Weaver started forward. He got nearly to the airlock before a cluster of hairy tentacles barred his way. He said indignantly, "Let me out, you monster. Let me out, do you hear?" The creature stood stock-still in an infuriating attitude until a little light on the wall changed from orange to red-violet. Then it crossed to the control board, did something there, and the inner door of the lock swung open. "Well, I should think so!" said Weaver. He stepped forward again--But his eyes were beginning to water. There was an intolerable tickling far back in his nostrils. He was going to--he was-- Eyes squeezed shut, his whole body contorted with effort, he raised his arm to begin the desperate race once more. His hand brushed against something--his kit, slung just above his waist. There were handkerchiefs in the kit, he recalled suddenly. And he remembered what the guide had said about Aurigean air. He tugged the kit open, fumbled and found a handkerchief. He zipped open the closure of his helmet and tilted the helmet back. He brought up the handkerchief, and gave himself over to the spasm. * * * * * He was startled by a hoarse boom, as if someone had scraped the strings of an amplified bull fiddle. He looked around, blinking, and discovered that the sound was coming from the Aurigean. The monster, with its tentacles tightly curled around the tip of its body, was scuttling into the corridor. As Weaver watched in confusion, it vanished, and a sheet of metal slid across the doorway. More boomings came shortly from a source Weaver finally identified as a grille over the control panels. He took a step that way, then changed his mind and turned back toward the airlock. Just as he reached the nearer airlock door, the farther one swung open and an instant torrent of wind thrust him outward. Strangling, Weaver grabbed desperately at the door-frame as it went by. He swung with a sickening thud into the inner wall, but he hung on and pulled himself back inside. The force of the wind was dropping rapidly; so was the air pressure. Ragged black blotches swam before Weaver's eyes. He fumbled with his helmet, trying to swing it back over his head; but it stubbornly remained where it was. The blow when he struck the airlock wall, he thought dimly--it must have bent the helmet so that it would not fit into its grooves. He forced himself across the room, toward the faint gleam of the Aurigean control board--shaped like a double horseshoe it was, around the two lattice-topped stools, and bristling with levers, knobs and sliding panels. One of these, he knew, controlled the airlock. He slapped blindly at them, pulling, pushing, turning as many as he could reach. Then the floor reeled under him, and, as he fell toward it, changed into a soft gray endless mist.... * * * * *