you'd easily live to a hundred and twenty-five."

Dr. Anna Mueller's head moved slightly. "We're aware of that, Colonel."

"It'd be pointless," said the colonel, "and a shameful waste. You're still the only crew that ever made it out beyond the Solar System. You've kept records of your personal experience, how you survived. They're valuable."

Dr. Mueller caught her breath. "Our adjustment to space is our private concern. I don't think you could understand."

"Maybe not, but we could try. To us, of course, complete adjustment is a living death."

"To us, it was a matter of staying alive."

Halter turned aside from disagreement, searching for common ground. "You'd be protected here, you know. You deserve that."

"Who'd protect us from you?" asked the captain. "Life in the Solar System is destructive."

rady, the lieutenant, leaned forward. "You've failed—all through the whole System."

"We haven't finished living in it," said Halter. "Who can pin a label on us of success or failure?"

Miss Gordon, dietician and televisor, said quietly, "There are some records I'd like to show you. We compiled them while the Alpha was drifting back into the System."

Halter watched the frail arm reach out and turn a dial.

A point of light grew on the screen in Colonel Halter's office.

"Pluto," said her quiet voice.

Halter watched the lightspot focus on a mountain of ice. Men in suits of steel were crawling up its frozen side. Other men on the mountain's top were sighting guns. The men below were sighting guns. Yellow fire spurted from the top and the sides of the mountain, blending into a lake of fire. There was a great hissing and a rushing torrent of boiling water and rolling, twisting steel-clad bodies. The mountain of ice melted like a lump of lard in a hot frying pan. Only the steel bodies glinted, motionless, in the pale wash of sunlight.

Halter watched the brightness die and another lightspot grow one moon. The focus shifted in close to a fleet of shining silver ships.

Then another fleet dropped from close above, hanging still, and there were blinding flashes engulfing each ship below, one after the other, until there were only the shining ships above, climbing into the dusk glow of the Sun.

The glowing circle of bright-ringed Saturn was already rushing toward Colonel Halter from far back in the depth of screen. The focus shifted onto the planet's glaring surface. Men in the uniform of Earth soldiers were rushing out of transparent shell houses and staring in panic as the missiles plummeted through the shells and erupted clouds of steam which spouted up from mile-deep craters and there was nothing but the steam and the holes and the white cold.

Jupiter made a hole in the blackness, with eleven tiny holes scattered all around her, like droplets of fire. Ships streaked up, one for each droplet, circling each, spraying fire, until each droplet flared like a tiny sun.

Yellow Mars, holding closely its two speedy rocks of moons, spun into the screen.

A straggling line of men moved across a desert that whipped them with sheets of yellow dust. A single ship dived from out of the Sun, swooped along the line, licking it with the tongue of flame that streaked behind. As the ship flashed beyond the horizon, a line of smoking rag bundles lay still upon the yellow sand.

arkness closed in upon the television screen in Colonel Halter's office. In the long moment of silence that followed, he thought, Oh, God, after this awful picture, how can I convince them to come out of the womb of that ship and live again? What reason can I give?