the back
of the helmet. He put the suit back on, then looked doubtfully at the
control board. It wouldn't do to go on pulling things at random; he
might cause some damage. Tentatively, he pushed a slide he remembered
touching before. When nothing happened, he pushed it back. He tried a
knob, then a lever.

The inner door of the airlock swung open.

Weaver marched into it, took one look through the viewport set in the
outer door, and scrambled back out. He closed the airlock again, and
thought a minute.

In the center of each horseshoe curve of the control board was a gray
translucent disk, with six buttons under it. They might, Weaver thought,
be television screens. He pressed the first button under one of them,
and the screen lighted up. He pressed the second button, then all the
others in turn.

They all showed him the same thing--the view he had seen from the
viewport in the airlock: stars, and nothing but stars.

The Moon, incredibly, had disappeared. He was in space.

* * * * *

His first thought, when he was able to think connectedly again, was to
find the Aurigean and make him put things right. He tried all the
remaining knobs and levers and buttons on the control board, reckless of
consequences, until the door slid open again. Then he went down the
corridor and found the Aurigean.

The creature was lying on the floor, with a turnip-shaped thing over its
head, tubes trailing from it to an opened cabinet in the wall. It was
dead--dead and decaying.

He searched the ship. He found storerooms, with cylinders and bales of
stuff that looked as if it might possibly be food; he found the engine
room, with great piles of outlandishly sculptured metal and winking
lights and swinging meter needles. But he was the only living thing on
board.

The view from all six directions--in the control room telescreens, and
in the ship's direct-view ports alike--was exactly the same. The stars,
like dandruff on Weaver's blue serge suit. No one of them, apparently,
any nearer than the others. No way to tell which, if any of them, was
his own.

The smell of the dead creature was all through the ship. Weaver closed
his helmet against it; then, remembering that the air in his suit tank
would not last forever, he lugged the corpse out to the airlock, closed
the inner door on it, and opened the outer one.

It was hard for him to accept the obvious explanation of the Aurigean's
death, but he fin