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swift a breaking. But the wariness of a race which had evolved among snakes and war spoke for him:

“Wait, Dave. Wait a minute. Just to be certain. Put a signal through. A teletype, I mean; we’ve no voice microphone, have we? You can do it right at that keyboard.”

“What for?” screamed Ryerson. “What for? If you won’t go through, I will!”

“Just wait, is all.” Suddenly Maclaren was begging. All the craziness of months between stars that burned his eyes woke up; he felt in a dim way that man must live under conditions and walk in awe, but this is one of the prides in being a man. He raised powerless hands and cried—it was not much above a whisper—”There could be some distortion, you know. Acci­dents do happen, once in a great while, and this web was made by hand, half of it from memory—Send a message. Ask for a test transmission back to us. It won’t take long and—My God, Dave, what kind of thing could you send home to Tamara if the signal was wrong?”

R

YERSON’S chin quivered in its beard, but he punched the typer keys with hard angry strokes. Maclaren sat back down, breathing quickly and shallowly. So it was to be­come real after all. So he would again walk beneath the tall summer clouds of Earth.

No, he thought. I never will. Terangi Maclaren died in an orbit around the black sun, and on the steel planet where it is always winter. The I that am may go home, but never the I that was.

Ryerson bent over so he could look into the screen which gave him an image of the receiving chamber.

Maclaren waited. A long while passed.

“Nothing,” said Ryerson. “They haven’t sent a thing.”

Maclaren could still not talk.

“A colonial station, of course,” said Ryerson. “Probably one of the outpost jobs with two men for a staff . . . or, another spaceship. Yes, that’s likeliest, we’re in touch with an inter­stellar. Only one man on watch and—”

“And there should be a bell to call him, shouldn’t there?” asked Maclaren, very slowly.

“You know how they get on the long haul,” said Ryerson. He

smote his chair arm with a fist that was all knobs. “The man is sleeping too hard to hear a thing. Or—”

“Wait,” said Maclaren. “We’ve waited long enough. We can afford a few more minutes, to make certain.”

Ryerson blazed at him, as if he were an enemy. “Wait? Wait, by jumping hell! No!”

He set the control timer for transmission in five minutes and crept from his seat and down the ladder. Under the soiled tunic, he seemed all spidery arms and legs, and one yellow shock of hair.

Maclaren stood up again and stumbled toward him. “No,” he croaked. “Listen, I realize how you feel, but I realize it’s space lunacy too, and I forbid you, I forbid—”

Ryerson smiled. “How do you propose to stop me?” he asked.

“I . . . but can’t you wait, wait and see and—”

“Look here,” said Ryerson, “let’s assume there is a freak in the signal. A test transmission comes through. At best, the standard object is merely distorted . . . at worse, it won’t be recreated at all, and we’ll get an explosion. The second case will destroy us. In the first case, we haven’t time to do much more work. I doubt if I could climb around on the web outside any more. I know you could not, my friend! We’ve no choice but to go through. Now!”

“If it’s a ship at the other end, and you cause an explosion,” whispered Maclaren, “you’ve murdered one more man.”

Drearily, and as if from far away, he recognized the hard­ness which congealed the other face. Hope had made David Ryerson young again. “It won’t blow up,” said the boy, and was wholly unable to imagine such a happening.

“Well . . . probably not . . . but there’s still the chance of molecular distortion or—” Maclaren sighed. Almost experi­mentally, he pushed at Ryerson’s chest. Nothing happened; he was so much more starved that he could not move the lank body before him.