The explorer half turned in his seat.
"Ja?" he said quietly.
"There's nothing out there," growled Fallon. "Why should I sit and glare at that periscope?"
"Because," Bjarnsson returned with ominous gentleness, "there might be something. We will not reach the volcano for perhaps ten hours. You had better watch."
Fallon's hard jaw set. "I can't go any longer without sleep."
Bjarnsson's cragged face was flushed and greasy behind his helmet, but his eyes were like glittering frost.
"All the whisky and the women," he whispered. "They make you soft, Fallon. The girl would have been better."
A flashing glimpse of Joan as she had looked in the car that morning crossed the eye of Fallon's mind—the tumbled fair hair and the sunlight warm on throat and cheek, and her voice saying, "You wouldn't be bad, Webb ... so lazy and so hell-fired selfish!"
He cursed and started forward. The dark blur of Bjarnsson rose, blotting out the green glow. And then the panel light rose in a shuddering arc.
Fallon thought for a moment that he was fainting. The low curve of the hull spun about. He knew that he fell, and that he struck something, or that something struck him. All orientation was lost. His helmet rang against metal like a great gong, and then he was sliding down a cluttered slope.