r to Captain
Crane's question. "I doubt if Forbes would know, if he were alive, and
I'm by no means the commander he was. But, as you say, we have to do
something. So, since it's a little early in the game to explode the
kotomite and call it a day's work, we better declare a truce between
ourselves, and then check up on the ship. Come on, if you're able."

She was able.

* * * * *

In the next twenty minutes we found that it was the forward end of the
great flier which was damaged, and that while she was in fair shape
amidships and astern, she would never fly again. We discovered that the
three unaccounted-for men of the crew were lying forward, and found that
two were dead and one lived--a radio man named LeConte. He had two ribs
broken. Half a dozen atomic guns remained to us, and we found intact one
dynamo capable of generating the new cold light in considerable
quantities. It was not an encouraging check-up, though. Out of a crew of
ten, only the four of us were alive; Captain Crane, the Jap, LeConte,
and myself. And all of us were more or less battered. The ship was still
habitable, but smashed beyond hope of repair. Around us stretched
Orcon--in the control of Ludwig Leider.

I got LeConte, the radio man with the broken ribs, into the small cabin
where the Jap still lay and made him comfortable. Then I set the Jap's
broken arm. I gave both him and LeConte an injection of penopalatrin in
order that their shattered bones might be decently knitted in two or
three hours. The Jap presently came to, and I found that he was a
civilian like myself, but one who had long been employed on the U. S. W.
research staff as a ray and explosive expert. I realized at once that he
was the inventor of the kotomite with which the ship was loaded.

All of them, including Captain Crane, told me the story of the crash.
Captain Crane hadn't been responsible, after all. Their magnogravitos
system had failed in some mysterious manner as they approached Orcon. In
spite of the checking effect of their helium pontoons, which had
expanded properly when they had come into Orcon's atmosphere, they had
slammed into a sea of light and crashed. That was all anyone knew. But
everyone suspected that Leider had been somehow responsible.

"I do not enjoy the prospect," Koto said after a glance at his
temporarily helpless left arm. "If Leider is able to wreck a space ship
before she ever reaches his planet