" Harkness suggested.

"Well, he showed me some darn nice sapphires," Chet agreed. "Probably
found some way to cut them and he's setting them in a bracelet of soft
gold: that's my guess."

"I wish he were here," Diane insisted.

And Chet nodded across the clearing as he said fervently: "I wish I
could get all my wishes as quickly as that. There he comes now with his
bow in one hand and a bag of something in the other."

The tall figure moved wearily across the open ground, but straightened
and came briskly toward them as he drew near. He seemed more gaunt than
usual, as if he had finished a long journey and had slept but little.
But his eyes behind their heavy spectacles were big with pride.

"You have--what do you Americans say?--'poked fun' at my helplessness in
the forest," he told Chet. "And now see. Alone and without help I have
made a great journey, a most important journey." He held up a bladder,
translucent, filled with something palely green.

"The gas!" he said proudly.

"Why, Herr Kreiss," Diane exclaimed, amazed, "you can't mean that you've
been to Fire Valley; that that is the gas from about the ship!... And
why did you want it? What earthly use...."

* * * * *

She had looked from the proud face of the scientist to that of Harkness;
then turned toward Chet. Her voice died away, her question unfinished,
at sight of the expression in those other eyes.

"From--the ship? You mean that you've been there--Fire Valley? That
you've come back here?" Chet was asking on behalf of Harkness as well:
his companion added nothing to the words of the pilot--words spoken in a
curiously quiet, strained tone.

"But yes!" Herr Kreiss assured him. His gaze was still proudly fixed
upon the bladder of green gas. "I needed some for an experiment--a most
important experiment." And not till then did he glance up and let his
thin face wrinkle in amazed wonder at the look on the pilot's face.

Chet had raised one end of another stick as Kreiss approached. He had
intended to place it against the frame they were building: it fell
heavily to the ground instead. He regarded Harkness with eyes that were
somber with hopeless despair, yet that somehow crinkled with a whimsical
smile.

"Well, I said he had a surprise up his sleeve," he reminded them. "It is
nearly night; I can't do anything now. I'll go to-morrow; take Towahg. I
don't know that there's anything we can do, but we'll try.

"You wi