n two and a half years
of brooding. Finally his dream paradise was complete to the last detail
of his hopes and imaginings.

It was the world which he had built around Laura taken on an immaterial,
but to him nonetheless real, life. There was Laura and there was
himself. And there was the complete bliss for which he had planned Big
Tim's murder to achieve.

He became aware of a change. The outlines of his world were dimming,
dissolving, fading. Even Laura, radiantly lovely, was beginning to blur
before his eyes.

In horror he sought to clutch the evaporating structure to him and
stabilize it once again. But it slipped through his fingers like an
impalpable mist. Before he was fully alive to it, his dream Eden was
gone, and he was back in that formless void in which he had found
himself. And even that was thinning.

Nellon awoke. He looked around for Laura and that idyllic dream land in
which they had loved. But only the great, green cylinder with its
flaming globe and the vast room beyond met his gaze.

Nellon climbed to his feet. With the action, he became aware that he
felt wonderfully refreshed and stimulated. He looked around for Big Tim,
then he remembered. Avoiding the open doorway through which the rays
still poured, he peered through the green wall. Big Tim was lying there
on the floor within. He was very still in his thermalloy suit.

Nellon began a chain of reasoning. As it progressed, there went with it
a rising tide of exultation.

As long as Big Tim remained there under the influence of the globe, he
would remain unconscious, living, perhaps, a dream as real and vivid as
his own had been. It would be just as though Big Tim were dead. None of
the expedition members knew of the doorway through which he and Big Tim
had entered. With the almost continuous storms which raged on Titan, the
door would soon become covered again. Ages might pass before a chance
accident revealed it once more.

He, Nellon, could go back to the ship with a tale of how he had lost Big
Tim in the bitter storm. The men might search, but he knew it would be
futile.

Laura would grieve, of course, when he returned and told her the news.
But he would be there to comfort her, and she would get over it. And he
knew that she would marry him, with Big Tim out of the way. He could
look forward to a happiness more satisfying than that of the dream.

Nellon saw his course clear. He knew just what he had to do.

* *