been total; leaving Mars was even easier
than leaving the surface of Earth for the orbits of the Stations. But
there was a period of no-thought, no-time, no-being. And then full
consciousness seeped back slowly. But not as it was supposed to.

Johnny Love knew he had come to because he could see the banked
instruments glowing palely before him; because he could realize from
reading them that his ship was doing its job to perfection. Almost ready
to complete the blast-off ogee, and--

Angrily he belted the scanner switches off and the dull red sphere faded
from the viewplates.

And he could feel the sweat start again all over his body. No, the
returning consciousness was all wrong.... All wrong, and the image
wouldn't go away....

Red desert he had seen before, yet had not seen. There were dark ridges
of brown-green at its horizon; oddly-formed crater-places that might
once have held placid lakes. And on all the vast surface there was no
hint of the Patrol tracks, no sign of--anything.

But he had to descend to the place.

He did not know how to locate it, but the image told him that it did not
matter. The image said merely that he must begin cutting his power.

There was no strength in his arms and hands, yet they moved in front of
him as though things detached from his body; skillfully, surely, playing
deftly across the colored studs.

Scanners on. Scanners on, kid....

He watched the screens again, unconscious of what his fingers did on the
panels. The dull red sphere loomed large once more. The picture was
off-center; without knowing what he did he rectified course with the bow
jets; it was centered again. But it was a different place. Still the
desert, but with ridges of brown-green at its horizon; oddly-formed
crater-places....

It was coming up fast, now; faster, until the horizon was only a gentle
arc against a thin span of blackness, and the rest was cold red.

Hardly knowing what he did, his fingers suddenly raced over the control
console, even before the scanner-alarms began their ear-splitting
clanging!

The ship lurched into a direction-change that threatened to wrench the
hull apart, and the picture in the scanner reeled crazily. He knew his
own brain was not dictating the commands of control to his fingertips,
nor was it evaluating for itself the madly fluctuating values indicated
on the panels. A human brain could not have done it, he knew that....

He had cut power. At least there was no