anded. He was resigned to his single state.

But all that was changed by the little blue-eyed girl he had met in
Paladar. She was a different sort; worth a hundred of those others and
fulfilling to perfection the ideal he had always set up. On her world,
Jupiter's satellite, Europa, he had neither wealth nor influence; he'd
left these behind when he deserted Earth for a life of vagabondage among
the stars. But, to the daughter of Detis, this lack meant less than
nothing; his love, and hers, meant everything.

* * * * *

And, what a good sport she had been! When they were threatened by Rapaju
and his minions; when they barely escaped being swallowed up by that
monster of space which Mado had likened to the Sargasso Sea of Earth;
when she herself proposed joining them in their rovings throughout the
universe.

She was a companion of whom even the phlegmatic Martian was proud, she
brought with her presence on the _Nomad_ a subtle something that made of
the coldly mechanical space-ship a thing of new beauty and a place of
cheerfulness--a home. And, to think he had won her for his own. To
think....

"Carr!" Mado's sharp exclamation startled him from his pleasant
thoughts. "Come here and take a look at this," the Martian demanded, his
voice betraying an excitement unusual for him. "Something is wrong on
this satellite we're heading for."

Locking the controls in the automatic position, Carr turned to join his
friend at the viewing-disk of the rulden. Mado had found an opening in
the heavy cloud layer, and before them was an unobstructed view of a
rugged countryside where huge boulders had been scattered by the mighty
hand of creation and where the sun shone weakly on the rim of a yawning
crater in which sulphurous vapors curled. They saw this strange land as
from an altitude of a few hundred feet, though the _Nomad_ was still
more than a million miles from the satellite.

"What's wrong about that?" Carr grunted. "Excepting that it's just
another of these barren and useless bodies that doesn't even provide us
with an attracting interest."

"Wait," Mado replied, "You'll see in a moment. Something--"

* * * * *

At that instant there came a puff of blue flame from out the pit,
carrying on its heated breath a drifting sheet of incandescence that
fluttered and pulsated like a thing alive. Mado switched on the sound
mechanism of the rulden and the roaring of