ually sauntered off.

The girl came up and reached the deck. "I am in A22," she told the
carrier. "My brother came aboard a couple of hours ago."

Dr. Frank answered my whisper. "That's Anita Prince."

She was passing quite close to us on the deck, following the carrier,
when she stumbled and very nearly fell. I was nearest to her. I leaped
forward and caught her as she nearly went down.

With my arm about her, I raised her up and set her upon her feet
again. She had twisted her ankle. She balanced herself upon it. The
pain of it eased up in a moment.

"I'm all right--thank you!"

In the dimness of the blue lit deck I met her eyes. I was holding her
with my encircling arm. She was small and soft against me. Her face,
framed in the thick, black hair, smiled up at me. Small, oval
face--beautiful--yet firm of chin, and stamped with the mark of its
own individuality. No empty-headed beauty, this.

"I'm all right, thank you very much--"

I became conscious that I had not released her. I felt her hands
pushing at me. And then it seemed that for an instant she yielded and
was clinging. And I met her startled upflung gaze. Eyes like a purple
night with the sheen of misty starlight in them.

I heard myself murmuring, "I beg your pardon. Yes, of course!" I
released her.

She thanked me again and followed the carriers along the deck. She was
limping slightly.

An instant she had clung to me. A brief flash of something, from her
eyes to mine--from mine back to hers. The poets write that love can be
born of such a glance. The first meeting, across all the barriers of
which love springs unsought, unbidden--defiant, sometimes. And the
troubadours of old would sing: "A fleeting glance; a touch; two wildly
beating hearts--and love was born."

I think, with Anita and me, it must have been like that.

I stood, gazing after her, unconscious of Dr. Frank, who was watching
me with his quizzical smile. And presently, no more than a quarter
beyond the zero hour, the _Planetara_ got away. With the dome windows
battened tightly, we lifted from the landing stage and soared over the
glowing city. The phosphorescence of the electronic tubes was like a
comet's tail behind us as we slid upward.

III

At six A.M., Earth Eastern time, which we were still carrying, Snap
Dean and I were alone in his instrument room, perched in the network
over the _Planetara's_ deck. The bulge of the dome enclosed us; it
rounded like a great o