He raised the antenna on the tele-talkie and snapped it on. The screen glowed into life. Towers was stepping through the bulkhead door into the radio room. Just like a television play in installments, Brandon thought. Scene two coming up. "No sign of him at the scene of the crash," Towers told Reinhardt. "If he got out," observed Reinhardt, "he could be a hundred miles away or more." "_If_ he got out," Towers said in a tone that irritated Brandon. "I got out," Brandon said. "And right now I'm walking around your precious planet like a boy scout. Damn this tele-talkie! I'd give a year's pay if you could see me now, Towers." "We may yet spot the escape capsule," Reinhardt was saying. "We're still continuing the search," put in Towers. "But I don't mind telling you I'm not wasting much more fuel." The radio operator started to say something, hesitated and finally settled for, "yes, sir." Brandon swore and snapped off the set. He looked at his walk-around bottle. "Can't stay here any longer," he muttered. He couldn't find the capsule. He walked three, perhaps four miles. He stopped and blotted his moist brow with his sleeve. He wasn't going to find it. Before him stretched an endless carpet of red dust. The light from the two moons was growing dim, as each settled toward different horizons. He sat down. A cloud of powdery dust settled over his legs. The lightness in his head told him that his oxygen was running out. The weakness in his muscles reminded him that it had been a long time since he had walked in a planet's gravity. A distant flare lit up the horizon. He choked off a sob, and beat his fist in the red dust. A wave of nausea swept over him. Bitter stomach juices welled up in his throat but he swallowed them down again. Desperately he turned on the tele-talkie. "Astro, this is Brandon," he said. "Brandon, this is Astro," Reinhardt said. Brandon's body tensed. "Thank God I finally got through to you. Listen, Reinhardt, I must be about three--" "Brandon, this is Astro," said Reinhardt in a monotone. He said it again and again and again. Brandon fell back on the ground. His breathing was short, strained. His face was bathed in perspiration. The oxygen, he realized, was giving out. What are the odds, that the air of Sirius Three is breathable, he wondered. One in a hundred? The planet has water and both animal and plant life. Certainly it has sufficient gravity to hold its oxygen. But what other elements--noxious gases might be present. Maybe the odds are closer to one in fifty, he decided. "But it's no gamble when you have nothing to lose," he told the Milky Way. Ripping off his oxygen mask, he took a deep breath of the alien atmosphere. The dust choked him, his ears rang. Black spots danced before his eyes, then melted into solid blackness. Brandon could hear Towers' voice in a vortex of darkness.