now--calm, quite collected, his face
graven, while the yellow tendrils carpeted the whole cabin, penetrated
between the twin banks of instruments on each side and clouded the bow
windows, visi-screen and positionals until the two living men aboard
that ship of death were completely shut off from outside vision.
Friday, his large white eyes never for a moment still, and waiting as
the Hawk was waiting to find whether or not their suits, too, harbored
the fungus, could quite easily have been scared into a state of panic;
but the sight of the steely figure near him eased his nerves and
brought a vague kind of reassurance.

Minutes went by. Presently the Hawk said softly into his microphone:

"We're safe, now, I think. You'd better go aft and see what state the
ship's in. Come right back." And as Friday left, wading through the
clinging growth, the trader went to the eye-piece of the electelscope.

He brushed the puffy covering of yellow silt away and adjusted the
instrument's controls as best he could, centering it on where Judd's
craft had last been. Then he peered through--and saw that which made
him start.

The _Star Devil_ was rolling round and round, like a ball!

* * * * *

Carse looked out on a star-studded panorama that was sweeping crazily
by. Now the cloudy globe of Iapetus, which had just before lain far
behind, came swinging into view, sliding rapidly from the bottom of
his field of view to the top, and so out of sight again, to quickly
give place to the flaming, ringed sphere of Saturn, which in turn
passed away and left the star-spangled blackness of space. Then
Iapetus once more. He snapped the electelscope off abruptly, and
turned from it to see Friday come clumping back.

"Swept everything clean, suh," the negro reported gloomily. "That
fungus's thick; cain't even see the men's bodies, it's so deep. It's
that way, all over."

"It's down in the gravity propulsion plates too," Carse said shortly.
"Their adjustment's been ruined by it, and we're out of control,
turning over and over. I couldn't possibly see Judd. Well, we've got
to go down to the plates and try and clean them."

It was a weird scene that faced him in the engine room. The complex
instruments and machinery were draped with straggling ferns of yellow;
up above, a solid clump some ten feet thick hung on the platform where
the engineer usually stood--a living tomb. The usual purr of the
mechanisms was muff