d. Babs and Cochrane were left
alone.

There were still temblors, but the sharper shocks no longer came. There
was conflagration in the wood, where the lurching ship had left a long
fresh streak of forest-fire. The two castaways stared at the round,
empty landing-place. Overhead, the blue sky turned yellow--but where the
smoke from the eruption rose, the sky early became a brownish red--and
presently the yellow faded to gold. Unburned green foliage all about was
singularly beautiful in that golden glow. But it was more beautiful
still as the sky turned rose-pink and then carmine in turn, and then
crimson from one horizon to the other save where the volcanic
smoke-cloud marred the color. Then the east darkened, and became a red
so deep as to be practically black, and unfamiliar bright stars began to
peep through it.

Before darkness was complete, Cochrane dragged burning branches from the
edge of the new fire--the heat was searing--and built a new and smaller
fire in the place where the ship had been.

"This isn't for warmth," he explained briefly, "but so we'll have light
if we need it. And it isn't likely that animals will be anything but
afraid of it."

He went off to drag charred masses of burnable stuff from the burned-out
first forest fire. He built a sort of rampart in the very center of the
clearing. He brought great heaps of scorched wood. He did not know how
much was needed to keep the fire going until dawn.

When he finished, Babs was silently at work trying to find out how to
keep the fire going. The burning parts had to be kept together. One
branch, burning alone, died out. Two red-hot brands in contact kept each
other alight.

"I'm sorry we haven't anything to eat," Cochrane told her.

"I'm not hungry," she assured him. "What are we going to do now?"

"There's nothing to do until morning." Unconsciously, Cochrane looked
grim. "Then there'll be plenty. Food, for one thing. We don't know,
actually, whether or not there's anything really edible on this
planet--for us. It could be that there are fruits or possibly stalks or
leaves that would be nourishing. Only--we don't know which is which. We
have to be careful. We might pick something like poison ivy!"

Babs said:

"But the ship will come back!"

"Of course," agreed Cochrane. "But it may take them some time to find
us. This is a pretty big planet, you know."

He estimated his supply of burnable stuff. He improved the rampart he
had made at fi