inning openly now, stopped Deston's floundering. "It's high
time you fellows told each other the truth. Bobby and I let our back
hair down long ago--we were both tremendously surprised to know that
both you boys are just as strongly psychic as we are. Perhaps even more
so."

"Oh ... so _you_ get hunches, too?" Jones demanded. "So you'll have
plenty of warning?"

"All my life. The old alarm clock has never failed me yet. But the girls
can't start packing pistols now."

"I wouldn't know how to shoot one if I did," Bernice laughed. "I'll
throw things I'm very good at that."

"Huh?" Jones asked. He didn't know his new wife very well, either. "What
can _you_ throw straight enough to do any good?"

"Anything I can reach," she replied, confidently. "Baseballs, medicine
balls, cannon balls, rocks, bricks, darts, discus, hammer,
javelin--what-have-you. In a for-real battle I'd prefer ... chairs, I
think. Flying chairs are really hard to cope with. Knives are too ...
uh-uh, I'd much rather have you fellows do the actual executing. I'll
start wearing a couple of knives in leg-sheaths, but I won't throw 'em
or use 'em unless I absolutely have to. So who will I knock out with the
first chair?"

"I'll answer that," Barbara said, quietly. "If it's Blaine against Babe,
it'll be Lopresto against Herc. So you'll throw your chairs or whatever
at that unspeakable oaf Newman."

"I'd rather brain him than anyone else I know, but that would leave that
gigantic gorilla to ... why, he'd ... listen, you'll simply _have_ to go
armed."

"I always do." Barbara held out her hands. "Since they don't want to
shoot us two--yet--these are all the weapons I'll need."

"Against a man-mountain like that? You're _that_ good? Really?"

"Especially against a man-mountain like that. I'm that good. Really,"
and both Joneses began to realize what Deston already knew--just how
deadly those harmless-seeming weapons could be.

Barbara went on: "We should have a signal, in case one of us gets
warning first. Something that wouldn't mean anything to them ...
musical, say ... Brahms. That's it. The very instant any one of us feels
their intent to signal their attack he yells 'BRAHMS!' and we _all_ beat
them to the punch. O. K.?"

It was O. K., and the four--Adams was still hard at work in the
lounge--went to bed.

* * * * *

And three days later, within an hour after the last flight-datum had
been "put in the tank," the