dings. Fran would not meet
him. Soames had given warning of traps and close hunting. But Fran would
not meet him. It looked bad.

He bought a second-hand motorcycle at ten o'clock in the morning. He
knew motorcycles. By three in the afternoon he threaded through the
traffic of Bluevale. To him, on the watch for such matters, there seemed
an unusual preponderance of men on the streets of that small town. Fran
wouldn't notice it. Soames did. But he wasn't noticed. He'd bought a
leather jacket and a cap. He rode a battered motorbike. He didn't even
faintly resemble Fran.

He rode casually through Bluevale and along the wide, smooth highway to
the much smaller village of Navajo Dam--at the edge of the big lake the
dam had backed up behind it--and then at a leisurely pace along the same
highway as it went over the crest of that massive structure. The lake to
his right rose within feet of the highway. To the left there was a
chasm, with a winding truck-road going down to the generator buildings
at the dam's foot.

Soames jittered. He went two miles on and into forest, dragging the
motorcycle out of sight from the road. He made himself as comfortable as
possible, to avoid transmitting any information about his whereabouts.
He stuffed his ears to mute the sounds of open country. From four
o'clock to eight, at irregular intervals, he turned on the
sensory-linkage device for a second or two at a time. He came to
recognize the physical sensations of the man who, back in the hidden
missile base, wore a child's belt and monitored for sensory
communications. Between seven and eight the identity of that man
changed. Someone else took the place of the first.

At ten o'clock there was the briefest possible sensation of a third
body. Soames knew it was Fran. He shook hands with himself, quickly.
Fran would recognize it as a greeting. Soames had contrived a way to
offer argument, but he only felt a boy's small, smooth hands shaking
each other in reply, and Fran was gone out of communication.

He did not come back.

* * * * *

At midnight Soames got his motorcycle out of the woods and onto the
highway. He rode slowly back toward Bluevale. He stopped at a hot-dog
stand outside the town and waited there for another signal.

At one, nothing had happened. Soames was close enough to the town to
have heard any tumult, certainly any shots.

At two and three--nothing.

At four o'clock, without warning, t