gs followed it. They gained altitude and
circled back overhead. Tiny bluish flickerings moved across the overcast
sky. Exhaust flames.

Coburn realized that it was a fighter plane escort.

The huge transport plane that waited for them was dark. They climbed
into it and found their seats. When it roared down the unlighted field
and took to the air, everything possible had been done to keep anybody
from bringing any weapon to bear upon it.

"All safe now!" said the voice of the American colonel in the darkness
of the unlit plane, as the plane gained height. "Incidentally, Coburn,
why did you want to look at Pangalos' palm? What did you expect to find
there?"

"When I started for the airport," Coburn explained, "I bent a pin around
the band of a ring I wear. I could let it lie flat when I shook hands.
Or I could make it stand out like a spur. I set it with my thumb. I saw
Pangalos' eyes, so I had it stand out, and I made a tear in his plastic
skin when I shook hands with him. He didn't feel it, of course." He
paused. "Did anybody go to the address I gave Hallen?"

Hallen said, in the darkness: "Major Pangalos got there first."

The blackness outside the plane seemed to grow deeper. There was
literally nothing to be seen but the instrument dials up at the pilots'
end of the ship.

The Greek general asked a question in his difficult English.

"Where'd they come from?" repeated Coburn. "I've no idea. Off Earth,
yes. A heavy planet, yes. I doubt they come from our solar system,
though. Somewhere among the stars."

The Greek general said something with a sly up-twist of his voice.
Whatever and whoever the Invaders were, he said, they did not like
Bulgarians. If they'd knocked out the raiding party simply to test their
weapons against human subjects, at least they had chosen suitable and
pleasing subjects for the test.

* * * * *

There was light. For an instant Coburn tensed. But the plane climbed and
the brightness steadied. It was the top of a cloud bank, brilliantly
white in the moonlight. They had flown up through it, and it reached as
far ahead as they could see. A stubby fighter plane swam up out of the
mist and fell into position alongside. Others appeared. They took
formation about the transport and all flew steadily through the
moonlight.

"I wish I knew," said the American colonel vexedly, "if those creatures
were only testing weapons, or if they were getting set to start