impossible. Standing by, sir."

For several moments after that, the thin atmosphere of Mars was warmed a little....

Acceleration blackout had not been total; leaving Mars was even easier than leaving the surface of Earth for the orbits of the Stations. But there was a period of no-thought, no-time, no-being. And then full consciousness seeped back slowly. But not as it was supposed to.

Johnny Love knew he had come to because he could see the banked instruments glowing palely before him; because he could realize from reading them that his ship was doing its job to perfection. Almost ready to complete the blast-off ogee, and—

Angrily he belted the scanner switches off and the dull red sphere faded from the viewplates.

And he could feel the sweat start again all over his body. No, the returning consciousness was all wrong.... All wrong, and the image wouldn't go away....

Red desert he had seen before, yet had not seen. There were dark ridges of brown-green at its horizon; oddly-formed crater-places that might once have held placid lakes. And on all the vast surface there was no hint of the Patrol tracks, no sign of—anything.

But he had to descend to the place.

He did not know how to locate it, but the image told him that it did not matter. The image said merely that he must begin cutting his power.

There was no strength in his arms and hands, yet they moved in front of him as though things detached from his body; skillfully, surely, playing deftly across the colored studs.

Scanners on. Scanners on, kid....

He watched the screens again, unconscious of what his fingers did on the panels. The dull red sphere loomed large once more. The picture was off-center; without knowing what he did he rectified course with the bow jets; it was centered again. But it was a different place. Still the desert, but with ridges of brown-green at its horizon; oddly-formed crater-places....

It was coming up fast, now; faster, until the horizon was only a gentle arc against a thin span of blackness, and the rest was cold red.

Hardly knowing what he did, his fingers suddenly raced over the control console, even before the scanner-alarms began their ear-splitting clanging!

The ship lurched into a direction-change that threatened to wrench the hull apart, and the picture in the scanner reeled crazily. He knew his own brain was not dictating the commands of control to his fingertips, nor was it evaluating for itself the madly fluctuating values indicated on the panels. A human brain could not have done it, he knew that....

He had cut power. At least there was no power. He was falling at a crazy angle and the desert was rushing up now, hurtling up to smash him. They'd hit him, then, yet he'd felt nothing....

It was getting hot. His hull must be glowing, now, even in the thin atmosphere of Mars—it was a long fall. Slower than a fall on Earth, through thinner air layers, yet he was glowing like a torch.

The ocean of sand rushed up.

And suddenly his left hand rammed the full-power stud.

It was as though he'd been hit from behind with all the brute force of some gigantic fist, and there were two things. There was the split-second glimpse of a crescent formation suddenly wheeling toward him and there was the clang of the scanner-alarm. There were those two things his brain registered before the titanic force of full power squeezed consciousness from it and left him helpless.

He was running. In a nightmare of a dead planet that was not dead, he ran, away from something.

That was how his consciousness returned. While he ran. He stopped, stumbling, turned to look behind him.

And the ship was there. Landed perfectly, stubby bullet-nose pointing to the sky. And above it—

Run!

The command hit his brain with almost physical force. A will that was not his own took hold of his whole being, and he was running again, plowing his way