Fallon's hard jaw set. "I can't go any longer without sleep."

Bjarnsson's cragged face was flushed and greasy behind his helmet, but his eyes were like glittering frost.

"All the whisky and the women," he whispered. "They make you soft, Fallon. The girl would have been better."

A flashing glimpse of Joan as she had looked in the car that morning crossed the eye of Fallon's mind—the tumbled fair hair and the sunlight warm on throat and cheek, and her voice saying, "You wouldn't be bad, Webb ... so lazy and so hell-fired selfish!"

He cursed and started forward. The dark blur of Bjarnsson rose, blotting out the green glow. And then the panel light rose in a shuddering arc.

Fallon thought for a moment that he was fainting. The low curve of the hull spun about. He knew that he fell, and that he struck something, or that something struck him. All orientation was lost. His helmet rang against metal like a great gong, and then he was sliding down a cluttered slope.

A blunt projection ripped across his back. Even through the leaded suit, the pain of it made him scream. He heard the sound as a distant, throttled echo. Then even the dim green light was gone.

The screen flickered abominably. It showed mostly a blurred mob of people, trampling back and forth. Then it steadied and there was a picture, in bright, gay colors.

A starfish twenty feet across wrapping itself around a woman and her stupefied child.

"We saw that," said Fallon. "On the beach. Remember?"

He thought Joan answered, but there was another picture. A vast red crab, pulling a man to bits with its claws. And after that, the shrieking woman outside the broken window, dragged down by a worm.

"Wonder who got those shots?" said Fallon. Again Joan answered, but he didn't hear her. The pictures moved more rapidly. Rays, black against the blue sky. Planes falling. Guns firing and firing and choking to silence. People, black endless streams of them, running, running, running.

Joan pulled at him. Her face was strangely huge. Her eyes were as he had first seen them, hard chips of sapphire. And at last he heard what she was saying.

"Your fault, Webb Fallon. This might have been stopped. But you had to sleep. You couldn't 

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