at
same uncanny power that had served aviators so well in an earlier day.
But Chet was glad to see his instruments registering once more as he
approached a new world.

Even the sonoflector was recording; its invisible rays were darting
downward to be reflected back again from the surface below. That
absolute altitude recording was a joy to read; it meant a definite
relationship with the world.

"I'll hold her at fifty thousand," he told Harkness. "Watch for some
outline that you can remember from last time."

There was an irregular area of continental size; only when they had
crossed it did Harkness point toward an outflung projection of land.
"That peninsula," he exclaimed; "we saw that before! Swing south and
inland.... Now down forty, and east of south.... This ought to be the
spot."

Perhaps Harkness, too, had the flyer's indefinable power of
orientation. He guided Chet in the downward flight, and his pointing
finger aimed at last at a cluster of shadows where a setting sun
brought mountain ranges into strong relief. Chet held the ship steady,
hung high in the air, while the quick-spreading mantle of night swept
across the world below. And, at last, when the little world was
deep-buried in shadow, they saw the red glow of fires from a hidden
valley in the south.

"Fire Valley!" said Chet. "Don't say anything about me being a
navigator. Wait, you've brought us home, sure enough."

"Home!" He could not overcome this strange excitement of a home-coming
to their own world. Even the man who stood, pistol in hand, behind him
was, for the moment, forgotten.

Valley of a thousand fires!--scene of his former adventures! Each
fumerole was adding its smoky red to the fiery glow that illumined the
place. There were ragged mountains hemming it in; Chet's gaze passed
on to the valley's end.

Down there, where the fires ceased, there would be water; he would
land there! And the ship from Earth slipped down in a long slanting
line to cushion against its under exhausts, whose soft thunder echoed
back from a bare expanse of frozen lava. Then its roaring faded. The
silvery shape sank softly to its rocky bed, as Chet cut the motor that
had sung its song of power since the moment when Schwartzmann had
carried him off--taken him from that frozen, forgotten corner of an
incredibly distant Earth.

* * * * *

"Iss there air?" Schwartzmann demanded. Chet came to himself again
with a start: he saw