It was dark in the room, with only the light of Deimos and Phobos shining into the glassite windows. He could just make out the darkness-shrouded bulks of shattered machinery in the corner. He pressed the button on his torch and the darkness fled in panic from the brightness of the light.

The whisper in his brain came then. "Don't...."

His flashlight clattered to the metal floor, and his hand was on his blaster. Then he cursed himself for a fool and retrieved his torch. He did not, however, turn it on again.

To be startled like that by mental telepathy was childish. It was something that every member of the Space Patrol had to master, and was an ability fairly common among intelligent people—many of whom practiced the art as something of a hobby. The only element of surprise was the fact that it was a strain on any ordinary man to project his thoughts that way, and speech was preferable when practicable. Still, there was no reason why anyone should not use telepathy if he wished.

"Who—" he began aloud, then shrugged and concentrated on thinking: "Who are you?"

"Speak aloud," came the thought. "It is easier for you, and makes your mental impulses clearer."

There is an individuality in thoughts, as well as in voices and faces. It occurred to Lawrence that the thought waves of this person were the clearest, the gentlest and the saddest of any he had ever encountered.

There was a clarity about them that was superhuman, that is associated with genius. And they were filled with a sorrow that transcended all human understanding. The sorrow of a dying race, of the shattered dreams of a billion years, the sorrow of the Wandering Jew alone on another planet and watching his own dissolve into cosmic dust—a sorrow beyond expression.

He found it dominating his soul, drowning him in a bitterness such as he had never dreamed possible.

Lawrence explained, "My instruments detected a steady stream of free gamma rays out in space, such as could only come from a ruptured atomic power source of some sort, and I flew down to ascertain if there had been an accident." He raised his voice a trifle over the wail of the desert wind. "Who are you?"

The brooding thought crept slowly into his mind, infinitely sad, infinitely weary.

"I am one who saw too far. It is no good for any being to go 

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