rs."

She looked around herself without comprehension.

"Which way?"

"_This way._"

Collins did not say those words.

They were said by the man with the gun in the uniform like the one worn
by Elston. He motioned impatiently.

"This way, this way."

* * * * *

"No priority," Colonel Smith-Boerke said as he paced back and forth, gun
in hand.

From time to time he waved it threateningly at Collins and Nancy who sat
on the couch in Smith-Boerke's office. They had been sitting for close
to two hours. Collins now knew the Colonel did not intend to turn him
over to the authorities. They were being held for reasons of
Smith-Boerke's own.

"They sneak the ship in here, plan for an unscheduled hop from an
uncompleted base--the strictest security we've used in ten or fifteen
years--and now they cancel it. This is bound to get leaked by somebody!
They'll call it off. It'll never fly now."

Collins sat quietly. He had been listening to this all evening.
Smith-Boerke had been drinking, although it wasn't very obvious.

Smith-Boerke turned to Collins.

"I've been waiting for somebody like you. Just waiting for you to come
along. And here you are, a wanted fugitive, completely in my power!
Perfect, _perfect_."

Collins nodded to himself. Of course, Colonel Smith-Boerke had been
waiting for him. And Doc Candle had driven him right to him. It was
inescapable. He had been intended to escape and turn up right here all
along.

"What do you want with me?"

Smith-Boerke's flushed face brightened. "You want to become a hero? A
hero so big that all these trumped-up charges against you will be
dropped? It'll be romantic. Back to Lindbergh-to-Paris. Tell me,
Collins, how would you like to be the first man to travel faster than
light?"

Collins knew there was no way out.

"All right," he said.

Smith-Boerke wiped a hand across his dry mouth.

"Project Silver _has_ to come off. My whole career depends on it. You
don't have anything to do. Everything's cybernetic. Just ride along and
prove a human being can survive. Nothing to it. No hyperdrives, none of
that kind of stuff. We had an engine that could go half lightspeed and
now we've made it twice as efficient and more. No superstitions about
Einstein, I hope? No? Good."

"I'll go," Collins said. "But what if I had said 'no'."

Smith-Boerke put the gun away in a desk drawer.

"Then you could have walked out of here, straig