is the first of a series of deep-cut arrow markings. Follow. They lead to the entrance. Old Martian workings. Maybe something. Whoever finds this, see that my kid, Soleil, gets a share. She's in school on Earth. Address is 93-X south Palma—

The pen had stopped writing half-through the word. Death had intervened hideously. Imagination could picture the scene as that airlock wall disappeared in blinding, soundless flash. Or perhaps there had been sound in the pressured atmosphere. His own arrival may have frightened off the claim jumpers, but too late to help the victim, who sat so straight and hideous in the airless tomb.

There was nothing to do. Airless cold would embalm the body until some bored official could come out from Crystal City to investigate the murder and pick up the hideous pieces. But if the killers returned Denver made sure that nothing remained to guide them in their search for the secret mine worked long-ago by forgotten Martians. It was Laird Martin's discovery and his dying legacy to a child on distant Earth.

Denver picked up the document and wadded it clumsily into a fold-pocket of his spacesuit. It might help the police locate the heir. In Martin's billfold was the child's picture, no more.

Denver retraced his steps to the frosty airlock valve of his ship. Inside the cabin, Charley greeted his master's return with extravagant caperings which wasted millions of electron volts.

"Nobody home, Charley," Denver told the purring moondog, "but we've picked up a nasty errand to run."

It was a bad habit, he reflected; talking to a moondog like that, but he had picked up the habit from sheer loneliness of his prospecting among the haunted desolations of the Moon. Even talking to Charley was better than going nuts, he thought, and there was not too much danger of smart answers.

He worked quickly, repairing the inadvertent damage Charley's pique had caused. It took ten full minutes, and the heat-deadline was too close for comfort. He finished and breathed more freely as temperatures began to drop. He peeled off the helmet and unzipped the suit which was reaching the thermal levels of a live-steam bath.

He ran tape through the charger to impregnate electronic setting that would guide the ship on its course to Crystal City. "We were on our way, there, anyhow," he mused. "I hope they've improved the jail. It could stand air-conditioning."

II

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