the puppies had climbed valiantly on her back and was pulling with
all his tiny might at a puppy-mouthful of her hair. His tail wagged
vigorously the while. Hod laughed, and Mal giggled, and inside the
cottage Zani--who could not see what had happened--giggled with them.

"She couldn't see it, but she knew what happened," said Soames. "I
suspect this place is so top-secret that it's a breach of security to
remember it outside. If anybody notices that little trick the kids can
do, they'll be suspected of casually inspecting high-secrecy stuff
while drawing pictures or playing with little dogs."

* * * * *

Soames returned to his quarters. He set to work upon the highly
necessary task of pretending that he was a castaway from the children's
civilization in order to improvise conveniences that as a castaway he'd
consider crude, but as an aborigine amazing.

From time to time, though, he wondered sardonically about the
public-relations program on the children. He'd prepared a complete
report about the ship, telling in detail about its arrival and adding
everything he could infer about the civilization that had made it,
except its location on the Earth of aeons ago and its imminent doom.
Gail had written what she considered the best human-interest story of
her life about the children. Neither report was asked for. Nobody knew
where either was to be sent. Soames guessed sardonically at a change of
policy somewhere.

But the problem justified worry, the simple, relatively insignificant
problem of the children here and now, with all thought of flaming skies
and upheaved earth put firmly aside.

The children had to be revealed. But the world would automatically
assume that the crew of an alien spaceship must be in some fashion
monsters. But four nicely raised children? Space-travellers? Spaceships
navigated by boys and girls who liked to play with puppies? Such
innocuous persons to represent the most deadly danger the modern world
had faced?

But they did represent it. There was no way out of the fact. And somehow
the facts had to be put across. The public-relations counsellors who had
interviewed the children pointed out the means. They got the job.

The advance publicity was thoroughly professional. The spaceship's
company was to be revealed in the most stupendous broadcast of all time.
For the second time in history, a trans-Atlantic relay patrol would form
two relay-channels from Nort