He staggered in sudden pain as the shock of meeting that alien atmosphere swept over him. It was not atmosphere by any human standard. It was rarefied beyond capacity to support normal human life. He gasped in desperate breaths and the ice needles he breathed upon the air were sucked back in to spear his own lungs.
Black checkerboard screens flashed across his vision, but he could see now the object at the edge of the pool.
There was no questioning the instinct that had driven him to turn back the Corsair. Firebird lay huddled on the rocks by the pool.
She lay as if she had been running and had fallen forward on her face. Nathan reached her and turned her over. He stared in unbelief.
The swaths and bandages had vanished in the pool and her body lay white and cold under the strong light of the sun. There was not a mark on her. The mystic properties that lay in the strange pool had performed a miraculous resurrection and healed all traces of the ghastly burns.
Nathan did not know whether she was yet alive or dead. She was icy to his touch and unconscious, but he picked her up and started back to the ship.
The exertion in that atmosphere caused swirls of dizziness in his brain, and he did not even ponder the question of how gravity could be great enough to make walking possible. He expended every fraction of his draining energy to fight back to the ship.
At last he laid Firebird inside the lock of the Corsair and closed the outer door with the last dregs of his strength. Automatically, the lock began to fill with warm air until the inner door swung open.
Nathan's strength revived shortly. He turned to Firebird. Her black hair that spilled over the floor of the lock looked as if it had never been touched by the destroying fire. Her face was molded in the same lines of perfection as before. And her flesh was beginning to glow with the pink of life. The final miracle showed itself in her breathing. She was alive.
He carried her into the stateroom and wrapped her in blankets. Her body was still icy from her long exposure. He started to move away to get a hot drink when she should revive. Then her eyes opened.