didn't cross over," insisted Markley's voice. "We saw you land a hundred miles safe in sunlight. Can't you even see the stars?"

The stars! Jessup strained his face toward the little round hole of transparency, and yet he saw nothing. He felt strange, idiotic words rising: "Someone's painted it black—I fell in a puddle of ink—"

"What's that?" shouted the colonel. "In God's name, man, talk sense!"

"I must have landed in a big shadow and fallen over," said Jessup. "That's why it's dark."

"Apparently you hit on your head," rasped Markley. "Look—pull yourself together! You're not in any shadow. You skimmed right into daylight in the middle of Nubium."

"You saw me land!" cried Jessup eagerly. "How did it look from up there?"

"You went down from the West," said the colonel, speaking fast. "Your jets started over the Altai Range. You sailed over Regio, apparently pretty high, and slanted in toward the edge of Pitatus. Your jets blinked out just about fifty miles north of that. That's all we saw."

"One of the steering vanes blew and she was going to spin—I had to cut the jets too high," said Jessup, his mind clearing rapidly. "Wait a minute, Colonel, I'll see what gives."

There was another interval of silence, underscored by the sound of his own labored breathing. He explored his body with his hands and found many sore spots but no obvious fractures. He loosened the harness and put his feet on the floor, bracing himself with his hands against the sides of the tiny cabin. He stood there for a minute, swaying, before he realized what was wrong.

The floor was down.

That meant the ship was resting on her tail structure. And so the bull's-eye above his head should have gleamed with cold stars and fiery sunlight!

He placed his hand against the tiny window and clicked on his wristlight. The inner and outer surfaces of the transparency glared back in double reflection. On the outside was a sooty deposit, like a greyish something dipped in candle smoke.

"First things first," he muttered aloud and started scanning the instruments.

The chronometer showed that Markley had exaggerated: he'd been out only ten minutes. And he was losing air! Sickeningly he 

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