Chapter III: Part 3

"Take too long to explain," Morrow replied, shaking his head. "Somebody's liable to see that spaceship any minute, now." He forced a broad, innocent grin across his face. "You want to come have a look at it?"

"Ye-e-es!" Foster agreed sarcastically, rising from his chair. "I suppose I _should_ take a look at it--"

Morrow led him out the front door and around the house. "Don't want to awaken your wife," he explained, clamping down his helmet.

"No-o-o-o!" Foster conceded. "I wouldn't advise that!" They proceeded on across the back yard, through the clinging, wet fingers of the mist.

Then Foster saw the ship.

After that, it wasn't too hard to persuade him to enter it. Then it was simple to switch on the gravitors and rise into the dark sky. Morrow had him planted in the flight engineer's seat, enthusiastically demanding explanations in full, as Smitty piloted them swiftly homeward.

Foster was sold!

* * * * *

They held a conference in the sawmill-workshop that lasted all the next day and well into the next night. Then Foster went home to tell his wife he'd had a hurry-up call from the aircraft plant and gone there to work on some secret research; they drove him back to Sacramento in the truck, and let him off near his house.

Then they returned to the workshop and went to work.

The following weekend, Foster drove up in his own car to see them. He climbed out of his car wearing lace-boots and hunting clothes. Reaching into the back seat, he brought out a shotgun and a stack of newspapers, then Morrow came up to greet him and they strode into the workshop.

"You fellows have really been hitting the ball!" Foster exclaimed, as he stopped and gazed at the small, needle-nosed ship sitting beside the larger ship.

Morrow nodded. They had worked night and day to construct the second, smaller ship--a little two-passenger job with sweptback fins and a canopy-covered cockpit in its sharp nose. It rested neatly on its long A-fins, poised to hurtle into the sky. Its color scheme--dark blue-black on top, light gray on its belly--stood out in sharp contrast to the solid, shimmering black of the giant ship behind it.

It had been Foster's idea. He'd pointed out to them that they needed a smaller experimental model, easier to dismantle and rebuild, for the development of their air-jet chamber.

"Have you given it a test-flight yet?" Foster asked.

"Ran it out last night," Smitty replied, coming around the two ships to meet them. He set a plumber's blowtorch on the workbench and wiped his hands on a rag. "It hit seventy miles an hour, then worked up to seventy-four after a five-hour run."

Foster shook his head in puzzlement. "That's something I just can't account for. A jet-pod ought to be just as efficient as its design, and nothing should alter its basic performance other than a change in atmospheric conditions."

"There was no atmospheric change," Morrow said. "Same altitude, same barometric pressure, same thermal conditions. I'm beginning to think the problem isn't only in the jet-pod design."

"That makes two of us!" Foster agreed. "The design I gave you should've worked better than any seventy miles an hour, if your propulsion unit develops that focus of 'false gravity' and squeezes the air out, forming a low-pressure center, as you said it did."

"We've checked that, too," Morrow said, frowning thoughtfully. "I'm beginning to think it's something to do with the gravitors' field of influence. Come over here--I want to show you something!"

He led the jet engineer over to where he and Smitty had rigged a gravitor mechanism and a sling-load of sandbags with rope attached, just as they'd used in weight-testing the gravitors. He switched on the gravitor, adjusted its setting, and let it lift the load of sandbags into the air. Then he pointed to the rope dangling down beneath it.

"See that twist in the rope, just under the sandbags?" he said. "That much of the rope is in the influence of the gravitor's field, which is cancelling out the pull of the Earth's gravity. Now then, if it can influence that three-foot length of rope, what influence might it have on the air around it--and on the slipstream of air flowing over our ships, which is supposed to enter the air-vents and be blasted out the jets for propulsion of the ships?"

"It could be scrambling our intake flow," Foster acknowledged pensively. "But would that condition alter in time?"

Morrow shook his head. "I don't think it does--or that it would unless the gravitor's batteries were almost burned out. Then the field's influence might lessen a bit. Otherwise, no."

"Then why is it that the jets' efficiency increases with time?" Foster asked. "How'd you get seventy miles an hour on the big ship, then ninety? And five hours' running built up the little ship's speed an additional four miles per hour, didn't it?"

Smitty nodded. "It gets gradually better--but not much. If we knew how it happened and what it was doing to the air-flow, maybe we could design jet-pods with the right shape to use that air-flow and get good performance."

Foster turned and peered sharply at Morrow. "Bill, doesn't that gravitor's field work by conductivity of some sort through the surrounding material?"

"Uh?" Morrow started. "Yes, it--wait! You mean the ship's plastic hull?"

"Right. And what about the polarization of that plastic?"

Morrow pursed his lips, contemplatively. "Like all materials on Earth, it's polarized--if you want to use that word--to the gravitational and magnetic fields of Earth. I see what you're driving at, though--the gravitors establish a field in which the Earth's gravity and magnetism are cancelled out, or bent back upon themselves. The mechanism of the gravitors, the hull they support, everything within their field of influence is placed on a basis of its own gravity, mass-attraction, magnetism, what-have-you."

"And that's gradually changing the polarization of those materials," Foster concluded. "And the gravitors' field, working through the material, is also affected. There's a gradual change in its influence on other surrounding matter--and on the slipstream flowing over the ship!"

"We'd need a wind-tunnel to test that, wouldn't we?" Smitty asked dejectedly.

"Yep," Foster agreed. "And wind-tunnels cost money. The only other way to test it would be to make a cross-country flight, and I wouldn't advise that."

"What about a cross-country night flight?" Morrow wondered.

Foster gave him a strange look. "You two haven't been reading the newspapers lately, have you?"

* * * * *

Morrow and Smitty exchanged glances of mingled surprise and guilt. "We've been rather busy out here," Morrow protested lamely.

"I suspected you were," Foster said, a trace of grim humor in his voice. He walked over to the drafting table in the corner, where he'd left his shotgun and bundle of newspapers. "Pull that thing down and come over here," he told them. "I've something to show _you_, now!"

Morrow cranked the gravitor-sling down on the hand winch and Smitty shut it off; then they went over to where Foster was spreading newspapers on the drafting table, checking and circling columns of newsprint with a blue crayon pencil. Morrow stepped to his side and stared down at the papers. The words fairly leaped up to strike him in the eye.

MYSTERY SHIP NEAR SACRAMENTO

BLACK SPACESHIP SEEN

MARTIANS PREFER CALIFORNIA!

TWO CARS LEAVE H'WAY AS ROCKET SWOOPS

BLACK ROCKET SHIP; 'NOT OURS,' SAY AIR FORCE

There were more than a dozen news stories about it--not front-page, black-headlines stories, but two-column stories beginning on page two or three and continued in the newspaper center-section. None of it was spectacular enough to merit big headlines.

However, it had obviously been given a thorough coverage by the press. A railroad worker walking to work the Saturday morning of their trip to Sacramento had seen "a black, torpedo-shaped ship flying through the mist at low altitude, making a deep, rumbling noise." A police patrol car on the highway had seen it "flying low through the clouds, as if it were having mechanical difficulty of some sort." Two cars had left the highway and skidded into a ditch as both drivers saw "a black ship without wings swoop directly over" with a sound "like one long, continuous A-bomb explosion!"

Some said the ship was just a solid black shape, without lights or any noticeable features except the absence of any wings; some said "a long, blue flame" came from the tail of the ship. Some said "bright red, green, and blue lights were swarming around it" and some claimed there were "big windows in the sides, with something moving around inside."

Officials of the Air Force, both in California and in Washington, professed to have no knowledge about the ship. But one fact was added: both official groups said they were deeply interested in the reports for "reasons of security," that a thorough investigation would be made, and that radar surveillance along the West Coast would be intensified.

And one, final news story was headed: SEARCH FOR DOWNED 'SPACESHIP' FAILS. There had been strong belief, it said, that the mysterious black ship had been in trouble and was making a forced landing when it was sighted.

"There it is," Foster said with a tone of finality. "These are all the stories in the local papers. It's been played up from coast-to-coast, however--both in the newspapers and news telecasts. And the defense forces along the Coast are just waiting for you to pop out again so they can pounce on you."

"Along the Coast," Smitty echoed pensively. "It's significant that they haven't turned their attention to the interior--back as far as the Sierras, here--"

"Probably think it's some sort of new Russian reconnaissance aircraft," Morrow interjected. "They undoubtedly have a nice, little reception committee waiting out over the ocean."

Smitty nodded. "Any cross-country we plan to do had best be plotted due east, across the desert."

"There's the atomic project area, that way," Foster protested. "They certainly must have increased their air defenses around that."

"At low altitude, we can get around it," Smitty said.

Foster's features went slack. "Look here! You're not seriously thinking of--"

"If we had a wind-tunnel, no!" Smitty retorted wryly. "We could stick the little ship in it, let it run for a few days, watch the hull polarize itself to the gravitors' field, and note how the air-flow around the ship was affected. Then we could rip out the jet chamber and design a new one that'd work in the affected air-flow."

"_If_ we had a wind-tunnel," Morrow emphasized.

"Right!" Smitty turned back toward the ships. "So," he concluded, "we take the big ship! We head out over the desert and keep going, watching how the ship performs and what the air-flow does to her. We'll have to install a few barometric pressure-point indicators around her hull--"

"But we'd have to fly several days steady to get that hull completely polarized," Morrow said. "We can't just restrict ourselves to night flying."

Smitty winced. Then he rubbed his chin, scowling. "If we have to, Bill, we can go east to Utah, then south through Arizona to Mexico, then east again--flying across the Border at night, without lights, won't be too much trouble; and once in Mexico we won't have to worry about radar. We can go out over the Gulf of Mexico, if we want to, and then turn north and fly up the Mississippi and Ohio valleys as far as Pennsylvania. There's a lot of brush country in the neighboring mountain areas--there'd be little danger of getting seen through there. So long as we don't have to land anywhere, we're safe!"

"In other words, it'd be a cross-country endurance flight," Morrow surmised.

"But suppose the ship fails on you?" Foster demanded tersely. "Suppose you're forced down?"

"We're visitors from outer space!" Smitty replied, grinning.

Foster wasn't amused. "Let's not be foolish about this," he argued. "We've got something here that we can't let loose! The world isn't ready for it--"

"But we've got to have it perfected when the world _is_ ready," Morrow said firmly. "Once the tension wears out and the world situation changes, we've got to act! If we aren't ready, the world will go right ahead and get mixed up in some other squabble. Then we'd have to wait again."

Smitty laid a hand on Foster's shoulder. "You can get a few days off from the plant, can't you?"

"What? Well, yes," Foster stammered. "Of course! But--"

* * * * *

They took off at noon on a cloudy winter day.

They spent the afternoon dividing their attention between the test-flight instruments and the surrounding sky. They hadn't the money to afford elaborate recording mechanisms to graph every moment of the flight onto neat tape-spools; they had to rely on the human eye, the questionably analytical human mind, and the servo-mechanism of a human hand wielding a pencil on a loose-leaf notebook. And they constantly expected to see a razor-winged jet fighter hurtling down from the stratosphere above them, its cannon sparkling the bright flame-color of death.

They didn't talk much that afternoon.

They took turns at the controls and eating until each had consumed his dinner, then gathered tensely in the control pit as the ship bored rumblingly into the black night. Ahead of them was the Mexican Border. Below them and around them, almost scraping the ship's belly, as low as they were, was the jumbled, boulder-strewn Arizona desert bathed in frosty white moonlight. Above were the cold, twinkling stars, the black heavens--and who could tell what radar-equipped night fighter poised above them, ready to peel off and plummet downward, guns blazing--

Then the Border was behind them. They took turns at the controls and instruments again, catching a few winks of sleep between turns. Morning dawned, and they approached the Gulf of Mexico.

Morrow checked their supplies--food and water for the trip, parts and materials stowed in the spacious cargo deck for repairs on the ship if necessary--and they took turns at breakfast. Then he and Foster sat down to an argument about the scientific implications of the gravitors. Foster was of the opinion that Einstein's theory no longer was valid, that Milne's work came closer to the truth but was still vague. Morrow thought differently, and they argued together amicably.

Noon passed, and they were over the green expanse of the Gulf. Smitty called their attention to the short-wave radio. The newscasts were quite interesting.

A professional hunter in Nevada, hired to exterminate a mountain lion which had been slaughtering a rancher's cattle, was surprised when a ship that looked "like a big, black whale" thundered over his head and plunged down behind a nearby ridge. The hunter rode hastily around the ridge, expecting to find the wreck, but the ship had vanished completely "as if the ground up and swallered it!"

A Greyhound bus proceeding across Arizona nearly swerved off the road when "a long, black torpedo at least a hundred feet long" came across the sky "so fast the air thunder-clapped behind it" and left "a trail of blue fire" behind it. Passengers on the bus verified the driver's story, with some minor variations.

Two farmers standing in a field in northern Nebraska saw a flight of six "fish-shaped" objects go over, each having a shadow "big as a barn" on the snow.

A noted banker in Chicago created an uproar when he reported seeing "a giant, black shape" rise from the waters of Lake Michigan as he was driving home in the afternoon.

An amateur astronomer in Alabama reported sighting a "strange ship" rising upward from the Earth's atmosphere "on a pillar of rocket fire." The ship had mysteriously disappeared "as soon as it left the atmosphere," the middle-aged hobbyist stated.

A Swedish Air Force jet-pilot claimed he had sighted, given chase, fired at, and seen his tracers bounce harmlessly off a "black, fish-like craft" flying at 40,000 feet above the Baltic Sea.

The news commentators added, in significant tones, that no airline pilots had yet reported seeing such craft. One added somewhat caustically that due to previous experiences the pilots probably wouldn't report anything to the authorities even if they did see anything, since the authorities persisted in treating such reports and the pilots who made them with painful ridicule; the commentator then launched into a condemnation of the current Administration.

"It would seem," Smitty observed from all this, "that we are quite famous!"

"'Notorious' is the word, I believe," Foster countered drily. "If this keeps up, some congressman is likely to introduce a bill providing that the government produce some Martians with black spaceships. The voters will demand it."

"It's good disguise for us, anyway," Morrow mused.

"Uh huh!" Foster grunted in reproof. "Unless we're found out, that is. If the public discovers that we've hoodwinked 'em and there aren't any Martian immigrants at all, they'll probably howl for our blood! I think this is going to develop into a scare-issue, Bill. I'm afraid people will want it, as an excuse to work off some of their nervous tension."

"Fine!" Smitty said grimly. "If anybody's trying to catch us, a general scare-issue will have 'em looking all over the place. We're already supposed to be in Nebraska, in Lake Michigan, in the Baltic Sea, and somewhere out in space!"

"Invisible, too!" Morrow laughed.

* * * * *

They passed over Louisiana in the early morning and proceeded northward up the Mississippi valley. Indicated air-speed was two hundred and thirty-eight miles per hour. Dawn was blanketed in a pouring rain. They turned off up the Ohio valley and reached the Allegheny Plateau in West Virginia, flying by instruments, topographical maps, and radio omni-range navigation.

And once they almost blundered straight into a big, six-engined commercial stratoliner. The stratoliner pulled up almost at the last minute.

By mid-afternoon, they were approaching Pennsylvania. The drizzling rain had changed to snow and sleet. Then they were forced down. The ship's air-speed fell off with an alarming suddenness. Then the entire tail structure took on a heavy load of ice.

They settled tail-down into a clearing on a densely wooded slope. The ship wallowed deep into the soft, slushy snow.

The three men got together over the table in the forward lounge. Foster kept running his hands through his hair, nervously. "We're stuck," he said. "We're stuck here for the winter unless we can rebuild the tail assembly. That jet chamber has to be changed."

It was obvious, after they had diagrammed the readings from their various flight-test instruments. The ship's hull had become completely polarized to the gravitors' field; the field influenced the air flowing over the hull, so much so that a simple air-scoop couldn't pick up air to blow through the propulsion unit and out the tail-jets. The air intake had to be designed to work on the disturbed air-flow.

"It's a little like those 'space-warps' in science-fiction yarns," Foster explained. "There's a warp of the gravitational and magnetic fields around the ship. The air-flow entering that warp bends and twists to follow it."

"We ought to redesign the entire hull to comply with that warped air-flow," Smitty suggested absently.

"The hull doesn't matter so much," Foster contradicted. "We could design it in any shape, though a sharp nose and thin guide-fins are still effective. You just happened to hit the right answer when you placed the control-surfaces forward on the nose of the ship."

"Talking isn't going to get us out of here," Morrow remarked grimly. "Let's get to work on that tail assembly."

"I got news for you!" Smitty muttered. "If we rebuild the tail with our power-tools, it'll use up the juice in our batteries. We won't have enough to get home."

"We must get our batteries recharged, then," Morrow said. "Will we have enough juice left to get out of here when we're finished?"

Smitty nodded. "And then we'll be up a creek. Where do we get our batteries recharged?"

"Couldn't one of us venture into a town around here and buy a few batteries?" Foster suggested. "Without wearing our Martian costumes, of course."

"Our Martian costumes as you call 'em are at least warm!" Smitty retorted. "It's a little cold to go wandering around out there in our coveralls."

"Wouldn't pay to risk it, anyway," Morrow said. "Suppose someone has seen our ship flying around here? Suppose they make a report that brings in the authorities and--"

"But who'd think a man in coveralls just stepped off a spaceship?" Foster persisted.

"Uh huh. You have a point, there. But if the authorities were investigating, they'd check railroad and truck shipments of any plastic or metal aircraft construction materials into this region, and where they were delivered. They'd check local machine shops, auto-parts shops, aviation parts dealers--and _they'd check garages_! If one of us walks up to a garage, buys a battery, and walks away carrying it on his shoulder, don't you think the garage mechanic is going to remember him, what he looked like, how tall he was, what he weighed? How often does anyone without a car buy an auto battery and carry it away on his shoulder?"

"We might 'borrow' somebody's car," Smitty mused, grinning.

"We might be caught ten minutes afterward, too," Foster objected. "The police are quite efficient at catching car thieves."

"Then we need a car," Morrow concluded. "Smitty, can we lift out of here once we've rebuilt our jets?"

"We could travel a few hundred miles," Smitty conceded. "Not that it would get us anywhere."

Morrow grinned crookedly. "Would it get us to Westerton, New Jersey?"

It would. And the next night, it did.

* * * * *

The three men crouching in the control pit of the sleek, black ship looked red-eyed and haggard from fatigue and lack of sleep. They had stripped off their shoes and socks to let them dry near the ship's heater, and their damp, mud-stained coveralls were drying on their bodies. Foster had developed a wracking cough and his nose was running.

The air-speed indicator registered three hundred and sixty-eight miles per hour. Smitty stared at it, glumly. "Let's just hope it doesn't fade out on us again," he muttered.

The test of the ship's performance had been the whole purpose of their long, cross-country trip, Morrow thought wordlessly. They had made every preparation they could think of for the trip. Each had a special suit with helmet and gravitor-tank--and one additional feature: a one-man propulsion unit. They'd developed that in the workshop when they ran one of the suit's gravitors until its field had completely polarized the suit; then, when the suit was suspended high over a small wood fire, the smoke from the fire had risen up into the suit's gravitor field and twisted and swirled around to conform to the warp of that field. Knowing those twists and swirls, Foster had designed a small jet unit with air intake slots and jet-pipes which utilized the air-flow through the gravitor field.

Of course, there was one fault in this jet unit: it was designed to use the air-flow around a gravitor standing still. With the gravitor in motion, that air-flow was altered somewhat. But when Smitty had floated up in his suit with that little jet unit built into its tank, he had managed to fly around the sawmill yard at a good fifteen miles per hour. The air drag against his legs, since the gravitor made him weightless, was considerable--it flattened him out in horizontal flight and, by swinging his legs from one side to the other, he was quite capable of controlling the direction of his flight. The lift or descent of the gravitor sufficed for climbing or diving maneuvers. He'd looked like a human fish swimming in the sky.

For the ships, of course, such a jet unit wouldn't do. The ships needed jets which would work while in motion, at speeds exceeding a hundred miles an hour. Thus, they'd had to fly the ship until its gravitors completely polarized its hull. Then they had to determine the air-flow over that hull at flying speeds with flow and pressure indicators mounted on the hull. Then they had to rebuild the tail-jets to conform with their findings.

A flight half-way across the continent and back to their workshop would have served for that. But then, they had to be sure that there was no further change in the air-flow or polarization or gravitor field. For that reason, they had decided on this trip all the way across the country. It would give them a complete, thorough test of the ship.

They had even gone so far as to arm themselves for defense, in case they were forced down anywhere and someone tried to get rough with them. In a strictly legal sense, the streamlined plastic pistols they carried were not lethal weapons.

Technically, those pistols were ray-guns. They fired a beam of light.

That light came from a standard photographer's flash-bulb. It was focused into a tight, narrow beam by the pistol's barrel reflector. It wouldn't penetrate the human skin; it wouldn't even raise a blister. It was almost physically harmless. But directed at a person's face at a distance of no more than twenty feet, it would leave them totally blind for about three minutes. A simple flash-bulb delivered a nice, bright flash.

A person suddenly struck blind wasn't likely to be in any condition or mood to cause trouble.

All other preparations for the trip had been as completely thorough, as carefully planned. Yet they had made one slight error. They had forgotten to include extra batteries for the ship. In all their careful and intricate preparations, that one, simple precaution had been overlooked.

And now, because of it, Morrow wondered if the whole purpose of their trip wasn't going to be changed. They were flying to Westerton where he would borrow a car from someone he knew.

The one person in Westerton he felt he could trust more readily than others was, of course, Gwyn Davidson. And Gwyn's father had a car.

But they couldn't land their ship anywhere near town, where he could go directly to Gwyn. They would have to land some distance from town, at a spot he knew quite well, and he'd have to proceed from there. He couldn't hitch-hike into town; people knew him, would recognize him and ask questions. He'd have to fly in on his suit gravitor.

And when Gwyn saw that, he'd have some explaining to do. He wondered what she would think....

He wondered, too, at the thrilling tingle of excitement which was washing through him in waves of--of ecstasy, almost! There was no other word for it! He felt like a kid with his first toy.

The ship glided down through the cold moonlight and grounded behind a thick screen of trees, hidden near the shore of a small lake. Across the glistening, ice-covered lake, the sprawling log structures of Lakeshore Lodge loomed blackly against the snow glare. The buildings were deserted, uninhabited during the winter.

Morrow remembered it during the summer season, alive with people in bathing suits, and small boats out on the lake, and this small clearing behind the trees where they landed, where he and Gwyn had sprawled on a blanket, sunning themselves. He remembered the spot quite well.

Westerton was twenty miles away.

* * * * *

He was numb with the shock of the cold air and the weird experience of his flight when he approached the town.

_It felt so damned strange!_ He was flying at about four hundred feet, sprawled flat with the wind blowing and buffeting over him. His head was protected by his helmet, of course, and he was only doing about fifteen miles an hour--but the weightless condition of his arms and legs made it feel as if he were battling a sixty-mile gale! And using his legs to guide his flight completed the impression: he _swam_ through the air!

The yellow lights of town began to outline the streets and intersections below him. Never having seen them from the air, they were at first strange to him, unrecognizable--then he got his bearings and flew onward. Or swam. His breath was coming in labored gasps. His whole body was tensed against the cold seeping into his suit.

He searched frantically for Gwyn's house. It was after two in the morning; she'd be home asleep now.

He spotted it, flew over it, and cut his tiny jets. Then, tuning down his gravitor, he drifted gently downward until his feet crunched in the snow in the small back yard. Looking up, he saw with a start that he'd just barely missed straddling a telephone wire on his way down.

Shivering, he strode toward the house. It was a two-story, white frame structure and Gwyn's room, he believed, was on the left side upstairs. He went around to the side of the house and looked up at the windows, puzzled. Which was hers?

It wouldn't do to try to scramble in a window, anyway. Gwyn would probably let out a scream that would awaken the whole neighborhood--or her father might take a shot at him!

Better to do it the conventional way. Knock on the front door. Ring the bell.

Should he take her father into his confidence, too? Morrow decided against it--no point in stretching his luck too far.

Then he had to get Gwyn out of the house. Alone.

Morrow shook his head, grinning wryly. This was getting more like a kid's game all the time! Then he shuddered. It was cold as blazes! He had to get inside and get warm!

He strode purposefully around front, went up on the porch, and rang the bell. A good, long ring. Then he jumped off the porch and ran back to the side of the house.

A light flashed on upstairs. A shapely, feminine silhouette passed across the curtains as Gwyn crossed the room, pulling on her housecoat.

Morrow stepped close to the wall, tuned up his gravitor, and rose easily up to the window. He grabbed the sill to stop himself and peered in. The room was empty. The window was raised slightly.

He pushed it up, scrambled in, and lowered it behind him. The room was small and neat, littered with feminine knick-knacks, and smelling more clean and polished than sweetly perfumed. He strode past the rumpled bed and sat down in the chair against the wall, out of sight from the doorway.

His gravitor tank kept him well-forward on the edge of the chair. His suit remained ice-cold and snug in the room's warmth, which he felt seeping in through the vents in his helmet collar. He shuddered violently, then sucked the wonderfully warm air into his lungs. He gazed around, noting that his helmet gave everything in the room a bluish tint, but he was so accustomed to that he didn't mind it. Then he saw himself in the dressing-table mirror, across the room, and almost doubled over with silent laughter.

What a strange creature he was, with a shimmering, bright skin and a huge, dark globe of a head!

Gwyn would scream her lungs out!

He reached up hastily, broke the clamps on his helmet and swung it back. Best to let her see his face, first, and recognize him--

A door opened out in the hallway.

"Who is it, Gwyn?" Old man Davidson's voice had the mellowness of a concrete mixer.

"Nobody, Dad!" Gwyn's voice came from downstairs, puzzled. Small feet stamped on the stairs. "It's awfully cold out for anyone to be playing pranks. When I opened the door, there was nobody out there!"

"Well, go back to sleep, honey."

"All right. 'Night, Dad."

The door closed in the hallway. The small footsteps trod disconsolately toward Gwyn's door.

Then she was swirling into the room, closing the door, and pulling the housecoat off over her blue, pink-flowered pajamas.

When she saw him, she froze and sucked in her breath.

"_Bill!_"

It wasn't a loud exclamation, but a faint, weak cry. Morrow had his finger over his lips, motioning her to silence.

Her face went blank; then she tugged her housecoat frantically back on and strode over to him. Her voice was a low, insistent murmur. "Bill, how did _you_ get in here? What _is_ this, anyway?" Her wide eyes were sweeping over him from head to foot, unbelievingly. "What on earth's _happened_?"

"Sit down," Morrow said gently. "Keep your voice low. Can't let anyone know I'm here, Gwyn--and I need your help!"

* * * * *

Gwyn looked at him steadily for a long moment. Then she said, with a kind of silent protest, "All right, Bill. I'll get Dad's car out and go with you. Now--how are you going to get out of here?"

"Same way I got in," he told her, quietly. "I'll meet you outside."

Then, before she could protest, he strode to the window, raised it, climbed out, and shoved free--using his gravitor, of course, as he did.

She stared at him from the window until he touched ground. Then he waved to her and went around the house to the garage.

She came out a few minutes later, dressed in a warm, woolen suit.

Morrow explained the project to her as they drove downtown. When they got out on the highway, approaching an all-night garage, she dropped him off. A half-hour later, she was back.

"Got the batteries?" he asked, piling into the front seat beside her.

"Yes, I got them," she said.

They drove on out to Lakeshore Lodge.

She was grimly silent all the way. No questions, no comments whatsoever. She kept her eyes straight ahead on the highway, her face expressionless and a little pale in the passing lights.

_She doesn't like it_, Morrow thought bitterly.

But if she didn't like it, why didn't she say so? Did she think this female silent treatment would work on him? Gwyn should know him well enough to realize that such typically feminine maneuvers always have the opposite effect of what they were supposed to have on him. Silent disapproval, huh? Then the devil with her!

But such obvious deceit wasn't like Gwyn, either, he realized. Maybe it was something else, then.

Maybe she had gotten the idea that he didn't want her opinion. Suppose she wasn't asking questions because she thought he didn't want her to ask anything!

Possible, he thought. Even probable. He might have overdone it when he tried to impress her with the need for absolute secrecy. Maybe she thought he'd merely come to her because he needed help, that she wasn't included in the project itself--

But _was_ she?

Morrow realized, then, that he wanted her to come back with him. Back to California, to the workshop--

What would the others say about that?

And did he want to expose Gwyn to the sort of risks they were taking?

They drove up to the Lodge and parked. "I'll have to take the batteries in one at a time, I guess," he said dourly.

"Where?" She seemed to rouse herself out of her own thoughts.

Morrow pointed across the lake. "The ship's over there, beyond the trees. Remember the place?"

"Oh!" she exclaimed softly. He couldn't see her face in the darkness.

"I'd better call them," he said, opening the car door. He stepped out into the snow, straightened up beside the car, and swung his helmet over his head. There was a tiny, pocket-sized walkie-talkie built into the helmet collar under his chin; he flipped its switch and waited for the set to warm up.

Then he began calling quietly. "Angel One to Cloud Two. Angel One to Cloud Two--do you hear me? Come in. Over."

"_Cloud Two to Angel One_," Smitty's voice was a tiny, metallic sound inside the helmet. "_Hear you faint but clear. Give your position, over._"

"I'm at the Lodge," Morrow replied. Gwyn was watching him, wide-eyed. "The girl is with me. We've got the stuff. I'll have to bring it one at a time to you, over!"

"_Angel One, are you observed? Repeat, are you observed? Over._"

Morrow scowled in puzzlement. "Nobody here but us chickens," he quipped back. "What're you driving at, over?"

"_Do not attempt to bring stuff here_," Smitty's voice taunted him. "_You might drop something. Remain at your position--we'll come there!_"

Morrow's mouth went slack. Of course! He should've thought--

"_Cloud Two to Angel One! Acknowledge, please. Over._"

"Okay, guys!" he snapped. "Roger, wilco, over and out!" He switched off the set, angrily.

But what was he angry about?

He wasn't sure. Something was wrong, somewhere. Somehow, things just weren't working out right.

"They're--coming here?" Gwyn asked hesitantly.

"Sure," he retorted, his tones unnecessarily brusque. "They're coming here."

"Oh." She gripped the steering wheel and stared ahead, not looking at him.

"Gwyn--" Morrow started around the car, around to her side to open the door and lift her out--

A faint, whining sound came from above as he reached the front of the car. He stopped and looked up, startled.

The sleek, black ship settled down to the white snow before them. A sort of strangling gasp came from Gwyn, then she was out of the car and standing beside him, clutching his arm tightly.

The thick door swung open on the faintly gleaming hull. A figure in bright, snug garments, with a dark globe of a giant head, floated out of the door and came gliding toward them. It swung its legs down and settled to a crouch in the snow in front of them.

"Well?" the strange, dark globe-head drawled. "Don't I rate an introduction?"

* * * * *

The batteries were installed. The old ones they replaced were stored on the cargo deck to be recharged when the ship had returned home.

The forward lounge was bright, warm, and cheerful, with the ultra-modern interior fittings and deep, foam-rubber chairs and the moonlit snow and trees outside the long port-holes' slits. Gwyn sat between Smitty and Morrow, holding her cup out for Foster to pour her coffee. Foster poured with a deft flourish. He had his jacket tied around his waist as an apron.

"I've always maintained," he observed with mock seriousness, "that the woman's touch is absolutely essential to the success of any project attempted by man!"

"Quite true," Smitty agreed, going along with the gag. "Though I'm not a lace-curtains man, mind you. Just lace." He grinned wolfishly at Gwyn.

"Being a married man, myself," Foster went on, pouring himself a cup of coffee, "I have so accustomed my tastes to minor discrepancies as practiced by the fairer sex that I'm no longer disturbed by such. Nylon stockings and underthings hanging all over the bathroom, for example. As one gets used to that sort of thing--"

"Hear, hear!" Smitty chanted.

Foster sprawled in a dignified pose in the chair facing them. "As one gets used to it," he continued unmindfully, "it fades to its proper insignificance. Then a man can truly visualize the worth of feminine companionship--the slippers, the evening paper, the scratching of one's back--"

Gwyn was laughing. The tension was going out of her shapely, young body. Her gaze was mirthful, speculative--especially when her glance slid over to Morrow.

"One finds," Foster went on, "that the prime essence of--of--"

He broke off with a violent sneeze.

Morrow finished his coffee, set his cup aside, and rose. "We'd better take off," he said flatly. He turned and faced them.

Smitty and Foster were looking at him with a silent reproof. Gwyn's eyes were on the floor. She set her cup aside, untouched.

Morrow returned their look without expression. Something danced and giggled and rolled, hugging its sides with laughter, inside him, but he kept it off his face.

"Gwyn!" he said. His tone was sharp, insistent.

She stood up uncertainly. "I'd--I'd better be getting home, too," she said.

"Right." He nodded. "We've got to get off before sunrise catches us--we'll be safe over the Pennsylvania brush country."

"All right." She moved toward him, toward the bulk-head door at his back.

He reached out and touched her shoulder, stopping her before him. "When we get back, I'll write you," he said gruffly. "Meanwhile, you can be straightening out your affairs here, and--in a couple of weeks or so--"

She looked at him, then. Eyes wide open and shining, lips parted.

"Well, don't just _stand_ there!" Smitty bellowed indignantly. "Go on and _kiss her_!"

* * * * *

It was hardly a month later when Morrow stood in the doorway of the sawmill-workshop, his arm around Gwyn, and said, "We need a good mechanical engineer! Can't get anywhere without him--"

And a small, gray-haired man sat up in bed, a few nights later, and stared at the two strange creatures standing before him. Their heads were dark, featureless globes. Their bodies were covered with a bright, shimmering skin. He noted vaguely that the female of the species was stacked quite well.

"Can't do anything without a good structural engineer!" the little man snapped angrily, a few months later, as they were standing around a littered workbench.

A slender, middle-aged woman stepped off the bus and walked up the quiet, dark street toward her home. Then she froze, a scream stuck in her throat, as several weird creatures swarming out of the shadows....

A Northern Airlines pilot glanced out at the port wing of the giant, humming stratoliner. His mouth fell open, then he grabbed his co-pilot's shoulder and pointed out toward the wingtip.

Two sleek, fish-like little ships were flying perfect formation with the big plane, their black silhouettes outlined sharply in the warm summer moonlight.

An Air Force pilot rode his powerful, deadly jet-fighter across the desert country, thinking of the wife and children waiting for him in Los Angeles. Suddenly, he tensed, staring over the side. Far below, a black shape was outlined against the gray earth.

Quickly, the pilot radioed his flight h.q. and fired his guns, blasting their muzzle-covers away. Then he peeled over into a dive and went screaming downward. The black shape appeared on his sights, his thumb pressed the fire-button--no time to set up for auto-fire--

And then, the black shape was gone!

The wind stopped screaming around the little ship as Smitty cut its gravitors back in, halting its helpless plunge. He pointed its needle-nose up the black maw of a deep canyon and glanced upward, grinning as he thought what must be going through that jet jockey's mind. _Which way'd he go?_

Just let 'em try following a "spaceship" through one of these twisting canyons! At a jet-fighter's thousand-mile-an-hour combat speed, just let 'em try!

But, as Morrow discovered, a heliocopter could follow anywhere. It wasn't when he and Gwyn drove into Stockton to get married, but later, when they were playing follow-the-leader in silvery wonderland of clouds under a full moon. He and Gwyn wore gravitor-units strapped to their backs, with the harness incorporated into a swim-suit attire, without helmets or any other garments. It was a warm summer night filled with cool breeze that caressed their skin as they circled and skimmed over and around the bright masses of cloud.

A civilian pilot riding his little ram-jet heliocopter southward toward 'Frisco saw them gliding around the clouds at approximately the same moment Morrow caught sight of him. The 'copter gave chase. Morrow and Gwyn parted, trying to confuse the pilot, but the 'copter swung on its whirling blades and went after Gwyn. Its speed was greater than hers and it was rapidly overtaking her--the pilot jockeying it into position so its blades would strike her. Apparently, the pilot had a morbid sense of humor.

Seeing this, Morrow swung back, intercepted the chase, and swooped low under the 'copter, trying to unnerve the pilot. But the pilot merely waved at him and laughed, shouting something about "_Gonna get one of you, anyway!_" that Morrow barely heard.

He circled and dived at the 'copter again, fumbling at his belt. This time, he pulled up to the side of the 'copter's teardrop cabin, stopping himself by slamming both feet against the cabin. Startled, the pilot jerked the controls and the 'copter dipped its blades at Morrow. He had just enough time before cutting his gravitor and plunging free to fire his flash-bulb pistol directly into the pilot's face.

Checking his fall several hundred feet below, he looked up and saw the 'copter wallowing precariously on auto-controls, its pilot pressing his hands over his eyes. Gwyn came swooping downward, her dark hair billowing out behind her, and called anxiously to Morrow--when he fell, she'd thought the 'copter blades had struck him.

They lost themselves in the starry blackness before the pilot regained his sight.

That spring season, the newspapers broke out in a rash of headlines and front-page stories about ships from outer space and life on other worlds, quoting eye-witness reports and authoritative comments. By summer, the latest best-seller book was a loosely-written volume entitled THE MONSTERS ARE AMONG US!

Those fortunate members of a certain group of thirty-seven men and women broke into grins every time they heard the book mentioned. This group had laid out a collective sum of slightly over a hundred thousand dollars for the construction of a small vacation resort in the Nevada desert.

It was a rather special resort. The buildings were built cheaply, yet were designed by certain talented engineers so that their structures were considerably stronger than those of conventional buildings using costlier materials--a not too difficult feat, considering the outmoded building codes which governed most construction--and were surprisingly sleek and ultra-modern, as well.

The members of this group usually continued their work in plants and laboratories outside. Each year, when their vacation-time came up, they would rush off to a little radio repair shop in Stockton and have a quiet talk in the back room with its youthful proprietor. That night, they would drive up into the mountains to an old, abandoned sawmill, where a strange ship would drop out of the darkness to greet them....

* * * * *

It was a deep, twisting canyon east of the Kawich Range. Sand-stone cliffs towered up nearly three hundred feet on each side and a spring-fed stream trickled along the boulder-strewn floor, curling around clumps of stunted pine trees and dense brush. The wind sometimes tore through the canyon with a deep, mournful whistle.

Farther up, the canyon widened out. A pile of giant boulders formed an island in the middle of the floor and cliff-dwellers had built their dwellings in a large cave half-way up on one wall. Those dwellings were now occupied and joined by slender spans to the three sleek towers rising up from the island. At the foot of the island, a flat space had been cleared and long, low sheds built around it.

In the middle tower overlooking the clearing, which was now occupied by a slender, black ship. Morrow sat before the observation wall of his living room and gazed downward. He wore a simple pair of trunks on his tanned body, and socks and sneakers on his feet.

The man sitting in the chair next to him was tall, broad-shouldered, and husky. There was a two-day growth of beard on the lean face and the soiled white trousers and shirt looked as though they had been slept in. The man's eyes were cautious and tense when he glanced over his shoulder.

Smitty was standing behind his chair. Smitty wore the same casual attire that Morrow did, with the addition of a cartridge belt and holstered pistol about his thighs. The brown hand resting on the pistol-butt--it was a Colt .45 revolver--gave their visitor silent confirmation to the fact that he was, essentially, their prisoner.

"So it took you just six months to find us, did it?" Morrow asked musingly. "Too bad about the shipping records on those plastic construction materials--you must have traced down the shipments from every company in the country before you found that."

"We traced nearly all of them," the visitor conceded. "In fact, this one would've escaped our notice if you'd used any half-reasonable company in Stockton to cover up your use of the materials."

Morrow took cigarettes and matches from the pocket of his trunks and proceeded to light up, calmly. It was nearing sunset and the canyon was already plunged into a blue twilight, in which the lights in the towers and on the small landing field below glowed softly, in soothing pastel colors.

The visitor sat unmoved through the silence. He had been caught inside the old sawmill and flown to the hidden base the night before. His credentials said he was an agent of the United States Bureau of Internal Security, that his name was David Lyle. Morrow glanced at him, speculatively.

"I've told you all I dare about our group, here," he said. "I've told you some of the things we've done--"

"Without explaining them," Lyle interjected wryly.

Morrow smiled. "You wouldn't grasp the technical end of it if I had told you. It's as if I were the first man to invent the wheel and had gathered a few others about me who were now developing the propellor, the fly-wheel, gear-ratios and the piston engine. We can generate enough electrical power in this canyon site to light a large metropolitan city, and we're now working on a means of using broadcast power and perhaps harnessing atomic energy. We already suspect some of the chemical and medical possibilities inherent in gravitor-field conditions--"

"And you have the answer to interplanetary travel at your fingertips!" Lyle muttered dourly.

"Yes, but without the financial means to do it," Morrow agreed. "Interplanetary travel won't be important for another hundred years anyway--if it is at all--since it will take that long for the world's population to reach any dangerous numbers."

"What's that got to do with it?"

"Mankind is due to reach the stage of population where he can no longer feed himself on Earth," Morrow explained. "He simply won't be able to raise enough food on this one planet to feed such numbers. Either that, or there'll be three or four atomic wars in the next few generations--if there's one, there'll be several wars--and population will cease to be a problem.

"There's been some talk of birth-control as the only logical answer to this overpopulation. It may be used, but I doubt its logic. You'll have to tell some people they simply can't have children, and on a world-wide scale you're going to have many cases where they disregard authority and have children anyway. Then, to make your authority stick, you'll have to take those unauthorized children away from their parents and kill them. You'll need a world dictatorship to do that.

"The only answer that's really logical is when this world gets too small to support mankind, go out and settle a couple more. That's where interplanetary travel becomes important, and not before. The astronomers claim there is very little likelihood of any native species of intelligent beings living on either Mars or Venus. I only hope they're right!

"But that isn't answering our present problem, is it?" Morrow grinned reflectively. "We could kill you, Mr. Lyle, but that would gain us nothing. There would be other agents following you. Also, it doesn't sit well with our attitude."

"Just what _is_ your 'attitude' as you call it?" Lyle demanded.

Morrow glanced at him through narrowed eyes and replied, "Just what would _your_ attitude be if you were in our position, Mr. Lyle?"

* * * * *

Later, as Morrow sat alone, Gwyn came out of the kitchen and joined him, perching herself on the arm of his chair.

"It'll work out all right, Bill," she murmured soothingly, running her fingers through his hair. "Don't worry about it."

Morrow shook his head. "We've got to let him go, Gwyn. We can't hold him."

"Then let's just face it," she replied, using her practical feminine approach. "The government is going to learn about our project. What can they do about it? Can they throw us into prison and confiscate all we have here? What'll they do with it? Without us, they won't understand it!"

"How much _will_ they understand, I wonder!" Morrow said dubiously. "Will they realize this could ignite the present world tension into a raging war?"

Gwyn looked out on the silent, brooding canyon. "Would it, Bill? I mean--I'm not doubting you, darling--but are you sure?"

Morrow sighed wearily. "No," he said. "Not sure. I'd just rather not risk it."

"Well, if it happens, it won't be our fault." Gwyn slipped her arms around him and settled down in his lap. "Don't worry, Bill--"

It was nearly midnight when Morrow stood down on the field, with the gleaming, black ship looming beside him, and watched Smitty and Lyle, the agent, walking out toward him.

"Finished your inspection, Lyle?" he called out, his voice sharp, brittle.

"Yah. I've finished." Lyle strode up with a thoughtful expression creasing his forehead. "You got quite a lay-out here."

"Thanks." Morrow hooked his thumb at the ship's open hatchway. "Climb in, Boy Scout. We're taking you back to Uncle."

"Ah-hmmm--just a sec, Morrow." Lyle paused, lighting a cigarette. "I've been thinking about that question you asked me--what my attitude would be in your place."

"Yes?" Morrow stiffened warily.

Lyle grinned. "One of the things that surprises me is that of all the people in your group, none has spilled the beans. How come nobody talked?"

"If you had what we've got, would you talk about it?"