rna!" both men exclaimed, and came to their feet as they welcomed
the smiling, graceful newcomer.

"Sit down here, Verna--we have hardly started," Westfall invited, and
Brandon looked at the girl in assumed surprise as she seated herself in
the proffered chair.

"Well, Verna, it's like this...." he began.

"That's enough!" she broke in. "That phrase always was your introduction
to one of the world's greatest brainstorms. But I know that this is the
first time you have had time even to eat like civilized beings, so I'll
forgive you this once. Why all the registering of amazement, Norman?"

"I'm astonished that you aren't being monopolized by some husband or
other. Surely the officers of the _Arcturus_ weren't so dumb that they'd
stand for your still being Verna _Pickering_, were they?"

"Not dumb, Norman, no. Far from it. But I'm still working for my
M. R. S. degree, and I haven't succeeded in snaring it yet. You'd be
surprised at how cagy those officers got after a few of them had been
captured. But they are just like any other hunted game, I suppose--the
antelopes that survive get pretty wild, you know," she concluded,
plaintively.

"Well, that certainly is one tough break for a poor little girl,"
Brandon sympathized. "Quince, our little Nell, here, hasn't been done
right by. I'm bashful and you're a woman-hater, but between us, some
way, we've simply got to take steps."

"You might take longer steps than you think," Verna laughed, her
regular, white teeth and vivid coloring emphasized by her olive skin
and her startling hair, black as Brandon's own. "Perhaps I would like
a scientist better than an I-P officer, anyway. The more I think of it,
the surer I am that Nadia Newton had the right idea. I believe that
I'll catch me a physicist, too--either of you would do quite nicely,
I think," and she studied the two men carefully.

Westfall, the methodical and precise, had never been able to defend
himself against Verna Pickering's badinage, but Brandon's ready tongue
took up the challenge.

"Verna, if you really decided to get any living man he wouldn't stand a
chance in the world," he declared. "If you've already made up your mind
that I'm your meat, I'll come down like Davy Crockett's coon. But if
either of us will do, that'll give us each a fifty-fifty chance to
escape your toils. What say we play a game of freeze-out to decide it?"

"Fine, Norman! When shall we play?"

"Oh, between Wednesday and Thursday, a