ly. He retched and
closed his eyes and lay on the hull through the beginning of an
eternity.

* * * * *

He had no concept of time. The chronometer in the suit was not working.
But it seemed as if many hours had passed when he felt a faint shock
pass through the hull beneath him. He felt a momentary elation. The
ships had separated. The search for him--if any--had been abandoned.

Slowly he inched his way around the hull to get a glimpse of the black
ship. It was still there, standing off a few hundred yards but not
moving. Its presence dismayed him. There could be no reason now for the
two ships to remain together. The Martian Princess should be turning
around for the return to Earth.

Then out of the corner of his eye he saw it. A trace of movement. A
gleam of light. Like a small moon it edged up the distant curvature of
the hull. Then there were more--a nest of quivering satellites.

Without thought, Mel pressed the jet control and hurled himself into
space.

The terror of his first plunge was multiplied by the presence of the
searchers. Crewmen of the Martian Princess, he supposed. The absence of
the space suit had probably been discovered.

In headlong flight, he became aware of eternity and darkness and
loneliness. The sun was a hot, bright disc, but it illuminated nothing.
All that his mind clung to for identification of itself and the
universe around it was gone. He was like a primeval cell, floating
without origin, without purpose, without destination.

Only a glimmer of memory pierced the thick terror with a shaft of
rationality. Alice. He must survive for Alice's sake. He must find the
way back to Alice--back to Earth.

He looked toward the Martian Princess and the searchers on the hull. He
cried out in the soundless dark. The searchers had left the hull and
were pursuing him through open space. Their speed far exceeded his. It
was futile to run before them--and futile to leave the haven of the
Martian Princess. His only chance of survival or success lay in getting
to Earth aboard the ship. In a long curve he arced back toward the ship.
Instantly, the searchers moved to close in the arc and meet him on a
collision course.

He could see them now. They were not crewmen in spacesuits as he had
supposed. Rather, the objects--two of them--looked like miniature
spaceships. Beams of light bore through space ahead of them, and he
suspected they carried other radiations also