o outer space--he and those stanch comrades? Five
years? God! Had it been so long? Yet here he was, back on Earth
again, the kindly, blessed Earth their eyes had clung to when they
were fighting desperately for their lives against the protoplasmic
things that inhabited Ganymede.

Hilary brushed a tear away as he thought of those brave, loyal
friends. Dick lay as he fell on Saturn, transfixed by an icicle dart;
Martin had been engulfed in an unholy maw on Ganymede; Dorn was a
frozen idol to the spiral beings of Pluto; and poor Hurley, his fate
was the worst of all: his hideously bloated body was swinging in an
orbit around Mars, a satellite through all eternity.

He, Hilary Grendon, was the sole survivor of that tremendous Odyssey!

Hilary shook his head vigorously to clear away the flood of
recollections. Enough that he had returned. Then a sudden eagerness
surged through him, a joyous intensity of emotion. What a story he had
to relate--how the Earth people would hang with bated breath upon his
adventurings! And Joan--his heart gave a queer leap at the thought of
that slender ardent wisp of a girl with her shining head and steady
gray eyes. She had promised to wait for him, forever, if need be. She
had said it simply, without heroics; yet Hilary knew then that she
would keep her promise.

A rush of impatience succeeded the inaction of his memories. He must
get to New York at once. He could not wait any longer. Joan
first--then Amos Peabody, the venerable President of the United
States--to report his return. He smiled at the stupefaction that would
greet him. No doubt he had long been given up for dead. The world had
been skeptical of the space ship he had invented; had, except for a
faithful few, mocked at his plans. Indignantly he had taken his
calculations, his blue prints of the spheroid, along with him. If the
flight was a success, well and good; if not, they would not be worth
much anyway.

In spite of his fever to be off, he carefully locked the controls,
sealed the outer air-lock. Hilary Grendon was a methodical man: that
was the reason he had survived.

Then he struck across country, walking very fast. He knew where he
was: in the wilderness of the Ramapos, some forty miles from New York.
Sooner or later, he reasoned, he would strike one of the radiating
conveyors that led into the metropolis, or a human being that would
set him on the right track.

* * * * *

A half ho