red into his
mouth. "I never want to do that again!" He dusted himself off and
flashed his emergency light around the deck. "Look at that!" he said in
amazement. "If we'd kept on digging, we'd have been trapped down there
for--" he paused and looked at Astro who was grinning--"a long, long
time!" He held the light on the sand that was flowing out of the open
hatch of the passenger lounge.

"Come on," urged Astro. "Let's get Roger out of there!"

They called to Roger through the hose and told him to bring two more
emergency lights and the remainder of the Martian water. Three minutes
later the _Polaris_ unit was together again.

Standing on the deck beside his two unit-mates, Roger brushed himself
off and smiled. "Well," he said, "looks like we made it!"

"Yeah," said Tom, "but take a look at this!" He walked across the
jet-boat deck to the nearest window port. What should have been a clear
view of the desert was a mass of solidly packed sand.

"Oh, no!" cried Roger. "Don't tell me we have to go through that again?"

"I don't think it'll be so bad this time," said Astro.

"Why not?" asked Tom.

"The sand is banked the heaviest on the port side of the ship. And the
window ports on the starboard side of the control deck were pretty high
off the ground."

"Well, let's not just stand here and talk about it," said Roger. "Let's
take a look!" He turned and walked through the jet-boat deck.

Tom and Astro followed the blond cadet through the darkened passages of
the dead ship, and after digging a small pile of sand away from the
control-deck hatch, found themselves once more amid the jumble of the
wrecked instruments.

For the first time in three days, the boys saw sunlight streaking
through the crystal port.

"I told you," cried Astro triumphantly.

"But there still isn't any way out of this place!" said Roger. "We can't
break that port. It's six inches thick!"

"Find me a wrench," said Astro. "I can take the whole window port apart
from inside. How do you think they replace these things when they get
cracked?"

Hurriedly searching through the rubble, Tom finally produced a wrench
and handed it to Astro. In a half hour Astro had taken the whole section
down and had pushed the crystal outward. The air of the desert rushed
into the control room in a hot blast.

"Whew!" cried Roger. "It must be at least a hundred and twenty-five
degrees out there!"

"Come on. Let's take a look," said Tom. "And keep your fing