was raised and set down. The men crowded close and looked. Then Rob looked, and Jim. Rob felt a sickening disappointment as he realized their failure. There was no creature inside the ice at all. It was nothing but a slab of rock.

One of the men snorted contemptuously. Another laughed openly in scorn.

Rob bit his lips and regretfully ordered the ice saw back to the ship. Then he sent the men back to their positions of search.

The young officer felt little hope. The ring was closing in toward the Centaurus. There wasn’t much more area that hadn’t already been examined. Rob, realizing the attitude of the men, knew they hadn’t probed as diligently as they were supposed to have. Very likely large areas had been only carelessly examined. But that couldn’t be helped.

Rob went through the last day with the slow resignation of defeat settling within him. In only a few hours the searchers would have covered the entire area, and their own moment of victory would be at hand.

When the search was finally over and still no one had found anything moving beneath the ice, Rob knew how it felt to taste defeat.

Jim clapped Rob sympathetically on the shoulder. “I’m sorry, Rob,” he said. “Perhaps later on there will be another expedition.”

“There won’t be any more to this place, you can be sure of that!” Rob blurted. “After this failure, the Space Command certainly won’t send any more good money after bad!”

Later, as all on board the Centaurus slept, Rob tossed restlessly on his cot. He heard the quiet breathing of the crewmen in the adjoining compartments. They were happy; their reluctant job was done and they were going home. The blast-off was scheduled for 0600 the next morning.

Rob could not stand his plaguing thoughts. He got out of bed and pulled on his clothes. He looked across the room at Jim Hawley, breathing deeply in sound slumber. Rob walked down the corridor to the garb room and began tugging on space gear. He realized only then how bone-weary he was, how his head ached from the tension of the past weeks, how heavily his heart throbbed in his breast. He couldn’t relax any place now, he knew, but it would be easier outside, continuing the search to the very end.

Rob tucked an electron gun in the holster of his suit, then left the Centaurus. He struck out over the glacier pack, his head lowered. It came to him 

 Prev. P 37/145 next