head, among glittering gems.

"This woman is not dead. Please have her given skilled
medical attention as soon as possible. She lies in a state
of suspended animation, induced by the injection of fifty
minims of zeronel.

"She is my daughter, Linda Cross, and my sole heir.

"I entreat the finders of this to have care given her, and
to keep in trust for her such part of the treasure on this
ship as may remain after the payment of salvage or other
claims.

"Sometime she will wake. Perhaps in a year, perhaps in a
hundred. The purity of my drugs is uncertain, and the
injection was made hastily, so I do not know the exact time
that must elapse.

"If this is found, it will be because the lurking thing upon
the ship has destroyed me and all my men.

"Please do not fail me.

Levington Cross."

Thad bought the white tower of his dreams, slim and graceful in its
Martian garden of saffron and purple, among the low ocher hills beside
Helion. He carried the sleeping girl through the silver door where the
girl of his dreams had waited, and set the coffer in a great, vaulted
chamber. Many times each day he came into the room where she lay, to
look into her pallid face, and feel her cold wrist. He kept a nurse in
attendance, and had a physician call daily.

A long Martian year went by.

* * * * *

Looking in his mirror one day, Thad saw little wrinkles about his
eyes. He realized that the nervous strain and anxiety of waiting was
aging him. And it might be a hundred years, he remembered, before
Linda Cross came from beneath the drug's influence.

He wondered if he should grow old and infirm, while Linda lay still
young and beautiful and unchanged in her sleep; if she might awake,
after long years, and see in him only a feeble old man. And he knew
that he would not be sorry he had waited, even if he should die before
she revived.

On the next day, the nurse called him into the room where Linda lay.
He was bending over her when she opened her eyes. They were blue,
glorious.

A long time she looked up at him, first in fearful wonder, then with
confidence, and dawning understanding. And at last she smiled.

* * * * *

End of Project Gutenberg's Salvage in Space, by John Stewart Williamson

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SA