Minor Planets, and then it was Mars, the base of the M-122. Kendall and
Cole took passage immediately on an IP supply ship, and landed in New
York six days later. At once, Kendall headed for Commander McLaurin's
office. Buck Kendall, lieutenant of the IP, found he would have to make
regular application to see McLaurin through a dozen intermediate
officers.

By this time, Kendall was savagely determined to see McLaurin himself,
and see him in the least possible time. Cole, too, was beginning to
believe in Kendall's assertion of the stranger ship's extra-systemic
origin. As yet neither could understand the strange actions of the
machine, its attack on the Pluto mines, and the capture and theft of a
patrol ship.

"There is," said Kendall angrily, "just one way to see McLaurin and see
him quick. And, by God, I'm going to. Will you resign with me, Cole?
I'll see him within a week then, I'll bet."

For a minute, Cole hesitated. Then he shook hands with his friends.
"Today!" And that day it was. They resigned, together. Immediately, Buck
Kendall got the machinery in motion for an interview, working now from
the outside, pulling the strings with the weight of a hundred million
dollar fortune. Even the IP officers had to pay a bit of attention when
Bernard Kendall, multi-millionaire began talking and demanding things.
Within a week, Kendall _did_ see McLaurin.

At that time, McLaurin was fifty-three years old, his crisp hair still
black as space, with scarcely a touch of the gray that appears in his
more recent photographs. He stood six feet tall, a broad-shouldered,
powerful man, his face grave with lines of intelligence and character.
There was also a permanent narrowing of the eyes, from years under the
blazing sun of space. But most of all, while those years in space had
narrowed and set his eyes, they had not narrowed and set his mind. An
infinitely finer character than old Jim Warren, his experience in space
had taught him always to expect the unexpected, to understand the
incomprehensible as being part of the unknown and incalculable
properties of space and the worlds that swam in it. Besides the fine
technical education he had started with, he had acquired a liberal
education in mankind. When Buck Kendall, straight and powerful, came
into his office with Cole, he recognized in him a character that would
drive steadily and straight for its goal. Also, he recognized behind the
millionaire that had succeeded in pullin