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"Wake up, Joe!" he cried. "Come on. Wake up."

"Uh—ahhh? What's the—?" Howard sat up and blinked his eyes. "Steve, what's going on?"

"The screen at sector twelve has collapsed. How many people are still in there?"

"Collapsed! Sector twelve?" Howard, still groggy with sleep, dumbly repeated what Strong had said.

Strong drew back his hand and slapped him across the face. "Come out of it, Joe!" he barked.

Howard reeled back and then sat up, fully awake.

"What—what did you say?" he stammered.

"Sector twelve has gone," Strong repeated. "How many people are left there?"

"We haven't even begun operations there yet," Howard replied grimly. "How long have I been asleep?"

"A couple of hours."

"Then there's still time."

"What do you mean?"

"Just before I folded, I ordered the evacuation crews to start working on sector eleven. They should be finished now and just about starting on twelve. If they have, we have a good chance of saving everyone."

"Let's go."

The two men raced out of the control tower to the jet car and roared through the desolate streets of the city. All around them commandeered jet cars raced toward the critical area. Commander Walters stood in the middle of an intersection on the main road to sector twelve, waving his arms and shouting orders to the enlisted guardsmen and volunteer miners that had raced back into the city to help. On the sidewalk, enlisted guardsmen handed out extra oxygen masks to the men who would search the area for anyone who might not have gotten out before the screen exploded. The main evacuation force that had been under Howard's supervision had already moved in but there was still a large area to cover.

"We'll split up into six sections!" roared Walters, standing on top of a jet car. "Go down every street and alley, and make a house-to-house search. Cover every square inch of the sector. If we lose one life, we will have failed. Move out!"

With Strong, Kit, Howard, Walters, and other officers of the Solar Guard in the lead, the grim lines of men separated into smaller groups and started their march through the deserted city. The swirling gas already was down to within a hundred feet of the street level. When it dropped to the surface, each man knew there would be little hope for anyone remaining alive without oxygen masks.

Every room of every house and building was searched, as over all, the deadly swirling gas dropped lower and lower and the pressure of the oxygen was dissipated.

Once, Strong broke open the door to a cheap rooming house and raced through it searching each room. He found no one, but something made him go back through the first-floor rooms again. Under a bed in a room at the end of the hall he found a young boy huddled with his dog, wide-eyed with fear. Such incidents were repeated over and over as the searchers came upon sleeping miners, sick mothers and children, elderly couples that were unable to move. Each time they were taken outside to a jet car where masks were strapped over their faces, and then driven to the spaceport. And, all the while, the deadly methane ammonia gas dropped lower and lower until it was within ten feet of the ground.

There were only a few buildings left to search now. The lines of the men had reached the open grassy areas surrounding the city proper, and as they collected in groups and exchanged information, Walters gathered them together.

"You've done a fine job, all of you," he said. "I don't think there's a living thing left in this entire sector. All volunteers and the first four squads of enlisted guardsmen and second detachment of Space Marines return to the spaceport and prepare to abandon Titan. Give all the aid to the officer in charge that you can. Again, I want to thank you for your help."

As the group of men broke up and began drifting away, Walters hurried over to Strong and Kit Barnard. "Steve," he said, "I want you to supervise the evacuation at the spaceport. Since this screen has blown up, those poor people are frightened out of their wits. And they have a right to be. If a major screen