one or both of the two living humans on it
could get out in time....

But of all this, nothing was in Hawk Carse's mind except the beating,
driving realization that few minutes were left in which to play out
the last scene. With reckless haste he sped to where his hunch led
him, the secret panel in Dr. Ku's laboratory. As he reached it, faint
sunlight came filtering in from somewhere and he saw that the panel
was open.

He looked within and dimly saw a ladder reaching down into black
depths. Without hesitation he thrust through the opening and dropped
into the blackness. He dared not lose a second.

* * * * *

He hit bottom with a thud, changed his glove controls and reached out
in the darkness. He felt that he was in one end of a passageway. As
rapidly as he could, his arms stretched wide, all his nerves and
muscles and senses alert, he pressed along it.

Continually he was thrown into the rough wall at his right by the
centrifugal force of the asteroid. How far did the passageway extend?
Was Ku Sui at the end of it? It occurred to the Hawk that the asteroid
was a developing shooting star, eating up the few hundred miles of
life that remained, streaking down into the atmosphere, where waited
quick friction and incandescence--and he down in the heart of it,
blind, without clue to what lay in front of him, ignorant of
everything, and with only minutes in which to achieve his end. There'd
be no heat-warning through his insulated suit. Even now, perhaps,
there was no time to get out; already the deadline might have been
crossed; he could not know. He went on....

How far? A hundred yards; two hundred? Easily that, he thought, and
still no variation in the blackness around him! The passageway seemed
straight, so he might now be past the rim of the dome above.

Then, for just a second, he saw a faint wisp of light ahead!

Automatically Carse's raygun came up, but in the time that simple
motion took the light was gone and the blackness was as deep and
lifeless as before. But he was coming to something. He went on,
perhaps a little faster, hot to discover the last emergency resource
of Dr. Ku. He took no pains to avoid making noise, for he knew Ku Sui
could not hear him through the airless space between.

After another hundred yards or so the light from ahead winked again.
It was stronger. Only a second of it, but he now suspected that it
came at regular intervals. It was a machine, pe