He stepped out of the turret looking for Falk. He had had a rough day, and it was time to go home. To his great relief he saw Falk standing a few feet away on the turret's side, his magnetized soles gripping the metal and his head looking out toward the stars. He was not hanging on to anything, he seemed to be totally unconcerned, and his arms were lifted strangely. Web whistled. Now there, he said to himself, is a man with nerve. He slipped hand over hand down the turret to get to Falk and the taxi. Falk didn't move as he approached. Falk just kept looking at the stars. "Come on boy, Web said aloud, let's get moving." He came up and laid his helmet against Falk's, so they could talk to each other. But he didn't say anything. Directly in front of his eyes was the plate of Falk's helmet, and inside the helmet was nothing. Web withdrew. The empty suit before him swayed slightly as he brushed it. This is ridiculous, Web said. I'm going nuts. Around him moved the whirling stars. I'm screwy as a jaybird, Web said. * * * * * The arrival of Kunklin and Prule was neither coincidental nor particularly fortunate. There is an indescribable something which a spaceship traveling at speeds beyond light does to the fabric of space, warping, shredding, leaving a trail which lasts for many days. Kunklin did not need a great deal of luck to pick it up, as he did, just a short way in from Alpha Centauri. He was equipped with a ship of the Central Repair Command, one of the most diversely powerful mechanisms ever produced by a living mind. Thus Kunklin and Prule arrived with great haste, but with no great luck. They were too late to prevent the deaths of the forty-seven men--for death it was--or the death of Joe Falk. And so it was that while Web was sitting numbly on a projection of the turret, making a mortal effort to control himself, he became watched, in turn, by two separate sets of alien eyes. The first set of eyes--which were more or less human in structure, differing only in their purple color--belonged to Kunklin and Prule. They had swept in a wide arc around the crescent-lit limb of the Moon, and halted at a discreet distance to survey the terrain before going in. Telescopes of an impossible resolving power picked out first the station, then the rockets, and eventually Web Hilton. Because they had a knowledge of the aliens, and of the type of crime that the aliens would commit, they knew at a glance what had happened aboard the satellite. But, at the sight of it, Kunklin was startled. "A space station!" he cried. "Well I'll be jetted." And not yet having noticed the empty suit of Falk--the arms of which had begun to float out helplessly, like a beggar--Kunklin regarded the doughnut with a delighted interest. Prule, a square, gloomy man who was always the more sober of the two, grunted darkly.