onds ago, too softly to be
heard. Now suddenly, from a slight rushing noise, it burst into an
enormous, thundering scream.

They leaped up together, horrified, and an overwhelming, gigantic
blast threw them to the floor.

* * * * *

The ground rocked, the ship fluttered and settled crazily. In that one
long second, the monstrous noise of a world collapsing grew in the air
and filled the room, filled the men and everything with one
incredible, crushing, grinding shock.

When it was over there was another rushing sound, farther away, and
another, and two more tremendous explosions; and though all in all the
noise lasted for perhaps five seconds, it was the greatest any of them
had ever heard, and the world beneath them continued to flutter,
wounded and trembling, for several minutes.

Wyatt was first out of the ship, shaking his head as he ran to get
back his hearing. To the west, over a long slight rise of green and
yellow trees, a vast black cloud of smoke, several miles long and very
high, was rising and boiling. As he stared and tried to steady his
feet upon the shaking ground, he was able to gather himself enough to
realize what this was.

Meteors.

He had heard meteors before, long before, on a world of Aldebaran. Now
he could smell the same sharp burning disaster, and feel the wind
rushing wildly back to the west, where the meteors had struck and
hurled the air away.

In that moment Wyatt thought of the girl, and although she meant
nothing to him at all--none of these people meant anything in the
least to him--he began running as fast as he could toward the west.

Behind him, white-faced and bewildered, came Beauclaire and Cooper.

When Wyatt reached the top of the rise, the great cloud covered the
whole valley before him. Fires were burning in the crushed forest to
his right, and from the lay of the cloud he could tell that the
village of the people was not there any more.

He ran down into the smoke, circling toward the woods and the stream
where he had passed an afternoon with the girl. For a while he lost
himself in the smoke, stumbling over rocks and fallen trees.

Gradually the smoke lifted, and he began running into some of the
people. Now he wished that he could speak the language.

They were all wandering quietly away from the site of their village,
none of them looking back. Wyatt could see a great many dead as he
moved, but he had no time to stop, no time t