to use the communicator to call home
would have blown his ship to atoms.

The Nipe did not want to die, but, if die he must, he did not want to
die foolishly.

It had taken a long time to drift in from the outer reaches of this
sun's planetary system, but using the power plants any more than was
absolutely necessary would have been foolhardy.

The Nipe missed the companionship his brother had given him for so long;
his help would be invaluable now. But there had been no choice. There
had not been enough supplies for two to survive the long inward fall
toward the distant sun. The Nipe, having discovered the fact first, had,
out of his mercy and compassion, killed his brother while the other was
not looking. Then, having disposed of his brother with all due ceremony,
he had settled down to the long, lonely wait.

Beings of another race might have cursed the accident that had disabled
the ship, or regretted the necessity that one of them should die, but
the Nipe did neither, for, to him, the first notion would have been
foolish and the second incomprehensible.

But now, as the ship fell ever closer toward the yellow-white sun, he
began to worry about his own fate. For a while, it had seemed almost
certain that he would survive long enough to build a communicator, for
the instruments had already told him and his brother that the system
ahead was inhabited by creatures of reasoning power, if not true
intelligence, and it would almost certainly be possible to get the
equipment he needed from them. Now, though, it looked as if the ship
would not survive a landing. He had had to steer it away from a great
gas giant, which had seriously endangered the power plants.

He did not want to die in space--wasted, forever undevoured. At least,
he must die on a planet, where there might be creatures with the
compassion and wisdom to give his body the proper death rites. The
thought of succumbing to inferior creatures was repugnant, but it was
better than rotting to feed monocells or ectogenes, and far superior to
wasting away in space.

Even thoughts such as these did not occupy his mind often or for very
long. Far, far better than any of those thoughts were thoughts connected
with the desire and planning for survival.

The outer orbits of the gas giants had been passed at last, and the Nipe
fell on through the Asteroid Belt without approaching any of the larger
pieces of rock-and-metal. That he and his brother had originally el