* * * * *

Ban Wilson was the most active physically. He was a miniature dynamo
of a man, throbbing with a restless, inexhaustible tide of energy.
Short and wiry, he stared truculently at the universe through
wonderfully clear blue eyes, surrounded by a bumper crop of freckles
and topped by a mat of bristly red hair. His short stub nose had
prodded into countless hostile places where it most emphatically was
not wanted. It would be hardly necessary to old acquaintances of his
to say that he was now speaking.

"No, sir! I say the Hawk's safe and kicking! Can't kill _him_! By my
grandmother's false teeth, I swear I'd follow him to hell, knowin' I'd
come out alive and leavin' the devil yowlin' behind with his tail tied
into pretzels! He said he would meet you here? Well, then, he will."

Friday looked up mournfully.

"Yes, suh, Cap'n Ban; but Cap'n Carse was going into a pow'ful lot of
trouble. An' he was worn an' tired, an' he only had a space-suit an' a
raygun, an' you know he wouldn't stop for anything till he'd done
what he set out to. I kind of feel ... I dunno ... I dunno...."

"By Betelguese!" swore Ban Wilson, "if he doesn't come soon I'll take
that damned Porno apart till I find him!"

Eliot Leithgow gave up the late radio newscast from Earth he had been
pretending to read. A brief silence fell, and through it the old
scientist seemed to feel something, seemed to expect something. And he
was not mistaken.

"_Who's there?_"

It was a cry from one of the watchers outside. Friday leaped out of
his uneasy seat and was through the door even before Ban, who followed
with Leithgow. They heard the Negro roar from ahead:

"Cap'n Carse! Cap'n Carse! Sure enough, it's Cap'n Carse!"--and they
saw his great form go bounding down to the gray-lit beach of the lake,
to a slight, weary figure that came stumbling along it.

* * * * *

Hawk Carse had come as he said he would, but he was a sore figure of a
man. Though he was not in it now, for days he had worn the harsh,
grating metal and fabric of a space-suit, and its marks were left on
him. Even from a distance the others could see that his once-neat blue
trousers and soft flannel shirt were torn through in many places,
revealing ugly purplish bruises; on his haggard face was a nap of
flaxen beard, and in his blood-shot gray eyes utter exhaustion, both
mental and physical. The Hawk had been acting at high tens