Without attempting to rise, he howled shrilly, time after time, catching his breath in gasps—while the thing moved steadily away.

Following an undeviating line, it left him far behind, diminished to a speck, and disappeared. The sound of it lingered when he could see it no longer.

His breath came quickly, spasmodically, through parted lips; his throat was tight, and his heart pounded. The staggering surprise of what he had seen and heard left him incapable of thought. His mind was a racing turmoil of questions. His contentment, his resignation were gone—destroyed in a moment; and in their place rose a great uneasiness.

The return of Hope, to a man who has definitely put it away from him, is a joy closely akin to pain in its intensity. His whole body shook as he struggled with the sand, attempting to rise.

He had seen a machine, he knew. It could not have been an animal. It was not alive, and it was made of metal.... A machine meant reasoning beings. There must be reasoning beings on Toon—where Loten's scientists had argued that they could not be! And machines that travelled through space! Perhaps....

As the new possibilities of his situation burst upon him, his homesickness returned a thousandfold; and he knew that he could rest no longer—could not wait in the sand for death. He must struggle—he must strive, until the end came—because there was a chance!

Immediately, his mind became purposeful, and he took stock of his position. He knew that the whole of Toon was not like this great stretch of sand. Thousands of years of observation of the bright planet had convinced the scientists of the Loten that it bore vegetation—and probably animal life of some sort....

But rational beings! His astonishment re-asserted itself. Five thousand years of systematic signalling had brought no response, and the project had lately been abandoned. Yet....

He shook his head, and returned to his problem. He must not waste time now.

He had food enough in his stomach to last three days at least, and he would not need water for even longer. He suddenly realized, with enormous satisfaction, that the pain in his head was considerably less than at first. Perhaps his system would be able to adjust itself to the atmospheric pressure....

The great question was where—and how—to go. He must go somewhere. Only motion would satisfy his craving for accomplishment of some sort. He would get no help on this great, sterile plain. He had no guarantee that another of the flying machines would come near him, and even if it did there was not much hope of attracting its attention. No, he must move....

He decided to follow in the direction the machine had taken. Its destination might be near-by—or it might be thousands of miles away. The probability seemed to be in favor of the former hypothesis, because the machine had been moving so very slowly.... Anyway, it was a chance!

Pulling his legs up under him, he made another determined attempt to rise; and finally succeeded in standing erect. But it made his legs ache terribly; and when he tried a step he slipped, falling back with a jarring thud.

He would have to crawl.

Ridding himself of the parachute, and with no further hesitation, he set out, crawling slowly and laboriously, keeping the sun at his back.

The heat was less oppressive now. The sun had sunk to a point where its rays were no hotter than at midday on his Loten; and he marvelled at the similarity of the two climates. He had seen none of the water vapors that astronomers described as almost constantly enveloping Toon. Toon—what he had seen of it—seemed to be as dry as the Loten, if not more so.

He climbed the long, gradual slope of a dune; and, after surveying the endless stretch of sand which met his view at the top, slid down the steep side, and crawled doggedly on.

Night was falling. The blue dome above him steadily darkened until it began to take on the appearance of his own native sky.

He was dead tired within an hour. He lay still for a time, breathing deeply—marshalling his strength. He was in excellent physical condition, but here his body was so heavy that the slightest motion was a strain. Soon, however, his eager spirit drove him onward.

At the end of another hour, happening to raise his head, he uttered an involuntary cry. Points of light glimmered in the sky.... So he was to see the stars after all!—though only at night, it seemed. He was relieved. In the back of his mind had been the ever-growing certainty that he would not be able to keep a direct course. He rested again, and picked out certain designs that would be helpful as guides.

He wondered if one of them were Loten. They were very dim and they blinked strangely; and their arrangement was meaningless to him. He fixed upon one of them—the brightest—and imagined that it might be his world—where his friends were, and his enemies; where his wives grieved for him perhaps; where his children laughed and played; where he might one day return....

He crawled along through the sand.

It was not really dark—only twilight. He wondered if this were night on Toon. It must be. Almost directly ahead of him—just a little to the right—was a radiance close to the horizon. It puzzled him. Soon it was spreading over the sky—a pale, ghostly light. Then a bright point appeared—a line; it grew. He stared in abject wonder while a great, white disk mounted into the sky, illuminating the scene around.

He rested a while, and watched it. It was Toon's satellite. It could be nothing else. But beside it the two luminaries of his own world were as pygmies. He was still watching it, fascinated, when he resumed his journey.

CHAPTER II.

Signs of Life

All through the night he travelled; and into the rising sun. The noonday heat forced him to take a prolonged rest, but he fought on as soon as possible; and sunset found him crawling weakly onward. The cool of night revived him somewhat. He knew that the strain under which he labored would hasten his time of sleep, and that worried him. Even now, he was often in a semi-conscious state. Still, he could not stop.

When the sun rose again, it shone through trees; and far across the yellow sand his tired eyes saw green hills. The sight invigorated him—spurred him on to stronger efforts. Soon after midday he lay panting in the shade of trees.

The trees astonished him. They towered above him, fully five times as high as any he had ever seen. Their stems were of enormous girth—rough and hard to the touch. There seemed to be something moving in their heavy foliage, far above him, and he heard faint, sharp whistling sounds. He looked around uneasily.

The size of the trees worried him. If there were animal life, it might be proportionately large. He shuddered. The desert, although uncomfortable, had had one advantage: he had been alone there.

Still, it was not loneliness that he was seeking, he thought grimly. Obviously, he....

He stiffened. He had been staring abstractedly at the coarse grass which grew thickly around him. Now his eyes became focussed upon a movement there—not three feet away. The grass was waving strangely, in a peculiar, uneven line; and he caught sight of something slim and green, that was not the grass. His throat contracted painfully. The thing did not seem to move, yet it was coming nearer. Whenever he caught sight of a part of its body, it appeared stationary; yet the waving of the grass was closer, and ever closer. It was very close now....

Suddenly his power of locomotion returned. He rolled over backward, and scrambled along the ground to a tree. Grasping the rough trunk, he pulled himself erect; and held himself in that position, panting.

He could see the thing more plainly now. It was like a long, green whip in the grass. Its forepart was raised in the air, and terminated in a triangular head, with two bright