Marooned! On the cold satellite of a dying sun,
light-years away from home.... For Rex there
was only one escape. But Carl called it murder!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1947.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The years passed relentlessly, ticked off--one, two three, four--by the
big lone planet Worta as it moved with ponderous sureness around the
dying red star. Sometimes, in the first year after they were marooned,
the two runaway boys, Carl Wyant and Rex Oberling, crawled from the
grottoes, chambers and labyrinthine tunnels which the Wortans had
driven deep beneath the planet's crust, and with a chill lonesomeness
looked out into the vastness of space where the stars brooded. One of
those stars, thirty-five light-years away, was Sol, around which swung
the planet Earth! They could not think of Earth without a brightness
coming to their eyes.
Sometimes the younger boy, then seventeen, would whisper, "I wish we'd
never left home, Carl."