them, jabbering, squealing, howling in anguish.

Scott stiffened, ears tensed as the code sputtered across millions of miles. But it was the same old routine. The same old message, repeated over and over again ... the same old warning hurled out from the ruddy planet.

"No. No. No come. Danger."

Scott turned toward the window, started up into the sky at the crimson eye of Mars.

What was the use of keeping hope alive? Hope that Hugh might have reached Mars, that someday the Martian code would bring some word of him.

Hugh had died ... like all the rest of them. Like those whose names were graven in the bronze there on the wall. The maw of space had swallowed him. He had flown into the face of silence and the silence was unbroken.

The door of the office creaked open, letting in a gust of chilly air. Jimmy Baldwin shut the door behind him and looked at them vacantly.

"Nice night to go to Mars," he said.

"You shouldn't be up here, Jimmy," said Alexander gently. "You should be down at the base, tending to your flowers."

"There're lots of flowers on Mars," said Jimmy. "Maybe someday I'll go to Mars and see."

"Wait until somebody else goes first," said Palmer bitterly.

Jimmy turned about, hesitantly, like a man who had a purpose but had forgotten what it was. He moved slowly toward the door and opened it.

"I got to go," he said.

The door closed heavily but the chill did not vanish from the room. For it wasn't the chill of the mountain's peak, but another kind of chill ... a chill that had walked in with Jimmy Baldwin and now refused to leave.

Palmer tipped the bottle, sloshed the whiskey in the glass.

"The greatest pilot that ever lived," he said. "Now look at him!"

"He still holds the record," Alexander reminded the radio operator. "Eight times to the Moon and still alive."

The accident had happened as Jimmy's ship was 

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