urely Ku Sui had been there! Surely he had not just imagined he saw
him!

* * * * *

Baffled and coldly raging, the Hawk whirled and groped frantically.
The centrifugal force caught him off balance and hurled him into a
wall, but dizzy he continued his desperate search, sweeping his arms
all around him, over walls and floor and, rising, the ceiling. The
tumbling asteroid banged him unmercifully into the six sides of the
room, but even as he was flung he reached and felt in every
direction--felt without result.

In some incredible way, Ku Sui had eluded him. The second the light
failed, he must have slipped by and escaped down the passageway
behind. The Hawk could hardly understand how it might have been
achieved, but there was no other explanation. So, with lips firm set
in his cold, grim face, he felt to the doorway, ready to track back
through the long, unlit passage. He might still overhaul and capture
the other. If there was still time....

But _was_ there?

The passing seconds had not been idle. Inexorably they had brought him
to Earth's atmosphere. He stared around the room in sheer horror.

For its blackness was relieved by the faintest of glows. It was not
that of the recurring light; it came from the whole rock ceiling
above. Carse was overwhelmed by the realization that within numbered
seconds the surface of the asteroid would reach incandescence.

Thoughts raced like lightning through his head. He could not get free
through the corridor and dome behind: that would take at least three
minutes, and not a quarter of a minute was left. Ku Sui too, if he
were in the corridor trying to reach the dome, was trapped and
finished. A meteor flaming to Earth would be their common grave!

A searing, hideous death! Trapped within fiery walls of melting rock!

At that moment the regularly re-recurring flash of light came, and
under pressure of his great need the phenomenon meshed with
understanding in Carse's mind. That light was sunlight! It come at
definite intervals as the dome side of the asteroid rotated to face
the sun.

And that light could reach the room only by way of some channel in the
ceiling!

* * * * *

In the waxing glow of the rock above him, Carse swiftly found the
channel--a vertical bore several feet wide, in one corner of the
ceiling. Its rock sides glowed redly, and at their end was a round
black patch that caused his heart to