For a long time he could not sleep, remembering that he had been cut off in the prime of his life. He had been the Senior Astrophysicist in the Systems War Office on Earth, working on the Second Einstein Modifications that promised travel to the more distant galactic Systems. He had completed six months of comparison spectography in the barren Centaurus System and had been about to take the year's return journey to Earth, looking forward to a vacation trip with his family to Venus City. He had been in the forefront of the free world's pushing back of the last frontiers of man. He twisted on his bed in a wild agony of hope and yearning. "Someday soon," he shouted to the walls, "I'll ride the monorail across the Western plains." He had discovered that it helped, to talk aloud, though none of his devices could make him forget he was a prisoner. To feel the Centaurus skies closing down on him and the alien mountains crushing him, so far from his work and those he loved, was to feel a terrible suffocation from which there was no release. But then he would go doggedly to work, or else carve the life-size figures to keep him silent company, and try to forget. He talked on and on, and finally he could talk no more. He slept. He was awakened by a pattering on the roof. "Rain!" he shouted. He jumped up and ran to the window socket. The rain clouds were high, and heavy with storm. It struck him like a blow: they hung above the mesa. Above his pyres. In a panic he clambered up to the mesa, forgetting his breakfast, forgetting his outer clothing, his mind in disorder. The shock wave pounded his eardrums. He was too startled to make words. With unbelieving eyes he saw, about five miles away where the river emptied into the sea, the black cloud of an atomic explosion rise into the sky to spread out under the rain. Then suddenly he was running blindly through the rain. The scout must have come down. They must be testing. The area was ideal for testing atomic weapons. _I must reach them before they leave._ Through heavy undergrowth he pushed his way down the slope to the valley. His foot slipped on an exposed root. With a sharp crack of bone, he fell. "My ankle!" he screamed, with terror smashing at his mind. He managed to find two thick lengths of branch that would serve as crutches. Then he started hobbling awkwardly toward the river. For an hour he forced himself on urgently along the river bank, now feeling knife-like pains slicing up through his body. The effort of moving was beginning to exhaust him. He fell down, and rested a moment. He heard a tree crash in the forest ahead. He heard someone shout. A human voice! He began to sob, softly at first, then uncontrollably. A human voice! It had never been so sweet a sound. * * * * *