ty, I was able to operate the machinery and steer, first for
Betelguese, then for the sun. Counting on the warning bells to arouse
me, I managed to get in snatches of sleep at odd intervals. At times the
strain of the long watches was almost maddening.

By the time the midpoint had been passed, I was living in a sort of
waking dream; or rather, a state of somnambulism. I ate; my hands moved
the controls. And yet all the while my mind was wandering elsewhere--out
to Garth's body under the blazing light of Rigel, back to the moon and
Kelvar, or else in an unreal, shadowy world of dreams and vague
memories.

* * * * *

With perfect mechanical accuracy I entered the solar system and adjusted
the projectors for the sun's attraction. Running slower and slower, I
watched Venus glide by. And then, gradually, everything faded, and I was
walking along the great Nardos bridge with Kelvar. The ocean was so
still that we could see mirrored in it the reflection of each white
column, and our own faces peering down, and beyond that the stars.

"I shall bring you a handful for your hair," I told her, and leaned over
farther, farther, reaching out.... Then I was falling, with Kelvar's
face growing fainter, and in my ears a horrible ringing like the world
coming to an end.

Just before I could strike the water, I wakened to find the alarm bell
jangling and the object-indicator light flashing away. Through the
telescope, the moon was large in the sky.

It was an hour, perhaps two, before I approached the sunlit surface and
hovered over the shore by Nardos. Try as I would, my sleep-drugged body
could not handle the controls delicately enough to get the _Comet_ quite
in step with the moon's rotation. Always a little too fast or too slow.
I slid down until I was only ten or fifteen feet off the ground that
seemed to be moving out from under me. In another minute I should be
above the water. I let everything go, and the _Comet_ fell. There was a
thud, a sound of scraping over the sand, a list to one side. I thought
for an instant that the vessel was going to turn over, but with the
weight of the reserve mercury in the fuel tanks it managed to right
itself on a slope of ten or fifteen degrees.

From the angle, I could barely see out the windows, and everything
looked strange. The water under the bridge seemed too low. The half-full
Earth had greenish-black spots on it. And the sky?

* *