He wondered if one of them were Loten. They were very dim and they blinked strangely; and their arrangement was meaningless to him. He fixed upon one of them—the brightest—and imagined that it might be his world—where his friends were, and his enemies; where his wives grieved for him perhaps; where his children laughed and played; where he might one day return....
He crawled along through the sand.
It was not really dark—only twilight. He wondered if this were night on Toon. It must be. Almost directly ahead of him—just a little to the right—was a radiance close to the horizon. It puzzled him. Soon it was spreading over the sky—a pale, ghostly light. Then a bright point appeared—a line; it grew. He stared in abject wonder while a great, white disk mounted into the sky, illuminating the scene around.
He rested a while, and watched it. It was Toon's satellite. It could be nothing else. But beside it the two luminaries of his own world were as pygmies. He was still watching it, fascinated, when he resumed his journey.
CHAPTER II.
Signs of Life
All through the night he travelled; and into the rising sun. The noonday heat forced him to take a prolonged rest, but he fought on as soon as possible; and sunset found him crawling weakly onward. The cool of night revived him somewhat. He knew that the strain under which he labored would hasten his time of sleep, and that worried him. Even now, he was often in a semi-conscious state. Still, he could not stop.
When the sun rose again, it shone through trees; and far across the yellow sand his tired eyes saw green hills. The sight invigorated him—spurred him on to stronger efforts. Soon after midday he lay panting in the shade of trees.
The trees astonished him. They towered above him, fully five times as high as any he had ever seen. Their stems were of enormous girth—rough and hard to the touch. There seemed to be something moving in their heavy foliage, far above him, and he heard faint, sharp whistling sounds. He looked around uneasily.