Either the atmospheric system had gone on the blink by itself, he thought, which was a hell of a long shot and too much of a coincidence, or else the alien, experimenting, had turned it off by accident.

Maybe the brute didn't need oxygen. Of course he didn't! His brothers outside sure didn't have any. Then, if he were independent of it, but could stand living in it, the probabilities were that he didn't breathe at all; that his metabolism was geared to ignore the elements in which he lived.

Just possibly he was taking this way to kill them off in a particularly fiendish fashion.

Silently Pink cursed the architect who had designed the Elephant's Child with the armaments room in the bow and the atmospheria back near the crew's sector, a thousand feet of passageways off. Every door he flung open took another bit of strength from his aching limbs. As he passed a mirror, he had a glimpse of his face. His face was flushed now, the grim-set lips were bluish, his eyes seemed to bulge from his head.

He began breathing through his mouth. It may have been imagination, but he thought the air had a foul taste, like a sea full of putrid fish.

Pink fell to his knees. Abruptly his strength had waned to almost nothing. He was horrified to realize how swiftly the air was going bad. He had to get to the system! He struggled up, staggered forward like a drunk. His heart, pounding wildly a moment before, now seemed to be slowing, weakening.

He found himself singing....

"Blast off at two, jet down at three

On the dead dry dusty sphere

What sort of a life is this for me,

A veteran rocketeer?"

Great God, was he crazy? Singing, shouting the words to that old song that Circe had brought back to his mind. Using up what amounted to his last drops of energy and air. God, God, help me, he thought wildly; make me shut up. But the maddened outer part of his brain kept him singing.

"I, who have seen the flame-dark seas,

Canals like great raw scars,

And the claret lakes and the crimson trees

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