n told them. "Herr Harkness, you have
filed claims on it; who am I to dispute with the great Herr Harkness?
Without question it iss yours!"

He laughed loudly, while his eyes narrowed between creasing wrinkles of
flesh. "You shall enjoy it," he told them; "--all your life."

And Chet, as he caught the gaze of Harkness and Diane, wondered how long
this enjoyment would last. "All your life!" But this was rather
indefinite as a measure of time.

CHAPTER V

_A Desperate Act_

The ship that Chet Bullard and Harkness had designed had none of the
instruments for space navigation that the ensuing years were to bring.
Chet's accuracy was more the result of that flyer's sixth sense--that
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 homecoming 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 he