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our luck’s beginning to turn.”
    He glanced at his watch, and did a quick mental calculation.
    “The sun’s rising over the Sea about now. Base will have the dust-skis out looking
     for us, and they must know our approximate position. Ten to one they’ll find us in
     a few hours.”
    “Should we tell the Commodore?”
    “No, let him sleep. He’s had a harder day than any of us. This news can wait until
     morning.”
    When McKenzie had left him, Pat tried to resume his interrupted sleep. But he could
     not do so; he lay with eyes open in the faint red glow, wondering at this strange
     turn to fate. The dust which had swallowed and then had threatened to broil them had
     now come to their aid, as its convection currents swept their surplus heat up to the
     surface. Whether those currents would continue to flow when the rising sun smote the
     Sea with its full fury, he could not guess.
    Outside the wall, the dust still whispered past, and suddenly Pat was reminded of
     an antique hour-glass he had once been shown as a child. When you turned it over,
     sand poured through a narrow construction into the lower chamber, and its rising level
     marked the passage of the minutes and the hours.
    Before the invention of clocks, myriads of men must have had their days divided by
     such falling grains of sand. But none until now, surely, had ever had his life-span
     metered out by a fountain of rising dust.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    In Clavius City, Chief Administrator Olsen and Tourist Commissioner Davis had just
     finished conferring with the Legal Department. It had not been a cheerful occasion;
     much of the time had been spent discussing the waivers of responsibility which the
     missing tourists had signed before they boarded
Selene
. Commissioner Davis had been much against this when the trips were started, on the
     grounds that it would scare away customers, but the Administration’s lawyers had insisted.
     Now he was very glad that they had had their way.
    He was glad, also, that the Port Roris authorities had done the job properly; matters
     like this were sometimes treated as unimportant formalities and quietly ignored. There
     was a full list of signatures for
Selene
’s passengers—with one possible exception that the lawyers were still arguing about.
    The incognito Commodore had been listed as R. S. Hanson, and it looked very much as
     if this was the name he had actually signed. The signature was, however, so illegible
     that it might well have been ‘Hansteen’; until a facsimile was radioed from Earth,
     no one would be able to decide this point. It was probably unimportant; as the Commodore
     was travelling on official business, the Administration was bound to accept some responsibility
     for him. And for all the other passengers, it was responsible morally, if not legally.
    Above all, it had to make an effort to find them and give them a decent burial. This
     little problem had been placed squarely in the lap of Chief Engineer Lawrence, who
     was still at Port Roris.
    He had seldom tackled anything with less enthusiasm. While there was a chance that
     the
Selene
’s passengers were still alive, he would have moved heaven, Earth and Moon to get
     at them. But now that they must be dead, he saw no point in risking men’s lives to
     locate them and dig them out. Personally, he could hardly think of a better place
     to be buried, than among these eternal hills.
    That they were dead, Chief Engineer Robert Lawrence did not have the slightest doubt;
     all the facts fitted together too perfectly. The quake had occurred at just about
     the time
Selene
should have been leaving Crater Lake, and the gorge was now half-blocked with slides.
     Even the smallest of those would have crushed her like a paper toy, and those aboard
     would have perished within seconds as the air gushed out. If, by some million to one
     chance, she had escaped being smashed, her radio signals would have been received;
     the tough little automatic beacon