get back until Jim and I work out something to steer us
with. But they must be wondering no end, outside, what the score is, so
I'm willing to call it a draw--temporarily--and let 'em in again. How
about it, Belle?"

"A draw it is--temporarily." Neither, however, even offered to shake
hands.

"Smile pretty, everybody," Garlock said, and pressed a stud.

"... the matter? What's the matter? Oh...." the worried voice of the
System's ace newscaster came in. "Power failure _already_?"

"No," Garlock replied. "I figured we had a couple of minutes of privacy
coming, if you can understand the meaning of the word. Now all four of
us tell everybody who is watching or listening _au revoir_ or good-bye,
whichever it may turn out to be." He reached for the switch.

"Wait a minute!" the newscaster demanded. "Leave it on until the last
poss...." His voice broke off sharply.

"Turn it back on!" Belle ordered.

"Nix."

"Scared?" she sneered.

"You chirped it, bird-brain. I'm scared purple. So would you be, if you
had three brain cells working in that glory-hound's head of yours. Get
set, everybody, and we'll take off."

"Stop it, both of you!" Lola exclaimed. "Where do you want us to sit,
and do we strap down?"

"You sit here; Belle at that plate beside Jim. Yes, strap down. There
probably won't be any shock, and we should land right side up, but
there's no sense in taking chances. Sure your stuff's all aboard?"

"Yes, it's in our rooms."

The four secured themselves; the two men checked, for the dozenth time,
their instruments. The pilot donned his scanner. The ship lifted
effortlessly, noiselessly. Through the atmosphere; through and far
beyond the stratosphere. It stopped.

"Ready, Clee?" James licked his lips.

"As ready as I ever will be, I guess. Shoot!"

The pilot's right hand, forefinger outstretched, moved
unenthusiastically toward a red button on his panel ... slowed ...
stopped. He stared into his scanner at the Earth so far below.

"Hit it, Jim!" Garlock snapped. "_Hit_ it, for goodness sake, before we
_all_ lose our nerve!"

James stabbed convulsively at the button, and in the very instant of
contact--instantaneously; without a fractional microsecond of
time-lapse--their familiar surroundings disappeared. Or, rather, and
without any sensation of motion, of displacement, or of the passage of
any time whatsoever, the planet beneath them was no longer their
familiar Earth. The plates showed no familiar