. Too, I was actuated by selfish motives. I loved my
telescopes and my isodermic super-spectroscopes. And there was still
much work I had to do! Already I had discovered three new elements, and
that had showed me I was but at the beginning of a knowledge of
cosmological chemistry. Forbes! He had brought me by force out here on
this beastly little planet whose orbit was like that of a snake with the
Saint Vitus' dance! He had taken me to this wretched planet which lay at
such a remote end of the Universe that not even explorers had been
tempted to visit it!

"Oh, damn the whole business!" I groaned aloud. I was thoroughly angry
and bitter.

In a little while I experienced a sudden change of mood. I'd no sooner
spoken than a moan came from directly behind me, and I remembered why
I'd got going in the beginning, and was ashamed. I entered a small
compartment which opened from Forbes' cabin, and discovered immediately
three more people.

The strides I had taken made me realize that I had to be careful, for I
was indeed endowed with a terrific strength--an extraordinary strength
and lightness. One of these three new people was obviously dead, for his
neck was broken. The other two still breathed. The first of the two was
a short man, a Japanese by the look of him. His arm was broken. The
other person was, to my surprise, a woman. She, like the dead Forbes,
wore the insignia of the U. S. W. Upper Zone Patrol. Her insignia was
that of a navigating officer.

So it was she who had caused the crash!

It was also she who had moaned. My feelings as I lifted her to a bunk
were mixed. Being a reactionary, I still felt that woman's place was not
in the Army or Navy. Yet I confess that the woman--or girl, rather--was
ornamental. She was of the Iberian type. She was beautiful, and looked
helpless. Some atavistic trait of the protective instinct in man made me
take a little more pains in caring for her than I might have taken with
a man.

* * * * *

"Doctor Weeks," were the first surprised words she murmured when I had
bandaged a cut in her head and she came to.

Weeks being my name--Frederick Weeks--I grunted and wondered just how
much _she'd_ had to do with my being here. I noted that the eyes were
gray with violet lights.

"You were handcuffed and drugged," she announced wonderingly.

"I was," I answered, "but I'm not any more. Thanks to my own efforts."

She dropped that subjec