 The four men are ranked according to:
After the wreck, the four of them had floated a while, floated and drifted together, four men in bulbous pressure suits like small individual rockets, held together by an awful pressing need for each other and by the "gravity-rope" beam. Dunbar, the oldest of the four, an old space-buster with a face wrinkled like a dried prune, burned by cosmic rays and the suns of worlds so far away they were scarcely credible, had taken command. Each suit had its own power-plant, reprocessing continuously the precious air breathed by the occupants, putting it back into circulation again after enriching it. Four men, thought Russell, held together by an invisible string of gravity, plunging through a lost pocket of hell's dark where there had never been any sound or life, with old Dunbar the first in line, taking the lead because he was older and knew where he was and where he was going. Maybe Johnson, second in line, and Alvar who was third, knew too, but were afraid to admit it. Russell had no idea now how long the four of them had been plunging toward the red-rimmed sun that never seemed to get any nearer. When the four of them had escaped from that prison colony on a sizzling hot asteroid rock in the Ronlwhyn system, that wasn't enough for Dunbar. And was, because of that, the richest treasure of all. We all look alike out here in these big rocket pressure suits, Russell thought. No one for God only knew how many of millions of light years away could see or care. Four suns. "You're still sure it's the sun up ahead ... "That's the only one—and it's a paradise. A pirate ship and I was second in command, and we came through this sector. I remember those four suns all spotted to form a perfect circle from this point, with us squarely in the middle. "Paradise and there we'll be like gods, like Mercuries with wings flying on nights of sweet song. If it's got air we can breath, and water we can drink and shade we can rest in—that'll be paradise enough for us. The second planet from that red-rimmed sun. A land like heaven and women like angels singing and dancing and laughing with red lips and arms white as milk, and soft silky hair floating in the winds." You mean to tell us there are people living by that red-rimmed sun," Russell said. That's what this world is, boys.
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