and him, and now with the wiring burned through there was no way of
signalling him he was wanted for an emergency. In his absence Mason took
command.

That passageway ran the full length of the ship. Midway down it was the
door leading to the women's lounge. The explosion had jammed that door
shut, and smoke was pouring forth from under the sill. All at once one
of the women rushed forward to announce hysterically that Mason's wife,
Estelle, was in the lounge.

Adjoining the lounge was a small cabin which since the beginning of our
voyage had remained locked. Norris had given strict orders that that
cabin was not to be disturbed. We all had taken it as a matter of course
that it contained various kinds of precision instruments.

Now, however, Mason realized that the only way into the lounge was by
way of that locked cabin. If he used a heat blaster on the lounge door
there was no telling what would happen to the woman inside.

He ripped the emergency blaster from its wall mounting, pressed it to
the magnetic latch of the sealed cabin door and pressed the stud. An
instant later he was leading his frightened wife, Estelle, out through
the smoke.

The fire was quickly extinguished after that and the wiring spliced.
Then when the others had drifted off, Mason called Brandt and me aside.

"We've been wondering for a long time what happened to Ganeth-Klae, the
Martian inventor who worked with Norris to invent _Indurate_," he said
very quietly. "Well, we don't need to wonder any more. He's in there."

Brandt and I stepped forward over the sill--and drew up short.
Ganeth-Klae was there all right, but he would never trouble himself
about making a voyage in a locked cabin. His rigid body was encased in a
transparent block of amber-colored solidifex, the after-death
preservative used by all Martians.

Both of us recognized his still features at once, and in addition his
name-tattoo, required by Martian law, was clearly visible on his left
forearm.

* * * * *

For a brief instant the discovery stunned us. Klae dead? Klae whose IQ
had become a measuring guide for the entire system, whose Martian head
held more ordinary horse sense, in addition to radical postulations on
theoretical physics, than anyone on the planets. It wasn't possible.

And what was the significance of his body on Norris' ship? Why had
Norris kept its presence a secret and why had he given out the story of
Klae's disapp