From somewhere in this dying universe came a cold and wet nose. It sniffed anxiously at his face and red-matted hair. A whine. Another louder whine; and a scratch of claws on concrete. Rhiannon opened his eyes. There were walls and the concrete floor and the hovering, shadowed cradles. There was the crouching figure of Karrin, seen from below and distorted, framed briefly in the door. There was a mud-colored shadow that sniffed and whined and gave its tail little hesitant twitches. Then Rhiannon's eyes blinded and closed; he found himself back in that fearful, dimming universe. The distant sparking of the space-boat's jets--a few stars to shape the emptiness. Rhiannon's last desperate, melting thought was: Atoms!--Atoms--we gotta catch up to that boat!--come on--we--gotta get back in that--boat-- The scratching claws went away. The last star was lost and the velvet blackness, without entity, was complete. * * * * * Karrin faded as quietly as a cat out the door and hurried into his boat, darted forward to the control-cabin and slammed down a lever. With a rumble the ground-ramp folded in and the hatch sealed itself shut. He leaned against a port and shielded his eyes from the interior glare. The noise had attracted the Patrolmen. They boiled through the far door and came streaking across the field, their guns spitting tight green flame. Karrin thumbed his nose at them and laughed. A moment later the boat was clawing its way toward Llarn's stratosphere. He set the spectro for the tiny moon and turned away to relax on the bunk. His "yacht" embodied principles developed by his own technicians--armament and locomotive potentials unknown to the Patrol--and he knew that he was safe from them. He regretted, however, that the hyper-space drive was useless for such short distances, for with it he might have reached his destination in less than a second. But with it also, at such a range, came the danger of overshooting, nailing himself and the boat a mile into the ground, and so he used the regular blasts and was thankful for his advanced shields. The Patrol might spot him, tail him--but that was all. Smiling, he stretched out on the bunk, reached for a book, and settled himself for the twenty hour trip. Beneath the bunk, curled in the warm darkness, Sergeant Atoms had settled himself for the trip long ago, for his master's dying thought-command had been an urgent and overpowering one, and this space-boat had been pictured and pointed out as clearly from its fellows as had been the "firing button" among the myriad devices on the dummy control board. An obedient but sleepy Atoms had entered the boat almost at Karrin's heels; unheard and unseen in the confusion of rumbling hatches and charging Patrolmen; very eager to get back to his interrupted dream-chase. With all his famous quiet and quiescence--he slept.