corridor for ten minutes or
more with official explanations. Then a message from Halsey released
us. The Martian who had been following us in his invisible cloak was
never caught.

We escaped from the crowd at last and made our way back to the
_Planetara_, where the passengers were already assembling for the
outward Martian voyage.

II

I stood on the turret balcony of the _Planetara_ with Captain Carter
and Dr. Frank, the ship surgeon, watching the arriving passengers. It
was close to the zero hour; the level of the stage was a turmoil of
confusion. The escalators, with the last of the freight aboard, were
folded back. But the stage was jammed with incoming passenger luggage,
the interplanetary customs and tax officials with their x-ray and
zed-ray paraphernalia and the passengers themselves, lined up for the
export inspection.

At this height, the city lights lay spread in a glare of blue and
yellow beneath us. The individual local planes came dropping like
birds to our stage. Thirty-eight passengers to Mars for this voyage,
but that accursed desire of every friend and relative to speed the
departing voyager brought a hundred or more extra people to crowd our
girders and add to everybody's troubles.

Carter was too absorbed in his duties to stay with us long. But here
in the turret Dr. Frank and I found ourselves at the moment with
nothing much to do but watch.

Dr. Frank was a thin, dark, rather smallish man of fifty, trim in his
blue and white uniform. I knew him well: we had made several flights
together. An American--I fancy of Jewish ancestry. A likable man, and
a skillful doctor and surgeon. He and I had always been good friends.

"Crowded," he said. "Johnson says thirty-eight. I hope they're
experienced travelers. This pressure sickness is a rotten
nuisance--keeps me dashing around all night assuring frightened women
they're not going to die. Last voyage, coming out of the Venus
atmosphere--"

He plunged into a lugubrious account of his troubles with space sick
voyagers. But I was in no mood to listen to him. My gaze was down on
the spider incline, up which, over the bend of the ship's sleek,
silvery body, the passengers and their friends were coming in little
groups. The upper deck was already jammed with them.

The _Planetara_, as flyers go, was not a large vessel. Cylindrical of
body, forty feet maximum beam, and two hundred and seventy-five feet
in length. The passenger superstructure-