dwindling as they went. Then they disappeared in the black sky, their roaring faded away, and there was left only the moaning of the wind around her and somewhere a child crying. And somewhere a voice asking, "Where are we? In the name of God—what have they done to us?" She looked at the snow streaming from the ragged hills, felt the hard pull of the gravity, and knew where they were. They were on Ragnarok, the hell-world of 1.5 gravity and fierce beasts and raging fevers where men could not survive. The name came from an old Teutonic myth and meant: The last day for gods and men. The Dunbar Expedition had discovered Ragnarok and her father had told her of it, of how it had killed six of the eight men who had left the ship and would have killed all of them if they had remained any longer. She knew where they were and she knew the Gerns had lied to them and would never send a ship to take them to Earth. Their abandonment there had been intended as a death sentence for all of them. And Dale was gone and she and Billy would die helpless and alone.... "It will be dark—so soon." Billy's voice shook with the cold. "If Daddy can't find us in the dark, what will we do?" "I don't know," she said. "There's no one to help us and how can I know—what we should do——" She was from the city. How could she know what to do on an alien, hostile world where armed explorers had died? She had tried to be brave before the Gerns but p. 13 now—now night was at hand and out of it would come terror and death for herself and Billy. They would never see Dale again, never see Athena or Earth or even the dawn on the world that had killed them.... p. 13 She tried not to cry, and failed. Billy's cold little hand touched her own, trying to reassure her. "Don't cry, Mama. I guess—I guess everybody else is scared, too." Everyone else.... She was not alone. How could she have thought she was alone? All around her were others, as helpless and uncertain as she. Her story was only one out of four thousand. "I guess they are, Billy," she said. "I never thought of that, before."
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