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golden ship. He came back with despair on his drawn harrowed features.

"You and I are the only ones left alive, Theron."

The commander gnawed at his lips.

"So. And I am dying." He smiled resignedly at Ardath's sudden protest. "It's true, Ardath. You do not realize how old I am. For years we have gone through space, and you are the youngest of us. Unshield a port. Let me see where we are."

"The third planet of this System," Ardath said.

He pressed a button that swung back a shutter from a nearby port in the golden wall. They saw nothing but darkness at first. Then their eyes became accustomed to the gloom.

The ship lay beached on a dim shore. Blackly ominous the strange world loomed through the gray murk of vague light that filtered through the cloudy sky. A slow drizzle of rain was falling.

"Test the atmosphere," Theron commanded. Ardath obeyed. Spectroscopic analysis, made from outer space, had indicated that the air here was breathable. The chemical test confirmed this. At Theron's request, Ardath opened a spacelock.

Air surged in with a queerly choking sulphurous odor. The two men coughed rackingly, until eventually they became accustomed to it.

"Carry me out," the commander said quietly. His glance met and locked with Ardath's as the younger man hesitated. "I shall die soon," he insisted gently. "But first I must--I must know that I have reached my goal."

Silently Ardath lifted the slight figure in his arms. He splashed through the warm waves and gently laid Theron down on the barren beach. The Sun, hidden behind a cloud blanket, was rising in the first dawn Ardath had ever seen.

A gray sky and sea, a dark shore--those were all he actually saw. Under Ardath's feet he felt the world shudder with the volcanic fires of creation. Rain and tide had not yet eroded the rocks into sand and soil. No vegetation grew anywhere. He did not know whether the land was an island or a continent. It rose abruptly from the beach and mounted to towering

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