Dex Harlow was a six-foot Senior Lieutenant who had been on many an out-of-the-way exploratory trip. Like Brand he was just under thirty and perpetually thirsting for the bizarre in life. He was a walking document of planetary activity. He was still baked a brick red from a trip to Mercury a year before: he had a scar on his forehead, the result of jumping forty feet one day on the moon when he'd meant to jump only twenty; he was minus a finger which had been irreparably frost-bitten on Mars; and he had a crumpled nose that was the outcome of a brush with a ten-foot bandit on Venus who'd tried to kill him for his explosive gun and supply of glass, dyite-containing cartridges. He clutched Brand's fingers in a bone-mangling grip, and threw his hat into a far corner. "You're a fine friend!" he growled cheerfully. "Here I'm having a first rate time for myself, swimming and planing along the Riviera, with two more weeks leave ahead of me--and I get a call from the Old Man to report to you. What excuse have you for your crime?" "A junket to Jupiter," said Brand. "Would you call that a good excuse?" "Jupiter!" exclaimed Dex. "Wouldn't you know it? Of course you'd have to pick a spot four hundred million miles away from all that grand swimming I was having!" "Would you like to go back on leave, and have me choose someone else?" inquired Brand solemnly. "Well, no," said Dex hastily. "Now that I'm here, I suppose I might as well go through with it." Brand laughed. "Try and get you out of it! I know your attitude toward a real jaunt. And it's a real jaunt we've got ahead of us, too, old boy. We're going to the red spot. Immediately." * * * * * Dex's sandy eyebrows shot up. "The red spot! That's where Coblenz and Heiroy were lost!" "And Journeyman," added Brand. "He's the latest victim of whatever's in the hell-hole." Dex whistled. "Journeyman too! Well, all I've got to say is that whatever's there must be strong medicine. Journeyman was a damn fine man, and as brave as they come. Have you any idea what it's all about?" "Not an idea. Nobody has. We're to go and find out--if we can. Are you all ready?" "All ready," said Dex. "So am I. We'll start at eleven o'clock in one of the Old Man's best cruisers. Meanwhile, we might as well go and hunt up a dinner somewhere, to fortify us against the synthetic pork chops and bread we'll be swallowing for the next fortnight." They went out; and at ten minutes of eleven reported at the great space ship hangars north of New York, with their luggage, a conspicuous item of which was a chess board to help while away the long, long days of spacial travel. Brand then paused a little while for a final check-up on directions.