watched. He had had that feeling many times, and he knew it for what it was. It was Death, standing straddle-legged over the face of the land, casting shadow and eternal silence upon it. The only light came from the lone man stalking toward the rocket standing sentry like a pillar of January ice in the center of the blast area.

His fingers twitched as he thought of the two years' work that had gone into erecting that shaft of beryllium. Innumerable painstaking trips to and from the junk heaps of that field, pirating pieces from other ships, liberating cases of parts from bombed-out storage sheds, relentlessly forcing himself on, even when exhaustion cried its claim.

Seligman had not been a scientist or a mechanic. But determination, texts on rocket motors, and the original miracle of finding an only partially-destroyed ship with its drive still intact had provided him with a means to leave this place of death.

It was one of the latest model ships; a Smith class cruiser with conning bubble set far back on the tapered nose, and the ugly black depressions behind which the Bergsil cannons rested on movable tracks.

He climbed the hull-ladder into the open inspection hatch, finding his way easily, even without a torch. His fingers began running over the complicated leads of the drive-components, checking and re-checking what he already knew was sound and foolproof—or as foolproof as an amateur could make them.

Now that it was ready, and all that remained were these routine check-tests and loading the food for the journey, he found himself more terrified of leaving than of remaining alone till he died—and when that might be with his stamina he had no idea.

How would they receive a man as transformed as he? Would they not instinctively fear, mistrust, despise him? Am I stalling? The question suddenly formed in his mind, causing his sure inspection to falter. Had he been purposely putting the takeoff date further and further ahead? Using the checks and other tasks as further attempts to stall? His head began to ache with the turmoil of his thoughts.

Then he shook himself in disgust. The tests were necessary, it was stressed repeatedly in all of the texts lying about the floor of the drive chamber.

His hands shook, but that same impetus which had carried him for two years forced him to complete the checkups. Just as dawn oozed up over the outline of the tatters that had been New 

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