ined face and the
agonized look of Diane as the two leaned above him.... But now he felt
stronger. He must see them again....

He opened his eyes for another look at his companions--and, instead of
black, star-pricked night on a distant globe, there was dazzling
sunlight. No desolate lava-flow, this; no thousand fires that flared and
smoked from their fumeroles in the dark. And, instead of Harkness and
the girl, Diane, leaning over him there was a nurse who laid one cool
hand upon his blond head and who spoke soothingly to him of keeping
quiet. He was to take it easy--he would understand later--and everything
was all right.... And with this assurance Chet Bullard drifted again
into sleep....

* * * * *

The blurring memories had lost their distortions a week later, as he sat
before a broad window in his room and looked out over the housetops of
Vienna. Again he was himself, Chet Bullard, with a Master Pilot's
rating; and he let his eyes follow understandingly the moving picture of
the world outside. It was good to be part of a world whose every
movement he understood.

Those cylinders with stubby wings that crossed and recrossed the sky;
their sterns showed a jet of thin vapor where a continuous explosion of
detonite threw them through the air. He knew them all: the pleasure
craft, the big, red-bellied freighters, the sleek liners, whose multiple
helicopters spun dazzlingly above as they sank down through the shaft of
pale-green light that marked a descending area.

That one would be the China Mail. Her under-ports were open before the
hold-down clamps had gripped her; the mail would pour out in an
avalanche of pouches where smaller mailships waited to distribute the
cargo across the land.

And the big fellow taking off, her hull banded with blue, was one of
Schwartzmann's liners. He wondered what had become of Schwartzmann, the
man who had tried to rob Harkness of his ship; who had brought the
patrol ships upon them in an effort to prevent their take-off on that
wild trip.

For that matter, what had become of Harkness? Chet Bullard was seriously
disturbed at the absence of any word beyond the one message that had
been waiting for him when he regained consciousness. He drew that
message from a pocket of his dressing gown and read it again:

"Chet, old fellow, lie low. S has vanished. Means mischief. Think
best not to see you or reveal your whereabouts until our position