Nathan did not know whether she was yet alive or dead. She was icy to his touch and unconscious, but he picked her up and started back to the ship. The exertion in that atmosphere caused swirls of dizziness in his brain, and he did not even ponder the question of how gravity could be great enough to make walking possible. He expended every fraction of his draining energy to fight back to the ship. At last he laid Firebird inside the lock of the _Corsair_ and closed the outer door with the last dregs of his strength. Automatically, the lock began to fill with warm air until the inner door swung open. Nathan's strength revived shortly. He turned to Firebird. Her black hair that spilled over the floor of the lock looked as if it had never been touched by the destroying fire. Her face was molded in the same lines of perfection as before. And her flesh was beginning to glow with the pink of life. The final miracle showed itself in her breathing. She was alive. He carried her into the stateroom and wrapped her in blankets. Her body was still icy from her long exposure. He started to move away to get a hot drink when she should revive. Then her eyes opened. She looked wildly about, then stared at him. "I thought you had abandoned me. Did your conscience get the better of you?" The hardness of her voice shocked him. He looked at her in pained surprise. "I thought you were dead. I saw the flickering of the light from the pool when you came out of it. I came back then only because I couldn't believe you had really died." "Of course. You couldn't really know, could you?" Abruptly she was crying. He sat down and took her hand. "There is no one else in the System who would not have been glad to leave Firebird there forever," she said. Nathan made no reply. He could not comprehend her strangeness. But for the moment she was no longer the fearless Firebird. She was a little girl, lonely and lost. VI Mars was wholesome in death before the coming of the spacemen. Now it was the refuse heap of the Solar System. There was Heliopolis, of course, the great, shining, chrome-plated space port where vessels from all parts of the System touched for refueling and recreation of the passengers. Recreation that was not legal on any of the other planets. The permanent population of Heliopolis was three fourths confidence men. The other fourth was made up of fugitives from penal colonies and thieves and murderers whose crimes had not caught up with them. But these were the elite of the population of Mars. The lower types were found in the five suburbs surrounding Heliopolis. The worst of the five was Taurus, where daily morning chores was burial of those who had been unfortunate in the night's tavern brawls.