Babs said shakily: 

“Do you—­think they’ll—­do you think—­”

There was a nearer roaring.  The space-ship leaned, and leaned....  Cochrane’s lips tensed.

The space-ship’s rockets bellowed and a storm of hurtling smoke flashed up around it.  It lifted, staggering as its steering-jets tried frantically to swing its lower parts underneath its mass.  It lurched violently, and the rockets flamed terribly.  It lifted again.  Its tail was higher than the trees, but it did not point straight up.  It surged horribly across the top of the forest, leaving a vast flash of flaming vegetation behind it.  Then it steadied, and aimed skyward and climbed....

Then it was not.  Obviously the Dabney field booster had been flashed on to get the ship out to space.  The ship had vanished into emptiness.

The Dabney field had flicked it some hundred and seventy-odd light-years from Earth’s moon in the flicker of a heart-beat.  It might have gone that far again.  Whoever was in it had had no choice but to take off, and no way to take off without suicidal use of fuel in any other way.

Cochrane looked at where the ship had vanished.  Seconds passed.  There came the thunderclap of air closing the vacuum the ship’s disappearance had left.

There were squealings behind the pair on the hilltop.  Eight of the huge yellow beasts were out in the open, now.  Tiny, furry biped animals waddled desperately to get out of their way.  Smaller creatures scuttled here and there.  A sinuous creature with fur but no apparent legs writhed its way upward.  But all the creatures were frightened.  They observed an absolute truce, under the overmastering greater fear of nature.

Far away, the volcano on the skyline boomed and flashed and emitted monstrous clouds of smoke.  The shining, incandescent lava on its flanks glared across the glaciers.

Babs gasped suddenly.  She realized the situation in which she and Cochrane had been left.

Shivering, she pressed close to him as the distant black smoke-cloud spread toward the center of the sky.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Before sunset, they reached the area of ashes where the ship had stood.  Cochrane was sure that if anybody else had been left behind besides themselves, the landing-place was an inevitable rendezvous.  Only three members of the ship’s company had been inside when Babs and Cochrane left to stroll for the two hours astronomers on Earth had set as a waiting-period.  Jones had been in the ship, and Holden, and Alicia Simms.  Everybody else had been exploring.  Their attitude had been exactly that of sight-seers and tourists.  But they could have gotten back before the take-off.

Apparently they had.  Nobody seemed to have returned to the burned-over space since the ship’s departure.  The blast of the rockets had erased all previous tracks, but still there was a thin layer of ash resettled over the clearing.  Footprints would have been visible in it.  Anybody remaining would have come here.  Nobody had.  Babs and Cochrane were left alone.