the annihilation now so near. He fought to come out of his dizziness. Shaking his head, he glanced back for sight of a minute, suit-clad figure. Had Ku Sui preceded him through the emergency exit, his shape should be visible somewhere, etched by the sunlight. There was no sign of him. Carse's eyes dropped to the asteroid. He saw it already miles below, a breath-taking celestial object, a second sun, brilliant and increasingly brilliant as it diminished over the watery plain waiting to receive it. His mind saw the Eurasian, caught in the long corridor to the dome, already dead on this last flight of his extraordinary vehicle of space.... The end came at once. The sun was quickly a great, brilliant shooting star, then a blinding smaller one: then its straight mad flight through the heavens was over, and it was received in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean and buried deep. A cataclysmic burial. A titanic meteor, an incandescent, screaming streak in the night--a cloud of billowing steam--a wall of water rearing back from the strange grave of the asteroid, so far come from its accustomed orbit around Mars.... The thought came to Carse that Dr. Ku Sui had died as he lived, spectacularly, with a brilliance and a tidal wave and an earthquake to disturb the lives of men.... And a sadness fell over the heart of the Hawk.... * * * * *