en Krakatoa, back on
Earth, blew itself to bits in the eighteen hundreds, it sent such
volumes of dust into the air that sunsets all around the globe were
notably improved for three years afterward. On this planet, smoking
cones were everywhere visible. Volcanic dust, then, made nightfall
magnificent past description. There was not only gold and crimson in the
west. The zenith itself glowed carmine and yellow, and those in the
space-ship gazed up at a sky such as none of them could have imagined
possible.

The colors changed and changed, from yellow to gold all over the sky,
and still the glory continued. Presently there was a deep, deep red,
deep past imagining, and presently faint bluish stars pierced it, and
they stared up at new strange constellations-some very bright
indeed--and all about the ship there was a bed of white ash with glowing
embers in it, and a thin sheet of white smoke still flowed away down the
valley.

It was long after sunset when Cochrane got up from the communicator.
Communication with Earth was broken at last. There was a balloon out in
space somewhere with an atomic battery maintaining all its surface as a
Dabney field plate. The ship maintained a field between itself and that
plate. The balloon maintained another field between itself and another
balloon a mere 178.3 light-years from the solar system. But the
substance of this planet intervened between the nearer balloon and the
ship. Jones made tests and observed that the field continued to exist,
but was plugged by the matter of this newly-arrived-at world. Come
tomorrow, when there was no solid-stone barrier to the passage of
radiation, they could communicate with Earth again.

But Cochrane was weary and now discouraged. So long as talk with Earth
was possible, he'd kept at it. There was a great deal of talking to be
done. But a good deal of it was extremely unsatisfactory.

He found Bill Holden having supper with Babs, on the floor below the
communicator. Very much of the recent talk had been over Cochrane's
head. He felt humiliated by the indignation of scientists who would not
tell him what he wanted to know without previous information he could
not give.

When he went over to the dining-table, he felt that he creaked from
weariness and dejection. Babs looked at him solicitously, and then
jumped up to get him something to eat. Everybody else was again watching
out the ship's ports at the new, strange world of which they could see