lly yelled feebly. He fought, he grappled with the threatening
blackout like a man fighting an invisible opponent on an endless flight
of stairs.

The grinding rolling terror of the sound, the ripping, twisting, tearing
scream of it cried on and on. Kelly knew one thing then.

He had not figured it right. His calculations were off. _The ship had
hit too damn hard._

* * * * *

Later, when he managed to get the straps off and tried to move, he fell
painfully onto the tilted deck. One of his eyes felt sticky. He rubbed
at it and his hand was smeared with blood.

He shuffled around in a stumbling circle. Minor damages could have been
repaired. But this--the ship was peeled open in glaring strips like a
breakfast cannister. A cold wind moaned through the ship that was now
nothing but a metal sieve. A hazy light filtered down and ran off the
metal like cold flour rust.

Kelly fell to his knees. "Kew," he whispered. "Lljub, Urdaz--Lakrit...."

The Venusian flower lady was sliced down the middle like a cabbage, and
the nitrate bowl was shattered and Kew was dead in a pool of fading
green blood.

Smashed into the bulkhead was Lakrit's sulphuric bathtub, and his
atmosphere had already filtered away with the wind to wherever it was
going. Lljub's pale glow was out for good, and his crystalline heart was
as opaque as a dead eye. Only a few pieces of Urdaz's tank were visible,
and Urdaz himself had already turned to a powdery food that the wind ate
slowly in long trailing streamers.

"What--what in the name of God have I done?" Kelly whispered.

All dead--

No! He slammed at the bulkhead until the warped metal gave and he ran to
the control room. The Crew--the Crew--

He stared at the tank.

Through a jagged opening in the ship's walls, the wind whined and
plucked at Kelly's red hair. The wind was colder now. He kept on looking
at the tank. He reached out and touched the big transparent curve of it
and then jerked his hand back with a whimper in his breath.

There was nothing in the tank, nothing but a blob of slowly drying
slime. He pressed his nose to the tank. "Crew--" he whispered.

There was no life in the slime. When he pounded on the tank, the stuff
collapsed in upon itself in withering flatness.

Kelly yelled. The cold wind froze at his teeth. It sucked at his breath
and dried at the interior of his mouth. He ran and climbed. The jagged
periphery of the opening sliced at hi