rozen fingers still clutched a cylinder
pen, and the nub adhered to the paper as the flow of ink had
stiffened. From nose, ears and mouth, streams of blood had congealed
into fat, crimson icicles. Rimes of ruby crystals ringed
pressure-bulged eyes. He was complete, perfect, a tableau of cold,
airless death.

The paper was a claim record, registered in the name of Laird Martin,
Earthman. An attached photograph matched what could be seen of face
behind its mask of frozen blood. Across the foot of the sheet was a
hurried scrawl:

_Claim jumpers. I know they'll get me. If I can hide this
first, they will not get what they want. Where Mitre Peak's
apex of shadow points at 2017 ET is the first of a series of
deep-cut arrow markings. Follow. They lead to the entrance.
Old Martian workings. Maybe something. Whoever finds this,
see that my kid, Soleil, gets a share. She's in school on
Earth. Address is 93-X south Palma--_

The pen had stopped writing half-through the word. Death had
intervened hideously. Imagination could picture the scene as that
airlock wall disappeared in blinding, soundless flash. Or perhaps
there had been sound in the pressured atmosphere. His own arrival may
have frightened off the claim jumpers, but too late to help the
victim, who sat so straight and hideous in the airless tomb.

There was nothing to do. Airless cold would embalm the body until some
bored official could come out from Crystal City to investigate the
murder and pick up the hideous pieces. But if the killers returned
Denver made sure that nothing remained to guide them in their search
for the secret mine worked long-ago by forgotten Martians. It was
Laird Martin's discovery and his dying legacy to a child on distant
Earth.

Denver picked up the document and wadded it clumsily into a
fold-pocket of his spacesuit. It might help the police locate the
heir. In Martin's billfold was the child's picture, no more.

Denver retraced his steps to the frosty airlock valve of his ship.
Inside the cabin, Charley greeted his master's return with extravagant
caperings which wasted millions of electron volts.

"Nobody home, Charley," Denver told the purring moondog, "but we've
picked up a nasty errand to run."

It was a bad habit, he reflected; talking to a moondog like that, but
he had picked up the habit from sheer loneliness of his prospecting
among the haunted desolations of the Moon. Even talking to