ar there's no pursuit."

Bert growled, "I'm not worried that the Patrol boys won't be along.
What really scares me is that some of Lauren's men may already have
found the _Prometheus_. We'll just have to wait and see."

Beneath the spaceboat the desert rolled. Vast Saturn and his multiple
moons, hung against the black and all-but-airless star-curtain. Then,
all of a sudden, before the eastward hurtling craft, it was daylight,
as the tiny sun burst over the horizon. Its wan rays fell on pale,
stratified mists of air, all but frozen in the cold of night.

Those mists, cupped between the hills, were the last of Titan's
atmosphere. Once, eons ago, when monster Saturn had been hot enough to
supplement the far-off sun's heat with radiation of its own, those
hills had been, for a few brief ages, verdant with primitive, mossy
growths.

Bert followed the dry bed of an ancient river, till he came to the
rocky cleft where the _Prometheus_ had been concealed.

Just as they glimpsed the ship, Alice gave a sharp gasp, as they saw
another spaceboat dart unhurriedly away. Bert landed in the rocky
gorge, and on foot they approached the _Prometheus_ cautiously, the
blasters from the cabin of the spaceboat gripped in their gauntleted
hands.

They found the ship's airlock securely bolted. But someone had tried
to cut through its tough, heat-resistant shell with a blaster for the
metal was still hot.

"A break," Bert breathed raggedly. "We got here just in time to scare
them off.... Hey!..."

That was when they found Doc Kramer. He lay behind a boulder, a
pathetic little figure who seemed to be merely sleeping. There wasn't
a mark on him that could be easily discovered. There was no time to
figure out how he had died--by poisoned needle, overstrong paralyzer
beam, or whatever. His body, within its spacesuit, was just beginning
to develop rigor mortis.

Alice's eyes were wet, her small jaw set hard. "Your brother's death
was at least an unintentional accident caused by carelessly made
equipment, Bert," she said. "But Doc was murdered."

"Yeah," Bert grated thickly. "Only murder is awful hard to prove as
far from civilization as this. Come on, we can't do a thing about it
right now."

* * * * *

Double rage and grief drove him on toward what he must do with greater
insistence than before. With a key from his hip-pouch, he opened the
airlock of the _Prometheus_. With great caution they went inside