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played within it.
    Carol’s voice;
    “ It—went on past.... It was as big as a cow! “
----
    Moran wrenched at the port-door. It partly revolved. He pulled. It fell outward. The wreck was not standing upright on its fins. It lay on its side. The lock inside the toppled-out port was choked with a horrible mass of thread-like fungi. Moran swept the flame in. The fungus shriveled and was not. He opened the inner lock-door. There was pure blackness within. He held the torch for light.
    For an instant everything was confusion, because the wreck was lying on its side instead of standing in a normal position. Then he saw a sheet of metal, propped up to be seen instantly by anyone entering the wrecked space-vessel.
    Letters burned into the metal gave a date a century and a half old. Straggly torch-writing said baldly;
    “ This ship the Malabar crashed here on Tethys II a week ago. We cannot repair. We are going on to Candida III in the boats. We are carrying what bessendium we can with us. We resign salvage rights in this ship to its finders, but we have more bessendium with us. We will give that to our rescuers.
    “ Jos. White, Captain. “
    Moran made a peculiar, sardonic sound like a bark.
    “Calling the Nadine !” he said in mirthless amusement. “This planet is Tethys Two. Do you read me? Tethys II! Look it up!”
    A pause. Then Carol’s voice, relieved;
    “ Tethys is in the Directory! That’s good! “ There was the sound of murmurings in the control-room behind her. “ Yes!... Oh,—wonderful! It’s not far off the course we should have followed! We won’t be suspiciously late at Loris! Wonderful! “
    “I share your joy,” said Moran sarcastically. “More information! The ship’s name was the Malabar . She carried bessendium among her cargo. Her crew went on to Candida III a hundred and fifty years ago, leaving a promise to pay in more bessendium whoever should rescue them. More bessendium! Which suggests that some bessendium was left behind.”
    Silence. The bald memorandum left behind the vanished crew was, of course, pure tragedy. A ship’s lifeboat could travel four light-years, or possibly even six. But there were limits. A castaway crew had left this world on a desperate journey to another in the hope that life there would be tolerable. If they arrived, they waited for some other ship to cross the illimitable emptiness and discover either the beacon here or one they’d set up on the other world. The likelihood was small, at best. It had worked out zero. If the lifeboats made Candida III, their crews stayed there because they could go no farther. They’d died there, because if they’d been found this ship would have been visited and its cargo salvaged.
----
    Moran went inside. He climbed through the compartments of the toppled craft, using his torch for light. He found where the cargo-hold had been opened from the living part of the ship. He saw the cargo. There were small, obviously heavy boxes in one part of the hold. Some had been broken open. He found scraps of purple bessendium ore dropped while being carried to the lifeboats. A century and a half ago it had not seemed worth while to pick them up, though bessendium was the most precious material in the galaxy. It couldn’t be synthesized. It had to be made by some natural process not yet understood, but involving long-continued pressures of megatons to the square inch with temperatures in the millions of degrees. It was purple. It was crystalline. Fractions of it in blocks of other metals made the fuel-blocks that carried liners winging through the void. But here were pounds of it dropped carelessly....
    Moran gathered a double handful. He slipped it in a pocket of his space-suit. He went clambering back to the lock.
    He heard the roaring of a flame-torch. He found Harper playing it squeamishly on the wriggling fragments of another yard-long ant. It had explored the trench burned out of the fungus soil and down to the rock. Harper’d killed