As the transport jetted upward through the paper-thin atmosphere, soaring above the miracle medley of towering, lacy, ancient Martian ruins and rough, utilitarian Earthman-built structures alongside the old canal, Lynne wondered unhappily what she was going to do about Rolf. She adored his every pore, his every muscle, but whether she could long endure the strain of living with him in Martian wedlock was something else again. There was a wild, undisciplined streak in Rolf that violated her ultra-civilized Earth-bred restraint. It could be exciting--marriage to Rolf--but it would be distasteful, too. Lynne opened her mind to exchange thoughts with him when another, more powerful, more urgent message reached her from the teleteam on duty at Nampura Depot. Its combination of two telepathic minds in unison was overpowering. It said, _we’re in touch, we’ve finally found it, we’re about to make contact--_ Then came a brain-wrenching flash, and--nothing at all. II Something had happened at Nampura Depot and the resultant confusion was frightening. Lynne tried vainly to sort out the welter of disorganized and often completely unintelligible thoughts that radiated from the recently set-up telepathic laboratory of Mars. The team on duty--plump, delicate Rana Spinelli and lanky, awkward Juan Olsen--had been stricken from some mysterious source. Juan was dead, Rana mentally erased by whatever had happened. That much a suddenly depersonalized Lynne Fenlay clearly understood. But the rest was telepathic bedlam. “..._simply working on Problem Outpost ... and I had a date after dinner with Juan ... as if he’d been mashed flat ... can’t understand how it happened ... Rana’s not breathing ... yes, but she’s in coma--almost catatonic ... after lunch, she told me she and Juan were going to try ... and Rolf Marcein would be at the weddings ... Fenlay, too, and his sister ... we’ve got to_....” The Nampura Depot transport hit an atmospheric dead spot and the messages faded out. In her anxiety to join her fellow-telepaths and help them in whatever emergency had arisen, Lynne’s malaise, her revulsion toward Rolf in his cups, vanished. She was needed--and that was all that mattered at the moment. The transport moved swiftly toward the reddish sun, enlarged almost to Earth-size as it sank toward the western horizon. Below, the red-and-green desolation that was most of Mars seemed to stretch endlessly toward the horizon. A vast ruined city, running parallel for twenty-seven miles with the left bank of one of the great dry canals, lifted its filigree spires above the purple dusk to trace patterns of breathtaking beauty in the sunset. This was Mars, a vast mausoleum stirring faintly with new raw life breathed into it by the colonists from Earth.