drained from Walter Pellinger's face. "Why forty-five?" he
whispered.

The lawyer paused before replying. They were grouped around him in a
half-circle, three frightened people waiting for an answer, yet knowing
in their hearts what that answer would be.

He shrugged. "I should have thought it was obvious," he said. "Of
course, I've no wish to alarm you and there is a method that might get
us out of here, but we've got to face the facts. I was the only one
among you whose legs had already begun to fail, so it's safe to assume
I'm the oldest inhabitant. In forty-five days, I shall be ten--the rest
of you will be less--and I can't guarantee to look after you any longer
than that." He fell silent, allowing the implication to sink in.

"Seven million dollars!" cried Walter Pellinger. "I've paid seven
million dollars just to die!" He began to laugh hysterically.

"Stop it, you fool!" Jason Tarsh caught him by the shoulders and began
to shake him violently. "You've paid seven million dollars to die young.
Why, you ought to be tickled pink. Remember the slogan of Galactic
Stores--'Originality is the Test of Taste!'"

Gillian Murray seized the lawyer's hand. "Curtis, you said something
about a method."

He pointed at the emergency hangar over on the far side. "There's a
lifeboat in there. It may have been damaged by the blast, so don't pin
your hopes on it. But if we can shift the loose stones and get the doors
open, we'll soon know."

Arm in arm, they walked across the landing strip.

* * * * *

Twice the relief boat shot low over the runway, sweeping round in a
gigantic circle. Then it changed course and climbed steeply into the
stratosphere. They watched it disappear out of sight--the last link with
the world they knew.

In the center of the landing strip, a dense column of smoke billowed up
from a pile of smoldering moss--a warning that no pilot could fail to
observe. In the stillness, it rose in a tall spiral, twisting and
turning, signaling to the winds.

"You should've let it land." Walter Pellinger was almost in tears; he
blinked miserably.

* * * * *

Delman had never pictured him like this, small, myopic, with fair hair
and sloping shoulders. The structure of his eyes had changed during the
intervening weeks and the contact lenses he'd worn until recently were
quite useless to him. Now, at twenty-one, he was half-blind and of
little practic