Belle's feet did hurt when she got back to the _Pleiades_,
but of course she would not admit the fact--most especially not to
Garlock.

Exactly at the expiration of the stipulated seventy-two hours, the
Galaxians began to destroy military atomic plants; and, shortly
thereafter, the starship's crew was again ready to go.

And James rammed home the red button that would send them--all four
wondered--_where_?

It turned out to be another Hodell-type world; and, even with the
high-speed comparator, it took longer to check the charts than it did to
make them.

* * *

The next planet was similar. So was the next, and the next. The time
required for checking grew longer and longer.

"How about cutting out this checking entirely, Clee?" James asked then.
"What good does it do? Even if we find a similarity, what could we do
about it? We've got enough stuff now to keep a crew of astronomers busy
for five years making a tank of it."

"Okay. We probably are so far away now, anyway, that the chance of
finding a similarity is vanishingly small. Keep on taking the shots,
though; they'll prove, I think, that the universe is one whole hell of a
lot bigger than anybody has ever thought it was. That reminds me--are
you getting anywhere on that N-problem? I'm not."

"I'm getting nowhere, fast. You should have been a math prof in a grad
school, Clee. You could flunk every advanced student you had with that
one. Belle and I together can't feed it to Compy in such shape as to get
a definite answer. We think, though, that your guess was right--if we
ever stabilize anywhere it will probably be relative to Hodell, not to
Tellus. But the cold fact of how far away we must be by this time just
scares the pants off of me."

"You and me both, my ripe and old. We're a _long_ ways from home."

* * *

Jumping went on; and, two or three planets later, they encountered an
Arpalone Inspector who did not test them for compatibility with the
humanity of his world.

"Do not land," the creature said, mournfully. "This world is dying, and
if you leave the protection of your ship, you too will die."

"But _worlds_ don't die, surely?" Garlock protested. "People, yes--but
worlds?"

"Worlds die. It is the Dilipic. The humans die, too, of course, but it
is the world itself that is attacked, not the people. Some of them, in
fact, will live through it."

Garlock drove his attention downward an