This was too much; this was carrying things too far. Those men moving about the rendering shed were dead, so dead that there had been no pulse of heart-beats in their veins. Yet they walked and worked with a smooth efficiency about the shed five hundred feet away.

And the freighters had vanished into the clouds. Yet that, too, was impossible; for the rocket blasts would have created such a roar in the air that he could not have missed their going.

It was as though his mind had tricked him, had conjured chimeras and mirages out of the air to strip his reason away.

He stiffened, the gun lifting in his hand, as one of the men working about the shed turned and ran directly down the field. He gasped silently, recognizing the greyed hair and ruddy face of Jim Palmer.

His hand snapped to a small button on his helmet.

"Hold it, Palmer, don't come any closer!" His voice roared from the tiny annunciator built into the top of his helmet.

Jim Palmer skidded to a stop, menaced by the ati-gun, fell, sprawling in the green mud, as his sudden stop tripped him on the treacherous ground. Amazement made a round O of his mouth, and the glad greeting faded from his eyes.

"What the hell, Denton?" he said sharply. "Have you gone space batty?"

Don Denton laughed without humor, shifted the gun muzzle slightly.

"I don't know," he admitted. "But I'm not taking any chances on anything until I find out what's going on!"

"What do you mean: 'What's going on'?" Jim Palmer pushed himself to his feet, wiped slimy mud onto his breeches' legs. "Hell," he finished, "all of us thought you were dead!"

"You—," Don Denton swallowed, blinked desperately, "You thought I was dead?" he croaked.

"Why, sure!" Jim Palmer waved an expressive hand. "We tried to get into your ship for more than a week, but couldn't. And we could see you crumpled in the pilot's seat. So we figured you had died."

"Look, Palmer," Don Denton said, "I like jokes as well as the next spacer. But I don't like the smell of this one! Now, what's the set-up here?"

"Well, it's just like the one I had on island Seven. I—"

Don Denton's voice 

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