Hochets to M where

A Science Fiction Novel

Rockets to Nowhere

ByPHILIP ST. JOHN

Jacket and Endpaper Designs by Alex Schomburg

Cecile Matschai, Editor Carl Carmer, Consulting Editor

THEJOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY Philadelphia * Toronto

Copyright, 1954 BY PHILIP ST. JOHN

Copyright in Great Britain and in the British Dominions

and Possessions Copyright in the Republic of the Philippines

FIRST  EDITION

Made in the United States of Americm L. C. Card #53-7337

Steppingstones to Space

THERE are always at least two ways of doing things. And sometimes the way that seems the most logical is not the one that is used. Long before the gasoline engine, a motor was invented which worked by heating air. Today we have air engines which are just as good as the gasoline motors. By coincidence, petroleum was discovered at just the time needed for its uses to develop and make our modern engines possible. If it had not been found, we would still have cars and airplanes, but ones powered by heating air, perhaps with an alcohol flame.

Today, it seems almost certain that men will build floating stations in space a thousand or so miles beyond the Earth, and that these will be used to serve as steppingstones into deep space, where the Moon and the planets wait for us. But it is too early to be sure. When Leif Ericson discovered America, it would have seemed certain that the Norse would first take over the New World. Instead, Columbus opened it up for the people of Spain.

A space station will cost twice as much as the atom bomb—and will still take many years to build. There are very few countries that could afford this— two of the richest countries watch each other with

fear and suspicion. Unfortunately, a space station may be used for war as well as for peace. Before we can decide to put up so much money, it may be that the risk of having such a station built will seem so great that other nations will consider it an act of war. Instead of trying to put up its own space station, each nation may have to pay more attention to making sure that no other nation is permitted to build one.

This is a ridiculous situation, but men can always find new ways of getting into such strange positions. When we have grown up enough to behave ourselves on our own world, we can be pretty sure we'll find a way to the other planets, in any event. When the political situation made it impossible for the Norse to use the new land they had found, this development had to wait another five hundred years. Almost certainly, men are not going to wait that long to reach other worlds.

For instance, men may find a way to use atomic power in their rockets. There is no way to do this to our present knowledge. But there may be. In that case, it might be possible to do without the space station and to make the long jump directly to another planet. It will take time and effort—and even lives—to develop such rockets, but it might prove simpler in the long run.

Or perhaps a way might be found to build a station without others knowing of it. We actually have some plastics which are nearly transparent to radar today. It might be possible to build ships that could escape all but the closest observation, and use them to construct almost invisible stations.

A lot of things are always possible. It's even possible that the fear and the hatred with which men have filled their political lives will slowly vanish; we do get along better with other people today than we did a thousand years ago. But since we don't improve steadily—since we seem to do things by an odd mixture of jumping ahead and sliding back at times—we have to consider also that there may be groups which are controlled even more strongly by fear and hatred.

There is more power waiting for the people who first get a station built or get to the Moon than has ever existed in history. A small group with a supply of rocket-powered atomic bombs in such a situation could force most of the world to obey. They would be a tiny target, hard to hit, located where the mighty pull of the Earth would work against all weapons sent against them. They would have the huge target of the world to strike against. They would have the help of Earth's gravity. Also, they would be united in their purpose, whereas Earth might very well be divided into quarreling groups.

Whenever such power can be had, there will always be people who will try to get it and to stop others from having it. Sometimes they try to help mankind with such power, and more often they only want to use it for their own selfish ends. History is filled with bitter, selfish wars for power—and with accounts of great deeds done by countless men who have sacrificed themselves for the good of then-fellow men.

With so many ways to do things, and with the complicated manner in which human beings can behave—singly, in small groups or as nations—it is impossible to predict what will happen. Science fiction doesn't try to tell what vMl happen. All it can do is to ask what would happen if some other thing were true, using the facts of science and all knowledge to do as good a job of guessing as is possible. Sometimes science fiction has been right; more often, it has made mistakes. But even many of the wrong guesses have been things that could have happened if some accident hadn't come along to make people choose a different way of doing the same thing.

It now seems fairly certain that we will build space stations within fifteen or twenty years. Many writers have given us excellent pictures of what will happen then. But now let's look into a world where atomic rockets roar up to a sky where there are supposed to be no space stations—a world where the events have been a little different, but where people are still the same. Let's see what might happen in a world where young men dream of piloting the sky-spurning rockets, even though they are rockets to nowhere!

P. ST. J.

Contents

CHAPTER                                                                                   PAGE

Steppingstones to Space ....            vii

1.    Security Check..................................................... ........ 1

2.    Beyond the Sky....................................................         13

3.    Warning~QRM...................................................         25

4.    Official Inspection............................................. ....... 36

5.    Superhot Rocket..................................................         47

6.    Lost Without Trace............................................         60

7.    Crossed Trails...................................................... ....... 72

8.    Blind Alleys.......................................................... ....... 86

9.    Peace Offering.....................................................         99

10.    Fresh Evidence.....................................................        113

11.    Among the Missing............................................ ...... 126

12.    The Uncoded Letter............................................       139

13.    Security Risk........................................................        152

14.    Blast-Off............................................................... ...... 165

15.    Clear Ether............................................................ ..... 178

16.    Judgment Day...................................................... ...... 190

17.    The Conspirators.................................................       204

be

Chapter 1 Security Check

DAWN was just breaking, but Danny Cross had

been up for hours. Now he stood on the rear [ observation platform of the big monorail express, nervously folding and unfolding the telegram that had called him back from Chicago. Then he spotted a familiar landmark, indicating they were nearing EI Paso, and he shoved the message back into his pocket and headed toward his compartment.

The big atomic-powered locomotive drove on silently at a steady two hundred miles an hour, and the wheels that ran on the single track were cushioned. There was almost no sound as he went down the aisle. This section of the monotrack had been finished in 1980, only a year before, and there was none of the roughness he had felt between Chicago and St. Louis.

The porter was making up his compartment and getting it ready for break-off as Danny came in. He looked up at Danny and pointed toward the telephone on the wall. "Gentleman just called you, sir," he said. "He said you'd be picked up in El Paso. Didn't give his name, sir."

"Must have been my father." Danny zipped up his traveling bag, feeling relieved that he wouldn't have to take the bus to Alamogordo. He found a bill in his wallet and tipped the man. "Thanks."

The porter pocketed the money with a grin, but his eyes were on the Security pass that showed in the wallet. "You one of those atomic scientists or space rocket men?"

Danny shook his head with the instinctive caution of anyone who had grown up near White Sands or Alamogordo. "My parents live there," he answered, truthfully enough, but in a way which made it seem like a complete denial. "Most of us around here have to have Security clearances."

"Oh." The porter looked faintly disappointed. Then he grinned again and went to the compartment door. "Break-off in ten minutes, sir."

Danny heard him locking the seals of the compartment and getting it ready for release at the station. He dropped into his seat and unconsciously reached for the telegram again. Maybe the porter had been flattering him, but it had probably been an honest mistake. He knew that he did look older than his age.

Danny was just eighteen—in fact, today was his birthday. He was nearly six feet tall, however, and a thick wave in his black hair added to his seeming height. He was still too thin, but his slightly nervous manner seemed to indicate that the slimness came from an inner intensity rather than immaturity. His face was still tanned and covered with tiny lines of wind burn from the desert. Together with the faint squint of his gray eyes and the firmness of his hps, it added years to his appearance.

Inwardly, though, he was still a boy and glad of it It would be nice to reach full manhood and go to work on his own; but that could wait until he finished his courses in rocket engineering in Chicago. He frowned at that; his marks had been good, but they should have been better in mathematics. He should have studied instead of using his Christmas vacation to visit his cousin Jet Larson in New York, where Jet was test-piloting rocket planes. But the trip had been worth it.

Danny noticed that his feet were tapping impatiently on the floor and forced himself to relax. He couldn't hurry the express by letting his nerves get on edge. He unfolded the telegram and looked at it for the hundredth time.

REPORT HOME OFFICE JUNE 17 FOR SECURITY RECHECK, it said. He'd barely had time to finish his final examination and dash for the station. But with both his parents engaged in government research, he couldn't argue. Security coverage had been broadened to include all members of a family now, and if there were something wrong with his clearance, it might mean the loss of jobs for both his father and mother. The Government couldn't take chances.

He tried to imagine what had led to this sudden checkup, but there was nothing he could remember doing wrong. With a grunt of disgust at his nerves, he crumpled the message and picked up the Chicago paper he'd already read a dozen times.

BJORNSENKILLED IN ROCKET EXPLOSION

Shake-up expected at White Sands Proving Grounds following death of famed engineer, exclusive source indicates. Third mystery death this year. (See Editorial, page 43.)

There was little real information in the story, beyond the statement that Dr. Bjornsen had been in a new rocket that had exploded at an altitude of a thousand miles, and that Dr. Stetinius and Dr. Vasilokow had also mysteriously died during the year. The editorial hinted darkly at sabotage and foreign spies, as well as carelessness. It finished with the eternal question: "Where's our space station?"

Danny shook his head. His father, Henry Cross, was actually an atomic scientist working on nuclear rocket fuel at Alamogordo. Anything that hit the White Sands section would affect him, since he was connected with the rockets. It might be the reason for Danny's hasty recall.

But things didn't make sense. Bjornsen had been head of the engineering section and forty years old. He had no business in a rocket. That was for regular test pilots, like Jet. No wonder there would be an investigation. Danny shook his head again, remembering Bjornsen—a small, intense man with a quick smile and an unusual amount of common sense. It was impossible that Bjornsen would have tried to fly an experimental rocket himself!

Outside, there was a sharp click, and a faint jolt reached Danny. He glanced out to see the long approach to the station at El Paso. The compartment in which he'd traveled from Chicago had split off from its place on the train, dropped wheels to a sidetrack, and was now spinning down its rail toward the station, with automatic brakes slowing it down. A few other compartments had also broken free; and half a dozen were leaving the station, picking up speed to join the express and fit themselves into the big sockets vacated by the compartments that had dropped off.

The development of such detachable compartments had made it possible for the expresses to compete with air travel and to cross the country in fifteen hours, without ever stopping.

Danny got off as the compartment stopped, and headed for the waiting room. No one was waiting for him yet. He toured the station to make sure, then headed outside to the main entrance to wait, noticing that the papers now carried no mention of Bjornsen's death. News Security rules must have been clamped down—and that only made the first account seem more real. Just how bad was the trouble here, anyhow?

"Hey, Danny!" The voice jerked his eyes up to see a low, three-wheeled sports car slide to the curb beside him. The plastic-bubble top flipped back and a man of about thirty jumped out, with motions as lithe and quick as those of a cat. He was shorter than Danny, but more firmly built, with a certain cockiness in the open grin and snapping green eyes. His hand caught Danny's bag and dumped it into the rear, while his other arm slipped around the boy's shoulder in a quick, hard squeeze. "Hi, kid! You're saved. Cousin Jet to the rescue!"

"Jet!" Danny grinned and grabbed for the other's hand. He'd gotten over some of his hero worship for his cousin, but Jet was still pretty much his idea of what a real man should be. "Where's the ambulance? Don't tell me they let you on the road without one following you? And what the heck are you doing here?"

Jet laughed, and pulled Danny into the little car beside him. "They've given up, kid. And I'm top rocket tester here now—assigned two months ago. I've been holding it as a surprise. Hipe!"

The motor roared to life, and the car jumped back, swinging out, and then leaped forward, seeming to touch the ground with its bottom plate as it ducked in and out of traffic. Jet held one of the new unlimited licenses, which meant he was free to forget legal speed limits, since his co-ordination gave him complete command of the car. His cockiness, though, was only a mask over a brain too intelligent to take useless chances. In minutes, they were out of traffic and heading along the new road that led directly through White Sands to Alamogordo, just skirting the Organ Mountains. The sports car really opened up then, with the speedometer hitting better than a hundred and fifty, and the motor roar drowning out any attempt to talk.

At the border between Texas and New Mexico— the entrance to the Proving Grounds—they had to stop while guards checked their Security passes before letting them go on.

"How are Dad and Mom?" Danny asked quickly-

Jet frowned slightly, but grinned quickly. "Fine, but up to their necks. They're going to try to wait for you, unless we get held up too long. I meant to tell you—I'm supposed to take you straight to Security before we go on. Chapman's waiting there."

"But . . ." Danny felt as if a fist were clutching his stomach. He couldn't have done anything to make that much trouble! "Jet, am I on the carpet, or is it this Bjornsen business?"

"Shh! We'll talk about that after Security, kid! But —well, I don't think you have anything to worry about. We've all been getting rechecks here." Jet took back their passes and opened the throttle again. The burning white sands that had given the name to the Proving Grounds began to slip by in a blur again.

Danny sat back, trying to digest it. There wasn't much question now. Bjornsen must have vanished— and it was giving plenty of trouble; enough so that he couldn't even be permitted to go home to his parents without another check. Long ago, Security had found that it was impossible to keep anyone from talking in his own family, and had begun checking everyone, down to the mice in the walls, according to the jokes. And because Security couldn't take chances, they had to operate on the idea that men were guilty until proved innocent. Even the smallest hint might give some inimical foreign power a vital hint that the United States could not afford to have known elsewhere.

In a surprisingly short time, Jet was swinging the car up to the curb in front of the official building. It was early, but Security was already busy at work, and the halls were filled. Jet found a vacant phone booth and nodded toward it.

"I'll wait here and keep in touch with your folks. Good luck, Danny!"

Chapman was smiling tiredly as a girl led Danny into his office. He stood up, held out a hand and then motioned to a chair. His attitude gave some reassurance to Danny, but not too much. Security men were always polite.

"It won't be long, Daniel," the man said. "Just a few questions. But remember you're under oath, and even a half-lie won't go here. Now—why did you stop going with Alma Jameson?"

It caught Danny off guard; he'd expected the usual routine questions first. Anyhow, he'd gone out with the daughter of the assistant professor only twice. He blushed a little, but met Chapman's eyes. "Because her father got mad when I told him I couldn't answer his questions about my father's work."

"Umm." Chapman made a mark on a paper. "Why didn't you answer? Was he asking anything not released?"

"No, sir. But—well, he kept trying to trip me up on the first couple of things I did answer, and I didn't know whether I could answer without letting something slip."

"Did you suspect he might be a Security undercover man trying to trip you, Daniel?"

Danny nodded reluctantly. "I guess I thought of it. Yes, I did wonder about that."

"He wasn't." Chapman laughed bitterly. "But unless he leams to control his darned fool curiosity, he'll meet someone who is. Okay, why did you decide to go to New York on your Christmas vacation?"

There were quite a few more questions, and Danny was sweating as he tried to be honest—and not to seem scared. Chapman nodded and went on making marks on his papers. Finally he put them away and seemed to relax.

"Just one more thing," he said finally. "We naturally had your wastebaskets turned over to us at our local branch. Oh-ho, so you didn't think of that, eh?" He chuckled, and drew out a thick sheaf of papers that had all been straightened and bound together. "Anyhow, what's this one? 'Vanadium . . . stadium . . . radium . . . scintillate . . .' and a bunch of cross-marks and numbers."

Danny studied the piece of scrap paper, and his face felt hot as he remembered it. "I—I was trying to write poetry," he said at last. "I was trying to get something different for Miss Jameson. And those marks—well, I'm not good at it, and I was checking off the syllables and accents. She liked it, though!"

Chapman reached out for Danny's old Security card, and tore it up slowly. Danny felt himself sweating again, but after what seemed a century, the man began filling out a new one, this time on red cardboard trimmed with black. He snapped a quick picture with a little instantaneous camera and pasted it onto the card. "Okay, Danny, this is a little better than your other one. You can go home. This is good for thirty days. After that, if your record passes all the way up, you'll get a permanent one. Keep your mouth closed except to others with the same card and there'll be no trouble."

Danny arose to go, but Chapman looked up again. "You might as well know officially, Daniel—you'll hear it soon enough, anyhow. Bjornsen was blown up—and so were six other men and four other rockets here, in the last three months! We are in for rough going here, and we don't know much more than you do now—except that there's one less paper in Chicago until it gets a new management! So watch yourself. If you hear anything, report it here at once! So long, Daniel!"

Jet was in the phone booth, but he hung up before Danny reached him. He looked at the new Security card in silence and nodded. He looked as if he'd never had any doubt, but Danny found his own legs still wobbly. How could he have guessed that the cleaning woman at his college dorm had been turning over everything?

"Tempus is fidgeting," Jet said. "Let's get some scat out of baby!" He glanced at the dashboard clock as they climbed in, snapped down the top, and began finding holes around other cars. It was less than ten minutes later when he swung the sportster up beside the small adobe ranch house.

"Danny!" His mother had the door open and was running toward the car before he could get the top up. She was still slim, though handling five-gallon crocks and special plant tanks all day had made her muscles too prominent for beauty. She was as tall as Danny, with the same gray eyes, though her hair was turning white. She was intelligent enough to be one of the nation's leading biophysicists, working on the development of new plants by radiation, and she looked it.

She caught Danny up, practically lifting him out of the seat, and spun around, hugging him. "You big overgrown lunkl" she cried, though there was the hint of tears in her voice. "Danny, it's good to see you. We were afraid Jet couldn't get you here before we left. Henry! Danny's here!"

The door opened again, and a slightly pudgy, middle-height man with drooping shoulders came out, carrying a brief case. His hair was sandy-brown^ except for a bald spot, and he looked like a somewhat elderly bank clerk beaten down by life. But

Danny knew his father had a better brain than his mother, even, and plenty of courage when it seemed important, though the problems of daily living never seemed to matter too much to him.

"I know, Mother." He caught one of Danny's hands and squeezed it. Pleasure covered the lines of strain on his face. "Looks as if Jet didn't quite get you killed, boy!"

"Not quite," Danny admitted with a grin. Then he sobered. "But let's talk about it over breakfast. I didn't eat on the train, and I'm starved for Mom's cooking!"

The others squirmed uncomfortably. His father shrugged. "Breakfast's on the table, boy," he said apologetically. "Work's driving us a little. We're overdue—and right now ... Look, we'll have a good get-together tonight. Won't we, Mother?"

Mrs. Cross was already in Jet's car. "Of course we will, Danny. Henry! We're late! Come on!"

The older man nodded unhappily and squeezed in. The top began coming down, and Jet swung around on one front wheel. Danny dropped back, watching them leave. Then, just before the top clicked shut, his mother shouted back to him. "Oh, Danny . . . Happy birthday!"

He was suddenly alone. He picked up his bag and turned into the empty house to eat a half-cold breakfast. But the food didn't matter; the thickness in his throat had completely ruined his appetite.

Chapter 2 Beyond the Sky

ANNY had unpacked the few things he'd brought with him and now he sat in his room, trying to think of something he wanted to do. As a last resort, he had pulled out some of his model rockets, but they aroused no enthusiasm in him. Instead, they kept reminding him of happier birthdays.

He went to the window and stood staring out at the little garden in the back. But there wasn't much to see. His mother always planted, but before it could develop she'd be so busy with other things that about all there was to see was a fine crop of weeds. Across the alley, he could see Jane Hammond busy digging in the Hammond garden. He considered going out, but gave up the idea. Then, having completely made up his mind that he'd study up on his mathematics, he changed quickly into rough clothes and headed down to dig out some of the weeds.

There was a roar outside and the sliding of tires on gravel. Jet came bounding in before Danny could get to the door. "Hey, kid! Hey—oh, there you are! Danny, why didn't you tell me it was your birthday?"

"Didn't seem important, I guess," Danny said, untruthfully. "What's another birthday?"

"Oh-ho, like that? So young and oh so bitter!

Button up your lower lip so it won't drag the ground and follow me. Come along!" He laughed, and hit Danny across the rump. "Giddy-ap, Dobbin. Just because people have to work is no reason for you to mope by yourself. Look around you, kid. It's a gorgeous day!"

They were outside now, and Jet swung his arm around, ending with a sweep over the Sacramento Mountains to the east, and up toward the Sun.

Danny sank into the sportster again. "It's always a gorgeous day here," he said.

"How wise we are! And I suppose because of that you don't care about the weather? And you don't care that your Cousin Jet has been bursting blood vessels and moving mountains to help you celebrate."

For a change, Jet was driving at a leisurely sixty. Now he swung onto Route 70, heading toward White Sands. "Gotta report in on a routine test run," he explained. "Then we'll celebrate."

In spite of himself, Danny felt his spirits rise. "I'd better change my clothes first," he objected, looking down at the old levis he had on.

"Nope. Perfect as you are. Hey, what are we creeping for? Scat, baby!"

The roar of the motor cut off the rest of Danny's objections. He reached up to adjust the polaroid bubble to cut off some of the burning light of the Sun. They passed the guards at the border of the huge Proving Grounds without question; evidently

Jet's car was already well-known. Then they swung off to the left and down toward the main field. Jet drew up to a parking lot and pointed.

"Look at the beauties, kid!"

Danny looked. Beyond the buildings lay the rockets. They thrust their sharp noses up toward the sky, gleaming in the Sun. When he was younger, each rocket had been enclosed in a heavy scaffolding structure, but now they had been perfected enough so that they could take off and land on the three retractable legs that projected from the rear of each.

Jet and Danny came around the buildings. There they could look out directly onto the field where the tank trucks and servicemen were busy on the big machines. Danny gasped. "Hey, I never saw that model before!"

"You sure didn't, Danny. That's just off the drafting boards. Big, isn't it?"

It was huge, as rockets went. It towered up into the air a good hundred feet, with broad vanes running out from the rear, each with an exhaust tube. In the sunlight it shone like a mirror.

Jet motioned toward it. "Go on and look it over, kid. I'll be out as soon as I check in here. I've got to take her up on a routine run this morning."

"They won't let me within half a mile of her," Danny objected.

"With a black and red pass they will. Kid, we're cleared. With a family mixed up in both rockets and atomics, we either have complete clearance for both or they tell us to pack and get!" He whistled at a man driving by on a motor scooter. "Red, take the kid out to the Hawk, will you?"

"Pass," the blondish-red-haired man said automatically. He looked at Danny's pass and nodded. "Hop on."

After three more examinations of his credentials, Danny stood outside the Hawk, examining it more closely than he'd been able to study any but the oldest ships. It was built like a dream. After the development of atomic-powered rockets in '63, the old cumbersome idea of three-stage rockets had been abandoned, and design had gone back to something like the early V-2's. It looked capable of reaching the Moon in a single hop.

But Danny knew better. Until he'd found that his eyesight was a trifle under perfection, he'd always dreamed of piloting one of these, and he knew almost everything that could be learned from the regular books about space flight. Real flight beyond the Earth was still something for the future.

The terrific expense of using the chemical fuels in a three-stage rocket had held up the idea of a space station around the Earth until the promise of atomic power had come true. Then success had always seemed just around the corner. The fuels they had now were good enough—but there was no refractory lining for the big jets that could stand up well enough to make carrying any real load up to such an orbit possible. Next year, they kept saying;

but next year and the next hadn't produced a suitable material, though his father spent his time working on it.

They had a fuel that would take them to the Moon without the need for a station in space. But they'd need better tube lining before they could even build such a station and use it to go further on. Besides, with the political situation the way it had been for the past twenty years, any nation that built such a station would at once be suspected of trying to grab too much power, and might find itself involved in a bitter war before the station could be built.

Then Danny frowned. Or was that the answer? Bjornsen should never have been in an experimental rocket. But if they had a station up there, secret still, the news of his death might be only a cover-up for the fact that he'd been taken up to work on it. It would be slow and expensive to build a station-but if they were building one . . .

Jet came up to cut off his thoughts. "Come on aboard," he said.

"Huh?" It caught Danny by surprise. He'd been trying for years to get permission to go aboard one of the ships, but it had seemed hopeless.

Jet was swarming up the rope ladder to the little entrance port eighty feet up. He looked down and grinned. "Sure, come on, Dan. I cleared it. They know you'll be coming in."

Danny wasted no more time. He was touching Jet's heels as the man pushed through the little entrance. Jet found a switch, and the light came on, while the outer door swung shut and the inner one opened. A real airlock, Danny thought; they must be getting close, if they bothered to equip ships with such things, which would be useful only if someone had to go out in space. Maybe he was right. Maybe they were building a space station!

Under him was only the heavy shielding of the atomic motors, but above was a tightly packed group of machinery and controls, with a number of television screens in front of the heavy, padded pilot chair. The ships had no windows or ports, but instead used scanners that delivered clear pictures to the screens inside. It had proved more convenient in the big ships to do it that way, rather than to try to build in quartz windows without destroying the strength of the skin. Jet pulled himself up the narrow little passage and cut on the screens. He pointed to the other heavy chair. "Sit down, Dan—or lie down. You can see as well from here."

Although his back was horizontal to the ground, it was the most comfortable chair Danny had ever felt. "You carry passengers?" he asked.

"Sure—sometimes on a test it takes an engineer to watch while I put the ship through her paces. Not much to see, is there?"

Danny had no complaints on that. True, the machinery was all covered and crowded together until it seemed to make no sense. But he could see the tanks and controls for the air the pilot must breathe, and he knew this was the real thing. Even the smell was different from anything else he'd experienced.

"Happy birthday, kid," Jet said, grinning at him. "We didn't really forget you. I've been getting permission all week, provided you passed your test. Like it?"

Danny nodded, and there was a lump in his throat. He blinked his eyes—and then blinked again as Jet's hands touched the panel. "Up!" he said into a microphone.

"Hawk up!" a voice answered. "Okay, Jet, you and your passenger have the sky."

Now Jet's fingers hit the keys before him. From behind, there came a bull-throated roaring sound. The ship trembled, heaved, and groaned. The roar increased, and Danny felt himself being pressed back into his seat as if his weight had suddenly doubled. Then it seemed to be triple normal, until he found it hard to breathe. He forced his eyes to the rear screen and gasped.

The ground was already far under them, while the edge of one of the great jets could be seen, spouting pale-blue fire downward. The Earth looked miles away and was growing smaller. He could already see El Paso, Las Cruces, Alamogordo and the little mountain chains.

"Jet!" he gasped.

Jet was busy, but he stole a quick glance at Danny and grinned. The false weight of the high acceleration didn't seem to bother him. "I told you we'd celebrate. We're going beyond the sky and take a look at old Mother Earth the way she should be seen. Come on, honey!"

He was swinging the ship now into a natter drive that would change most of their upward course into a rotation around the planet. The air must be thin enough not to hinder much, since he stepped up the acceleration even higher, making it seem as if Danny had an elephant sitting on his chest. Ahead, the sky was a cold black, with stars showing up on the color screen, some yellow, others red, a few blue —but none quite like the stars as seen from Earth.

"Hold on, kidl" Jet called. His hands slapped onto the controls again, and everything was suddenly silent. The weight vanished as the jets were cut off and they drifted on by pure momentum. Now there was a complete absence of weight, as if Danny were drifting in water that had no temperature and wasn't wet.

Danny had heard a lot about space sickness when people went into free fall where there was no feeling of gravity. Actually, though, gravity was pulling back on them and on the ship, but not felt because it pulled as hard on one as the other, balancing out; as it slowed Danny's body, it also slowed the ship. Gravity itself can't be felt—only the resistance to it. A man could feel the ground resist his feet, his feet resist his legs, his legs resist his body, and so on; but without such resistance from the ground he'd have fallen steadily without any feeling of weight.

Strangely, except for a faint dizziness, it felt good. Jet threw him an approving look. "You'll do, kid. They made a mistake not taking you for pilot training. You're a natural. Want to see how the controls work?"

He waited for Danny to pull himself easily over to the control panel, and began explaining things. "They almost fly themselves," he admitted. "The Hawk would probably land herself without a scratch if I didn't touch her after hitting the landing button."

Later he sent Danny back to his seat and again fired the rockets, bringing them into an even circular orbit around the Earth.

"A thousand miles up," he said when it was over. "We could drift on here forever without falling back to Earth, just as the Moon does. This is where they always expected to build the space station."

"Are you sure they didn't?" Danny asked. He leaped into his theory quickly. Maybe they didn't have perfect tube linings yet, but if the Hawk could reach the orbit with him aboard, it was fairly obvious that a space station could be built. It might be slow and expensive, but . . .

"Not a chance," Jet disagreed, finally. "I've been up here a hundred times—and you see that screen over there? Well, it's a radar gadget to show up meteors, if there are any—and you'd better pray it stays blank, too! Anything like a space station would show up sooner or later. Anyhow, we wouldn't dare build one. No other power could afford to let us get one up where we'd have an observatory and bombing platform in space. And we feel the same about other attempts. Nope! For political reasons, we won't dare build one now. We've got to get to the Moon directly—and that's quite a ways off. Here, you watch Africa down there. I've got to check instruments. This isn't just a joy ride; at the cost, we have to make every trip count."

Danny watched the world slip by, with the Hawk circling the Earth at a rate of once each two hours. He tried to make the most of it, knowing that he'd probably never have another chance, at least for years. For the most part, the Earth was a great bluish ball, covered in big patches by fuzzy stuff that must be cloud blankets. Sometimes huge areas were clear. He saw the Mediterranean clearly and was surprised at how much it looked the way it was shown on a big globe.

Then Jet was back. "Weather check this time," he said. "We get our money's worth. From up here we can spot air conditions and map out the patterns accurately. The photos and data I take back will let the meteorologists figure out the weather for at least a week in advance."

Then he began the trip down. It was the reverse of the one coming up, except that near the end they hit the atmosphere in a steep glide, with power off. The resistance of the air would slow down a lot of their speed, and it was just a matter of judging the right angle to bring them back over the Firing Area at White Sands.

At the end, he tipped the ship up sharply on its tail and came roaring down on a cushion of flame over the cleared area from which he'd taken off. They landed with a bit of a jolt, but the shock absorbers on the tripod legs soaked that up.

Danny let out a sigh as they began to leave the Hawk. He could no longer convince himself that the ground at the end of the ladder was real. His eyes were focused on the sky above, where genuine reality lay, and he moved down mechanically. Even the feeling of the Earth seemed wrong after he'd finished the downward climb.

Then he swung around—to see his father standing there, smiling a trifle bitterly. "You like it, eh, boy?"

"Gee!" Danny tried to put it into words, but nothing would come. His father seemed to understand, though.

"I'd blackmail Jet into taking me up if I were ten years younger," he said, and there was a touch of hunger in his eyes as he stared at the ship, where Jet was just climbing down. "Be back soon, Jet?"

"Just going to turn in my reports. Ten minutes. Hey, Uncle Hank, that kid of yours is a spaceman. He's got a stomach for it!"

Danny flushed, but felt as if he were being knighted by the King of England. Then he sobered. "How come you aren't at work, Dad?"

"Oh, that!" Cross shrugged, and the bitterness came back to his eyes, with something like fear in them beside it. "We're all off. My work's going to have to be scrapped—start all over. We've been following some trails of ben David. You know."

Danny nodded. David ben David was the greatest living expert on refractories and atomic shielding, though his father was only slightly below him.

"Well," Cross continued after a second. "Well, we ran out. Supposed to get new information from him today. Only—it's happened again. Ben David's disappeared. Testing a rocket with the new ceramic tube liners—and they say it blew up. I. . ."

He started to say something more and dropped it. But he had said enough. The disappearances were no longer merely suspicious; they were dangerous even to men in refractory work. And Cross was the best man left!

The older man shrugged. "So I dropped out here. Thought maybe we might pick your mother up. But Danny—not a word to her yet!"

It was the first time his father had ever suggested that.

Chapter 3 Warning — QRM

I

HERE was a strange grapevine in all these supposedly tight communities under Security, which made secrets almost impossible. Outsiders heard nothing, but those in the group always seemed to have the latest information at once. It was partly because of this that Security no longer cleared a worker, but included his whole family, and then made no effort to prevent such leaks inside the group.

Danny's mother had obviously learned. She came out to the waiting car and settled in the back with her husband. She didn't say anything, but one of her hands came down over his, and her face was too carefully unworried.

"I'm sorry about this morning, Danny," she said. "We wanted to hold a party for you, but we didn't know until the last minute that you'd get your quiz at once."

"Sure, Mom," he said, and now he meant it. "Forget it." He sent an inquiring glance at his father.

The older man began telling something about his day, and Danny listened carefully. The old code was still working. His father was varying short and long words like dots and dashes of Morse code—which was what they were. "Forget it," the message came. "Well have to talk about it openly now."

But most of the ride home was made in silence. His mother made some mention of difficulty in getting plants she was working on to breed true to type, but it wasn't as interesting as usual, in the atmosphere of gloom. Danny noticed the same worry on the faces of others as they passed them.

His mother went into the house, and Jet wandered up to his room to finish some reports. Danny and his father remained outside. The older man seemed particularly uncertain with none of the usual homework he usually did. Finally he pointed out to the little shack in the back yard where Danny had always kept his amateur radio equipment. He had had a ham station since he was twelve, operating on fourteen megacycles frequency.

"Didn't notice anything different?" Cross asked.

Danny stared at the shack. The tower still stood, with the antenna and rotator at the top. He walked quickly to the shack, opened the door and looked inside. It was neat and clean, but just as he'd left it. There was no new equipment. He swept his eyes over the racks and from the crystal-controlled oscillator section to the final stage.

His father pointed toward the wall, and Danny turned. It took him a full minute to realize that now there was a door where none had been before. It was painted like the rest of the little shack, and looked very much at home.

He threw the door open and gasped. Beyond it there was an extension, out of view of the house, which was why he'd missed it before. It was obviously a small garage—and inside it was a tiny little three-wheeled British sports car, something like Jet's bigger job. This would barely hold two people, though.

"A Morris!" he cried.

"Yep!" His father grinned, and ran affectionate hands over the gleaming enamel and the polaroid bubble top. "I broke it in for you, too. Better than sixty miles to the gallon, and she'll hit up to around seventy-five. Not really fast, but it'll get you around. From your mother and me, Danny. Just a sort of birthday present. Anyhow, you'll need it around here, now."

"Mom should be here," Danny protested. Then he opened the top. "Want to go for a spin?"

"Your mother wanted me to show it to you. Okay, though, we might as well try it out together. But not too far."

Somehow, having a car of his own made driving seem entirely different to Danny. The little machine purred out of the automatic doorway of the tiny garage. He found a back street and opened up the motor a bit, but pulled back when the speedometer began nudging the legal speed limit.

"It's a honey," he said. "Dad, you're the best—and Mom, too. But I'll bet it was your idea."

"As a matter of fact, it was hers. I had a lucky accident—the auditors went over my sick leave and vacation time and found they owed me some money for the last few years. So we got this. Better turn back, Danny!" Cross looked at his watch. Then he cleared his throat. "And, look boy, if we don't put on as merry a celebration tonight, well . . ."

Danny nodded. Under the circumstances, knowing even as much as he did now, he wouldn't have minded if they had forgotten his birthday. He frowned through the twilight as he headed back. The idea that his father might be in danger was hard to get used to, but it left a sick feeling in his stomach. They'd always been close to each other, though his mother usually did all the demonstrating of affection.

But the celebration was there, all the same. She had found time to bake a cake, or had already had it baked, complete with eighteen candles. And it was the kind of dinner he'd missed during the months in Chicago. By the time the last crumb of cake was finished, he was stuffed, and he felt that his birthday was properly taken care of.

Then a telephone call in guarded words from one of Cross's associates brought the troubles all back. Danny's father returned to the living room, shaking his head. "Dwyer's scared. He's afraid his wife won t get clearance, and he'll have to get out. Or else he's afraid she will... I don't know. Maybe he wants to get a good excuse to leave."

"You can't blame him," Mrs. Cross said.

"No. I'm afraid it does look like sabotage of some kind, Mother. I've gotten some hints that aren't circulating yet—and it looks as if this has been going on for quite a while. Only now they've started it wholesale. Remember Stevenson?"

Danny could remember the man, at least by reputation. He'd been chiefly responsible for licking the problems of harnessing atomic power to the rockets in a way which would not lead to radiation of all kinds being spouted out of the jets. He was practically responsible for modem space ships. But five years before he had announced he was retiring, and nothing had been heard of him since.

"I understand the Government's looking for him," Cross said. "And they can't find him."

"But his farm . . ." Danny objected.

"Farm nothing! Nobody apparently ever saw him after he made that announcement."

The possibility added a chill to the atmosphere. It seemed impossible that any foreign power could be kidnaping the leading men in the various fields of rocket research; and yet, it was almost easier to believe that than to think that both Bjornsen and ben David could have been blown up in rocket ships so close together.

"It still looks like a space station to me," Danny declared to Jet. "Maybe you just have been routed so you 11 be in opposition to it in its orbit. Or maybe they're building it farther out, Jet."

"No. I wasn't routed in any special way," Jet denied, but he looked worried.

Cross shook his head. "As a matter of fact, I've been thinking of space stations, too. But they wouldn't build one farther out—too far and it isn't as useful, is harder to reach . . . lots of reasons. And it could be spotted from Earth, anyhow. The UN has police everywhere looking for such a station. Every rocket has to have its course announced in advance to them, so they won't think it's the beginning of a station."

The United Nations had received a police force to patrol the world, finally, on the basis of watching atomic-bomb material. But actually, the fear of a space station in the hands of some private nation had been behind this move. Any group that got a space station up first would practically be in a position to tell the rest of the world to obey or be destroyed. Likewise, any nation starting such a station would be practically declaring war on the rest of the world.

Theoretically, the world police force should have made for peace. But actually, the dangers of modern science giving any nation superiority had been so great that the fears had grown steadily from year to year. Nobody dared to start war now, but no nation could afford to miss the first warlike act of another. It needed only a spark to set off general destruction.

Money had even been appropriated from the nations once to have the UN build its own space station. But the congresses and parliaments had balked after the money was delivered—when they began to try to find a way to control the station. There was no way of making sure it wouldn't fall into an enemy's hands through the group sent up to handle it.

Mrs. Cross had been sitting silently, staring out of the window. Now she turned around, and her voice was doubtful. "Henry, are you sure we shouldn't give it up here? You can always go back to industry, you know. And if something here is going to . . ."

"Nonsense. What would you do, Mother? Go back to teaching at some two-bit college where you had to do nine-tenths teaching and one-tenth research?"

"There are worse things," she said.

Cross shook his head with a peculiar absent-minded determination. He wandered across the room and began fingering a tiny tube liner, made of his first ceramic material. "No, Mother. When your employer is in trouble, you don't quit. How'd it have been if I'd quit in World War II just because I didn't like being in the middle of the fight? I could have gotten out—I was only sixteen in forty-four. But you wouldn't have married that kind of man. We've got to find out what's going on, and then we've got to lick it!"

She sighed and turned on the television set, but it was obvious that she wasn't seeing any of the gaudy-colored costumes of the chorus on the screen. Cross drifted across the room and seemed to discover an old copy of Nucleonics for the first time. He buried his nose in it, walking around idly while he read. But his eyes, over the edge of the magazine, were on Mrs. Cross.

Danny felt his foot begin tapping the floor, and the nerves prickling along his skin. He made a perfunctory excuse and got up quickly, heading out to his radio shack.

For a while he debated whether to take his little car or to put out a CQ call on the radio set for someone to answer. But in the car he'd only have a chance to worry more. Maybe if he used the transmitter he'd find some interesting ham with whom he could talk. At least he could fulfil his promise to call the guy in Chicago—the one who had the fancy rig he'd inspected.

Idly, he flipped on his receiver. It wasn't as fancy as the one he'd seen among all the equipment that guy—what was his name, George Lipsky?—had, but it pulled in the signals well enough. Out here there wasn't usually too much QRN; natural static was bad at times, but this was one of the better receiving periods. As for QRM—well, there was always quite a bit of man-made static from the electronic equipment at all the laboratories and factories, but tonight things were quieter than usual.

Finally he warmed up his rig, tested it and looked up the call letters of Lipsky in his little book. He pulled the microphone to him and began calling.

Surprisingly, he got an answer almost at once. "I read you fine, OM," Lipsky informed him. "S-6. You put out a clean signal, boy. Kind of hoped I might hear from you. I meant to ask you about your rig before. Crystal-controlled oscillator, I remember.

But you never told me what kind of array you were using. H-beam?"

"Right," Danny acknowledged. "With a chicken wire reflector. But the real trick's in the way I match my line impedance . . ."

It went on that way for a while. Hams hadn't changed any while Danny was away getting education stuffed into his head. They took his set to pieces with words, from his microphone transformer to the type of motor he was using to rotate his antenna array, and what he could do about some of the vertical polarization he'd suspected he was putting out.

"What kind of DX?" Lipsky asked finally.

It was a sore point with Danny. Where he was located, the mountains apparently put him in a hollow where the distant signals came in poorly. He could drive his own signal out, but he seldom got even the high-powered rigs from beyond the United States and other North American countries. Lip sky's idea of putting an antenna up in the mountains and then running a boosted line down to his set was fine—except that it would have taken a small fortune.

Lipsky indicated his sympathy. Naturally, it was only an excuse to discuss his own record of pulling in signals from all over the world. And apparently he'd made a hobby of learning as many languages as he could so that he could follow the other conversations.

"Most of it comes through in tight code that a cipher expert couldn't crack without a lot of work.

And some comes in on a scrambled beam—which I can't unscramble, of course," he admitted. "Elsewhere, they apparently don't have as many hams, but they sure have a lot of official gabbling on the same frequencies. I did get one call from someone speaking Polish the other night."

"Probably right in Chicago," Danny razzed him. "You can hear Polish spoken anywhere."

"Not like this. Wait'll I tell you. He kept calling some station there, sounding like it was a first-rate emergency. I tried to answer, but he wasn't having any. Then he must have got his party. He kept asking for a Miss Lobrowski. Then he tried some kind of crude code—there was a bunch of QRM here then from some guy who won't shield his arc-welder. But I guess the other guy didn't get the code, and the first guy fell back on plain language. I figure he got rattled. 'Tell her her father's disappeared,' he says. 'Disappeared into thin air. Blew up in a rocket.'"

Danny grabbed his microphone in suddenly moist hands. "He blew up in a rocket? What name was that, George? Was it Vladimir Lobrowski?"

"Hey, that's right. But then you know what happened? He said about three words more, and all of a sudden there was the biggest jamming of the ether you ever heard. The censors must have cut in with everything they had to drive him off. When the jamming ended, his signal was off the air."

Lipsky chuckled. "Don't tell me that was Chicago, Dan. They don't do things like that here."

"You're sure it was Vladimir Lobrowski who disappeared?" Danny asked.

"That's right. And they cut him off right in the middle . . ."

Suddenly there was a sharp sound in the speaker, and a harsh voice lashed out of it. "This is the office of the Federal Communications Commission. Control Division. The following stations are producing signals unacceptable for communication transmission. They will go off the air at once and stand by for inspection of their sets or forfeit their licenses."

It gave their call letters, then clicked off, while Danny stared at the radio. He reached over and cut his rig, making the proper notations in his logbook. But he couldn't pull his eyes away from his loudspeaker.

So they didn't do it here, he thought. It seemed that Lipsky was wrong.

And it also seemed that the United States wasn't the only group having troubles. Vladimir Lobrowski had been one of the real geniuses of design for atomic rocket tubes. His work had been hush-hush secret, but it was known that he'd managed to make standard refractory linings stand up for nearly double the normal use. Now he had disappeared.

Danny started in to tell his father. Then he shook his head. Cross had enough trouble already. And Danny would be lucky if they didn't take away his Security pass for this. He didn't want his father to miss sleep worrying about that.

Chapter 4 Official Inspection

nANNY was on tenterhooks the next morning, his nervousness increased because he hadn't gotten much sleep the night before. He had even tried to persuade himself that either he or Lipsky had been putting out a bad signal, but he knew better. He'd tested his signal earlier. Besides, it was crystal-controlled, not a home-built little variable frequency oscillator that could have gone sour. As for Lipsky's rig, it was of broadcast station quality all through.

They'd said it was the FCC—and the call might have come from them. But it was a Security man Danny expected. He kept looking out of the window, studying the street in front of the house until he caught his mother watching him. Then he had to give that up and sit there with his ears strained, waiting for the sound of the doorbell.

But when it did come, it was only the postman, though the sound seemed to make him pop out of his skin. Jet was nearest the door and came back with the usual collection of advertisements and bills, along with a letter from some distant relative of Danny's mother whom he'd never met—and didn't want to hear about that morning.

But at last both of Danny's parents were gone. He'd expected Jet to drive them to work again, but in that he was disappointed. Jet found a copy of

some magazine of Cross's that he could read—Jet wasn't exacdy stupid about science, since he had to know a lot in his job, though less than Cross. He stretched out with a second cup of coffee to enjoy it.

"Don't you have to report in?" Danny asked.

Jet yawned, stretching like a giant cat so that the muscles rippled under his shirt. "Nope. We only work every other day, kid. I told you, you should have been a rocket man yourself." He yawned again. "Oof, I'm sleepy. I stayed up playing cribbage with Uncle Hank until six this morning. How he does it at his age, I dunno. But I guess he couldn't have slept, with all this on his mind."

"Why don't you go back to bed then, if you're so tired?" Danny asked.

"Tch! You surprise me, Dan. Is that any way to talk to your cousin Jet when he's sacrificing his sleep to give you the favor of his company?" Jet stretched again and blinked. "Hmm. I think I will go up and ponder on the problems of the world."

"Don't snore over your pondering," Danny told him, trying to make his grin look natural.

It must not have succeeded too well. Jet grinned at him, and slapped his shoulder as he passed. "Danny, I'd swear you wanted me out of here. Who is it? Janie Hammond from next door? Oh-ho! Your cousin, my boy, will snore loudly and long! Don't worry about a thing. But why don't you take her for a drive in your new car?"

"Maybe I will," Danny agreed. Then he forgot about her completely as he watched Jet vanish into his own room, still chuckling. Why did adults have to think that everything about life was connected with a girl, anyhow?

He sat down in the chair by the window, ready to pounce up at the first sight of anyone driving in. The clock ticked away quietly, and the house was completely still. He caught himself nodding, and wondered if he should get up and walk around. But then he wouldn't be able to see the street. He tried sitting up straight, before his back began to ache.

It was three o'clock when he finally woke. Jet had apparently gone out, leaving a rough cartoon of a man with his mouth open and snores emerging from it on Danny's lap! It was a fair caricature of Danny.

He went out into the kitchen to fix himself a sandwich and was eating it when the doorbell sounded. The sandwich dropped onto the table, and he banged his shins getting through the kitchen door to the front.

There stood a man he'd never seen before. He had a bag of equipment in one hand and was wearing a serviceman's coveralls, but there was nothing about him to suggest the normal workman. He had the sharp eyes and the sureness of an official of some sort. He was lean and hard, but it suggested workouts in a good gymnasium rather than outdoor work.

"Daniel Cross?" he asked. At the nod Danny gave, he grinned casually. "Howdy. I'm Ned Audack. I hear you're having trouble with your transmitter."

"So I hear," Danny answered. "It's out back."

He expected the man to make a pretense of examining the set and show complete ignorance of radio. But in that he was wrong. Audack looked up at the mast, nodded, and went inside the shack. Meters and test instruments came out of his bag. "Got a bug?" he asked.

Danny took the semiautomatic code key out of a drawer, and Audack coupled it into the set. He began sending out a rapid signal at nearly forty words a minute—too fast for Danny to follow. Almost at once, chirps came out of the speaker in acknowledgment.

"Wouldn't do you any good to follow it," he told Danny a second after he cut off. "It's a special code we use to speed things up. Nice rig you've got here, Cross. Make it yourself?"

"Most of it," Danny admitted. "You want to see my logbook, I suppose?"

The other rifBed through it and handed it back. He began another series of tests, and followed with another series of lightning dots and dashes—faster than Danny had ever seen a bug set send before. Finally he slapped a seal on the set, folded up his equipment and put it away.

"Seems to be all right now. Too bad the other guy's set was out of order, and you had to get blamed for it. I'm afraid he'll be off the air for a while, until we can get it all straightened out."

Danny shook his head. After the demonstration of knowledge and efficiency he'd seen, he'd have almost believed that his set had been out of order. But not that of Lipsky. "I've been thinking of getting a new rig," he said slowly. "What do you think of the Steward and Jennings TX-100, fed into a Marcot clover-leaf array?"

"Couldn't be beat," the other said quickly. "The best outfit there is, without a question. But I don't think you could afford it... . Oh, I see. So that's the rig Lipsky had, eh?"

Danny nodded slowly, but the other didn't seem embarrassed by his slip-up. Audack let the grin fade from his face and indicated a chair, while he dropped onto one of the benches. "You're right, Cross. Lipsky couldn't have put out a bad signal if he'd tried—bad technically. But he was fouling up the airways, all the same. It wasn't his fault. He wouldn't know any better. But we can't let him off for that. We have to quiet him for long enough to let it soak in that giving out such information isn't a good idea. What do you think we'd have done if you'd been the one doing the telling?"

"Taken my Security pass away, I suppose?"

"That's right. And when you supplied the first name of Lobrowski, you were coming close. You've got to watch even such slips as that. I suppose you know by now that every ham around here is monitored at all times?" Audack nodded to himself. "You might as well know it. Since they did the very early atomic work near here and since the first V-2 was fired at the Proving Grounds, this has been one of the most important sections of the country. It used to be a desert here, with maybe one man to the square mile. Now New Mexico is a busy state. But it won't get too busy or too important for us to run full Security coverage on it. You never know what will be a serious blunder, either. Around here, it doesn't matter—most of the people you're likely to talk to are cleared, and you automatically think that everyone else may be a spy. But just remember that spies can get information on their short-wave sets easier than hanging around here, and be careful in the future. Right?"

Danny nodded. Audack was right, and he shouldn't have mentioned the first name of Lobrowski.

Audack dropped from the bench and stuck out his hand. "Okay, we'll . . . What's he doing here?"

Danny's eyes followed Audack's, to see Jet coming down the walk toward the shack. Jet had shaved and fixed up, and now looked as if he owned the Earth and maybe a little bit more.

"That's Jet—Jet Larson," Danny said. "He's a rocket test pilot."

"I know all that. But why is he here?"

Danny dropped his hand back onto his bench and picked up a heavy soldering iron. He wasn't sure it would do, but it was the best he could find. "I think you'd better show me your authority!" he suggested.

Audack frowned and then nodded, as if approving. "Right. Here. Then tell me why a rocket test pilot is here. Your people are mixed up in physics of various kinds, aren't they?"

The metal badge glistened officially in the light. One look was enough to show that Audack had all the authority he needed.

"He's my cousin. He's staying with us," Danny told Audack.

"Oh!" Audack considered, and then grinned. "It seems we have people who don't get things straight, either. I should have been told. Okay, Cross, just watch yourself. I'll give you a clean bill of health this time, though. And—it's a nice rig. Don't go buying fancy equipment when you've got something as good as this."

He went out, slouching now and suddenly looking like any normal workman. He was whistling an off-tune ditty as he passed Jet. Jet stared after him, then came on through the door.

"Whodat,kid?"

"You . . ." But it was obvious that Jet had never seen the man before. Danny had no desire to worry his cousin, or to admit the jam he'd almost been in. He shrugged. "Just a man here to fix my set. The crystal-oven thermostat wasn't working right, and my signal was shifting."

It satisfied Jet, probably because he wasn't very much interested at the moment. The pilot dropped onto a chair and stuck his feet up on the bench.

"Somebody's casing the house, kid," he said casually. "When I came back from the drugstore, there were a couple of goons outside. I dropped a package of gum on the walk. Maybe if you go out looking for it, you'll spot them."

"Watching us?" Danny asked. This was getting too thick.

Jet grinned. "Us, kid. Take a look, why don't you?"

But there was nobody there when Danny went out. He had to look for the gum before he spotted it over at the edge of the grass, and it gave him time to study the whole street. But there was only old Mrs. Rogers from the next corner, out walking her three mangy dogs. He doubted that she'd have scared anyone away.

She called to him, probably wanting to gush all over about how nice it was to have him back. He waved and bowed to her, but he had no desire to get mixed up in one of her three-hour gossip sessions while she tried to find out about his father and mother, and while the dogs pawed all over him. He picked up the gum and headed back to the shack.

"Nobody there," he reported.

Jet nodded and began chewing on one of the sticks of gum. "Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I'm just edgy. They looked funny out there, and they were acting as if they didn't want me to notice them—so I couldn't miss them, of course. Couldn't be Security; their men are smoother than that. Like that guy who fixed your radio, kid." He blew out a bubble, popped it, and looked up slowly to catch Danny's embarrassment. "I've got a sixth sense-have to have in my racket. I can practically smell anything phony. But don't let it bother you. I expect to find Security men dropping around regularly. These other birds, though . . ."

"What did they look like, Jet?"

"I don't really know. Foreign-looking, sort of, I didn't try to see too much. I wanted them to think I hadn't noticed them. Oh, forget it. Probably just a couple of men who've come here to work and are walking around, trying to figure what kind of house they should buy." He slipped to his feet, brushing off his pants. "Your folks are going to be home soon. How about us cooking supper for a change?"

Danny forgot the men at once, then. He'd always liked messing around in a kitchen with Jet, who seemed to be able to take anything and make it come out an unusual dish. They'd gone camping a lot when Danny was younger, and he'd learned about outdoor cooking pretty thoroughly from his cousin. But a chance to see Jet working over a regular meal was rare enough to make it interesting at any time.

There was no sign of men outside as they walked back to the house, and Jet seemed to have forgotten it. He went through the spice cabinet busily, humming to himself. "Hmm. If I had some . . . no, never mind. What's in the refrigerator? Any cold meat?"

"Half a pound of roast beef.Some cheese. Eggs."

"We might make baked spaghetti," Jet decided. "Yeah, it's been a long time, and Aunt Dot used to like it. Just about time, too. But your mothers as bad as most other women—she doesn't keep enough of the right spices. Anything else from the store?"

Danny suggested milk and butter, and Jet found a couple of other items missing. He reached for his light jacket. "Put on the spaghetti," he suggested. "And you might separate the whites from the yolks of a couple eggs. I need more yolk than white. I'll be back."

Danny suspected that this was a ruse to let Jet go out of the house for another inspection of the street, and didn't volunteer this time. He put water on the fire and reached for the egg container. There was only one egg left in it.

Jet was still on the walk as Danny rushed toward the door. He stood there, looking down. And then Danny saw that Jet was staring at a sedan at the curb —one with the plastic top completely polarized until everything inside was a dark blur. Jet's body was tense as something moved inside the car.

Then Jet moved toward the sedan, his hands carefully at his sides, his feet moving slowly. Danny let out a yell, but there was no response.

The door of the car opened, and an arm reached out. There was a flash of metal which might have been a badge or a gun; it was hard to see in the shadows of the interior. Jet nodded and said something in a soft voice.

Then he climbed in carefully. The door slammed shut and the car shot away from the curb with a screech of rubber tires as the full power of the motor hit the wheels. It must have been atomic-powered from the silence and speed, though Danny had never actually seen an atomic car before.

Danny started after the car, only to realize how senseless it was as he came to the end of the walk. He should be calling the police or Security. He'd just seen Jet kidnaped before his eyes. He...

His eyes caught scuff marks on the sidewalk where Jet had stood, as if his cousin had somehow found time to rub the edge of his rubber soles along the walk. He bent over, to try to read it.

"D," he made out, "No."

No what? But there was only one thing he had been planning, and this must have been what Jet had meant—he wasn't to call the police or anyone else. It was insane, and yet, maybe they'd threatened what would happen if such a call were made. Maybe they'd deliberately made Jet write it there, instead of his doing it without their knowing.

Danny went back to the patio and dropped onto a step, holding his head in his hands. Now he couldn't do anything. He had to sit there while anything might be happening—because worse might happen if he tried to do anything about it.

What was he going to tell his mother and father?

Chapter 5 Superhot Rocket

T was probably half an hour later when a step sounded on the walk. Danny jerked his head up sharply, and then felt the breath rip out of himself in a thick, short moan.

>tr

Jet grinned at him, though there was a touch of strain to it, Danny thought. "Come on inside, kid. Who'd you expect—Santa Claus? Ooof! What'd you do, put the pot on without water?"

He rushed through the door, dropping his packages on a table, and yanked the pan off the stove. The water had all boiled away. The pan was hot, but not as hot as it would have been in another minute. "Scrub it, Dan. It'll teach you not to believe that old nonsense about watched pots never boiling. They boil just the same. A good thing you didn't have anything but water in it."

"Jet!" Danny caught his cousin by the shoulder and swung him around, realizing for the first time how close to being a man he was. "Cut it out! None of this blamed nonsense. I saw those guys force you into that car. You can't tell me they were just giving you a lift to the store!"

"I got the groceries, didn't I?" Jet asked. Then he sobered as Danny's hands clenched. "Hey! Hey,

there, big cousin, don't hit a defenseless man shorter than you are. So help me, you'll get hurt if you do!"

"I wasn't going to hit you, but I'd sure like to strangle you, Jet. Give! Those were the guys you saw outside, right?"

"All right, all right. Put on the spaghetti, and I'll reveal all," Jet agreed. His own face was suddenly sober, though the words were still casual. "They were. But I'm not supposed to tell anything. Except that you've seen too much not to know, I guess. Tight lip on this?"

"Rigid," Danny promised, knowing he'd be expected to keep it even from his father and mother. It bothered him for a second, but he knew that Jet must have reasons for it.

"Okay. Put some salt in that water—couple of teaspoons, level. They're from b? 2k East, Danny. Came out here to help set up a new model rocket. A really hot one, kid—superhot! They think they've got one that will crack the speed of escape and get to the Moon. Something about replaceable linings, though I always heard that was impossible without a big shop handy. But they claim it can be done in mid-space. So I'm going to test hop it tomorrow. But it's so hush-hush they didn't want anyone to know I was even contacted. You kind of spoiled their act in that. But I told them I could cover up. I thought maybe I could. Okay?"

"The Moon!" Danny stood frozen, with an egg in his hand, staring at his cousin. "But you won't get there the first trip?"

"Nah. Only up to the same old level, probably. I'll go up, take out one set of linings and replace them—just to prove it can be done. We've got space-suits worked out—had them since '52 or '53. Now do you see why all the big hush-hush?"

Danny nodded, and finished with the eggs. With that, there would be no need for a station. They could go up a thousand miles, where their speed was better than four miles a second; there, in a tight orbit, they could change linings and build up the other three miles a second needed to break free from Earth. Change again in midspace, land on the Moon, and change again for the return. They had fuel that would do it—and now, with this . . .

With something like that, the mysterious disappearances might mean that the men hadn't been killed. Maybe they were on the Moon already!

Jet seemed to read his mind. "Nix on that dream stuff, Danny. This is the first model; if they had others they'd already sent up, why would they need a test pilot? They'd set up a base on the Moon and tell the world to stop getting ready for war. And I'd be taking training on how to live up there, maybe, instead of trying out every new model. But someday, and not too far from now, you're going to be kicking moondust around. Hey, this isn't going to be bad. Good cheese, the stuff Aunt Dot buys."

By the time the table was set, Danny had cooled down enough to be able to control himself when his parents returned. He took his mother's pleased fussing for granted, and grinned back at his father s vague smile of approval. They had apparently agreed not to talk about it at the table, since there was no discussion of the missing men this time. Cross was being upgraded one degree, with an increase in salary, and given the whole job of finding a suitable refractory.

For a while Danny writhed, hating the idea of his father going on with such useless work. Then his mind turned it over, and he realized it wasn't wasted. They could get to the Moon by changing finings—but that was a makeshift, and those linings had a good deal of weight. A refractory that would take the whole trip there without being changed was badly needed.

It wasn't until his parents were in bed that Danny found time to see Jet alone. He waited until he could hear his father's shoes drop on the floor and the contented grunt and sigh that always went with the sound. Then he stole back barefooted to the room Jet was using and knocked softly. Jet was still up, and the door opened instantly.

Jet motioned to the chair beside the bed, and closed the door. "I was expecting you. Couldn't wait until morning, eh?"

"You might be gone by morning, for all I knew," Danny said. He stared about, admiring Jet's possessions. There weren't many, but they were all good, with a strong flavor of honest masculinity about them. Rich leathers, good cloth, some hammered metal. He spotted a picture of himself on the dresser and was secretly pleased. He hadn't known Jet had kept it, though it was his own favorite portrait of himself.

Jet rummaged around among the odd bits of food in the tiny portable refrigerator and brought out a couple bottles of soda. He snapped the caps off with pressure from his thumb and handed a bottle to his cousin. Danny had spent weeks trying to learn the trick, with only sore thumbs to show for it. "As a matter of fact," Jet told him seriously, "I would have been gone before you got up. It's an early test."

"Any chance of my coming out to the field with you?"

"Sorry, kid. Not this time. I told you, you're not supposed to know anything about it."

"What time will you be back?"

Jet shrugged. "Hard to say. One of these tests usually takes about three or four hours. You use your jets a few minutes to get up, and a few minutes to get down, but there's a lot of coasting in between. It may take longer to change the linings."

"I thought maybe I could meet you at the field-after it was all over," Danny suggested. He didn't have much hope though, and the quick shake of Jet's head confirmed his suspicions.

"I'm not coming back here for a while, kid. I've got a dinner date at the pilots' club out on the field, and there'll be a lot of checking in after the test. Better not count on my being back till I get here. And look—get this straight! When I get back, you still aren't going to find out a blessed thing about what happened. Maybe I'll say-, it worked, maybe I won't. But this isn't stuff for even your Security pass to kick around. Savvy, tillicum?"

Jet was serious then, and the strain was back on his face. Danny nodded. His cousin was right, and he'd been foolish to expect anything else. Then, finally, some of the reason for the strain hit him.

"Jet! How safe is it?"

The other laughed, but it wasn't very confident. "No test of a new ship or a new idea is safe, kid. That's why I get paid ten times the wages your father gets, though he has five times the brains and training I have. But just remember all that stuff you see in the movies about daredevil pilots is hogwash. We're up there to test a ship, not to risk our lives; they wouldn't hire a man who liked to take chances. They want their ship back in one piece. Most of my training has been to teach me not to take chances. Still, things can happen. We just don't think about them, any more than you think about getting killed by slipping in the tub when you take a bath. How about some records?"

"Sure you don't want me to leave?" Danny asked.

There were a lot of things he wanted to say, but they all sounded silly and sentimental.

"I'd rather have you stick around," Jet admitted. "This job has got under my skin a little—being picked out of all the pilots around. I feel like company. I feel like . . . oh, doggone it, I'm in a bit of a funk. It'll be gone by morning, but right now I need to forget it. How'd you like to bunk down here tonight? I can open this thing up into twin bunks, and there's plenty of soda and stufF for a snack in the cooler. Maybe a little rummy and some Brahms before we turn in."

Danny nodded quickly. It sounded fine to him. And somehow, he was glad that Jet could feel that way. His own fears and nerves had always seemed like something to be ashamed of. But to know that a man like Jet could have the same reaction made it seem different. He found Brahms's Second Symphony and put it onto the portable phonograph, while Jet set up the rest of the room. His own choice would have been for something by Wagner, but he was surprised to find how good Brahms sounded on Jet's machine. Their own phonograph was a wreck from 1970, since neither his father nor mother had much of an ear for music.

At that, Jet grew sleepy before he did. Or pretended to. He wasn't quite sure. But his own lids were growing heavy, and he knew it was late, even though they'd deliberately turned the clock to the wall. He rolled into his bunk, all set to worry about Jet's chances, and was asleep before he could adjust the pillow.

It was a sound from outside that wakened him. His head snapped around to see that Jet was gone, while his ears caught the beginning roar of Jet's car. Danny came out of bed with a leap and a tangle of legs and sheet, and half fell to the window. He was just in time to see two strange men, dressed in plain business suits, climbing into Jet's car. But before he could open the window or call out, the little speedster swung around sharply and headed down the driveway.

He gathered up the sheet and remade the bed carefully, as Jet had made his. He folded the two sections together, made sure everything was tidy, and tiptoed down the hall toward his own room. It was still too early to awaken his parents.

In his own bed, he lay trying to picture what it would be like to take up a new ship that had never been tested and to go rocketing up to where there was no air and the colored stars looked out of nothing in the black sky. He couldn't picture it. Nor could he picture himself climbing into one of the heavy suits he'd seen pictured, and going out onto the hull of the ship to do whatever had to be done in changing the linings.

The thought sent a feeling of sickness through him. Yet he hadn't felt sick when he and Jet were up there, as most people seemed to. Maybe if he had to do it, it wouldn't be as bad as it seemed. Maybe it was the thinking about it that was bad— which would explain why Jet could feel nervous before the take-off, but then not worry after he got into the ship.

Danny lay there worrying about what chances Jet actually had. From the hall, he could hear sounds of his parents' getting up. He abandoned the idea of sleeping then, and washed and dressed carefully, remembering to dash extra cold water on his eyes so they wouldn't look too red.

He had the coffee on when his mother came down. She smiled at him. "Danny, it's nice to have a boy around the house again. I wouldn't trade you for a billion. Where's Jet?"

Danny told her that Jet was testing a new rocket, without any details, and she nodded. His father came in, yawning until his first cup of coffee, and heard the same story. He nodded, not seeming to consider it anything unusual, though most tests were made later in the day. Probably he figured that with all the trouble going on, there was some reason behind the change.

"Those notes of ben David don't tell a thing," he complained to Danny's mother. "Something about those new isotopes they've made, way up beyond plutonium. I was thinking of using them, too, but they're too hard to make. They never could have occurred in nature. After element 119, they begin to get stable again." This was to Danny. "By

140, they're more stable than anything we have, and •some of them have melting points beyond any temperature we've reached. But it takes more power to make them than we can find, commercially."

Danny knew just enough about it to listen, but not enough to contribute much. He'd been more interested when his father was trying to link molecules of some of the titanium compounds together like molecules of latex that made rubber. But that had turned out to be a blind alley. Titanium was a wonder metal, light and strong; it was the best pigment for paints; and it made some wonderful clays for ceramic use—but so far, it hadn't solved the problem of getting good refractories.

Science, he thought, was enough of a mystery without adding men who went up in rockets where they had no business and never came down.

After his parents left, Danny puttered about, and even went out into the garden to dig out the weeds. But this morning his nerves were too jumpy to separate the flowers from the useless plants. He gave up and went back inside, turning the television on until he grew tired of trying to remember what he'd seen.

Finally he wheeled out his little car and went heading up into the mountains. He found a good place to park and got out, hiking along, picking those trails which were just hard enough to exercise his muscles. But he was still kidding himself. His eyes kept going back toward the Proving Grounds, looking for some sign of a rocket coming down.

Still, it wasted the day. He got back, tired and sore from using muscles that had grown soft, just in time for dinner. But he had stopped on the way to call the pilots' club, and been told that no one had seen Jet Larson. It had been early, though; dinner there wasn't supposed to be before eight.

"You aren't eating a thing, Danny," his mother complained. "Don't tell me Jet's cooking has spoiled your taste for mine."

He grinned back at her. "Too many hot dogs while I was driving around," he explained.

"Your mother's the best cook in the world," his father told him, with the voice of a man who meant what he said, but had said it so often it had become mere habit. "You'd better eat. I'm going to put you to work after dinner. We've got about two hundred magazines to go through."

Danny hadn't noticed the stack before, but now he blinked. The dates went all the way back to 1970. "Doing what?" he asked.

"Looking for names. We'll list the contributors —including the letter writers. Then, when we find the last date, we'll mark it down. If there's some reference to the man dying or retiring, we'll cross out his name. And when we're done, we'll make a little chart by the year. I've got a suspicion that this mystery has been going on longer than we think."

"You'd better let well enough alone, Henry," Danny's mother advised him. "Security must have all that data."

"They work on what they've always done. I want to get an idea of what we're fighting. And I'm going to find out about this right now—tonight!" Cross stared at the magazines accusingly, then picked up his coffee and went over to the pile. "I guess we can do it in three-four hours, eh, boy?"

It took them five. Cross piled up the sheets and went through them, marking numbers off on a graph. Finally he drew a line that connected the dots. He held it up.

Danny stared at it, hating to believe it. "An asymptotic curve," he said finally.

"Not quite. The upward curvature doesn't change its angle at a regular rate. But it begins about 1974 and gets steeper every year. Danny, this has been going on for years. Do you realize how many men have been taken?"

"Some of them may be normal accidents—people who just drop out or go off into some obscure branch of research," Danny objected.

"Of course, which is why Security probably wouldn't pay any attention to it. But when you put them on a chart like this, and they form a regular pattern—Danny, those accidents will cancel out; they'll average the same every year. But they won't form this kind of a picture. Look, see how it increases here? Right where they began having all those accidents. Before that, they could get away with the usual reasons—moved, changed jobs, all that. They were only taking young single men, not too famous. But here, they began to step it up and take off the cream of the crop. It took some pretty fancy reasons to get them out of the picture. And look—it isn't just our nation. They're being pulled from every nation on our side—maybe on the other, though we don't have enough evidence for any opinion on that."

"Space station! Maybe a secret United Nations space station," Danny said quickly.

Cross shook his head doubtfully. "Maybe. I'm beginning to wonder. But if that's it, they'd have to be detection-proof. I don't know. Maybe they are being killed, Danny! Maybe even in the accidents they claim. It could be fixed. Drugged hypnosis, sabotaged rockets that would blow up . . ."

"Rockets!" Danny jerked to his feet and grabbed for the phone. "Dad, Jet should be back by now! Or at least at the pilots' club."

At the club, the attendant reported that everyone was gone. They'd been gone for an hour. And he was sure that Jet Larson had never been there. They'd held a place for him for an hour and then had taken the setting away.

Danny looked at his father with unbelieving eyes, trying to control himself as he put the phone back. He heard his voice come out, wooden and dead. "Dad—you'd better add another figure. Jet!"

Chapter 6 Lost Without Trace

EITHER Danny nor his parents had much sleep that night. They had spent hours on the telephone, calling every place and person offering any chance for a clue as to where Jet might be; it took careful work, since it wouldn't do yet to let the fact that he was missing leak out.

But there was nothing to be learned. Apparently Jet had just vanished from the face of the Earth. Even a call to the field had produced no results; nobody there could give out any information, and the men who might know something wouldn't be back until the morning shift. No real work was done at night, now, it seemed.

"But it doesn't make sense," Danny repeated for the fiftieth time. "Dad, if you re right, they were taking only scientists—and lately, famous scientists. Jet wasn't trained for that."

Cross traced the rising line with his finger and shook his head heavily. "No, my figures show only the scientists, because I was taking them from journals of science. And for the last year, we wouldn't notice the absence of anyone from those papers except famous men. All I found was that more and more are disappearing, and that they've begun taking the better-known men. Maybe young men

like Jet have been going right along—and nobody noticed it."

Danny knew he was beating his head against a stone wall. He had no reason to think that Jet was connected with the other cases. They might have been sabotage or anything else. Jet had known he was going on a dangerous mission. But because there was even a faint doubt about what had happened to the other men who had disappeared, he kept trying to put Jet into that group. Otherwise . . . He didn't want to think about that.

"You've got to sleep, Danny," his mother protested. "You admit you were up most of last night. You can't go on like this."

"I cant sleep!" he protested. "Look, Mom, I know there isn't anything more I can do now. But I just can't sleep!"

His father somehow managed to calm his mother down. "Take it easy. If he can't sleep, he can't. What does it matter? Just lie down and get some rest, Danny. It's not as good as sleep, but you'll feel better. And you'll be a lot more alive tomorrow. Just try the couch over there for a while."

His mother suddenly gave in. "That's right, Danny. Get some rest. Close your eyes . . ."

"You lie down and take it easy, and don't worry about your eyes," his father cut in. "She's trying psychology on you, boy. And you're as smart on that as she is—you always were. All I want is to see you stop pacing around."

He gave in, as much to quiet his parents as anything else. And he could watch and worry as much on the couch as he could while wearing out the rug. He found it hard to relax at all at first, but that was easier later. He heard them talking at the end of the room, his father already giving up his sudden forcefulness and making comments in an uncertain, diffident tone. Danny realized again, as he always had found in any emergency, that his father was stronger individually than his mother—and that his mother knew and respected it. But Cross himself would have laughed at the idea. For some reason, he'd always thought of himself as leaning on his wife; most outsiders thought that it was true, too.

As he watched, he saw his mother stretch out on another couch, while his father found a chair. He started to say something, but the older man winked and shook his head, nodding toward the form of Danny's mother. Well, she needed sleep, too. He nodded back and made no sound until her regular breathing showed she was asleep.

Danny never knew when he fell asleep himself. He had a vague memory of his mother getting up and coming over beside him, while his father chuckled once, softly, and he knew they had tricked him. But by then he was too close to slumber, and it didn't matter.

His dreams were horrible. Most of them were the same in the end. Something would start to happen—and then it would come to an abrupt end, flashing a blinding white. He would walk along the street, and there would be no street. He was shooting an arrow at a target, with some girl beside him, when everything exploded. And sometimes it was Jet instead of himself who was in the dream.

His body was wet with sweat when his father wakened him, just before his parents had to leave. But he knew they had been right in letting him sleep. His head was clearer, at least, and breakfast took away most of the fog that remained. He went to Jet's room, on the forlorn hope that his cousin might have returned, but the bed was still exactly as he'd left it.

He called the Firing Area Command, but nobody would give any information, beyond the statement that Jet wasn't there. The pilots' club was closed. Finally he knew there was nothing more he could do on the phone.

It was with almost a feeling of relief that he went to his car and wheeled it out. He felt in his pocket, found he had enough money for gas, and stocked up on fuel before heading out for Route 70. With a normal license, there was no sense in trying to push the car too fast, so he held it to the legal limit of sixty. The guards let him through after an examination of his Security pass. One recognized him.

"What about Jet?" Danny asked. "You know, the test pilot in the red sports car. Was he passing through here yesterday?"

The guard scratched his head. "He was in and out all week, but I can't remember about yesterday. Seems I saw him either going in or coming out. But there are so many . . ."

"He might have had two other men with him."

"Don't remember it, if he did. But we don't stop him, most of the time. We know his license number, so we just let him go on through. Makes it hard to remember."

Danny gave up, and stepped on his accelerator again, raising the speed to the limit here. The road was banked for speed, and the tiny car was low, hugging the road smoothly. It couldn't eat up the miles the way Jet traveled, but it held a steady seventy-five without too much trouble. At any other time, he'd have been ecstatic over its performance.

Then the field showed up, and he swung the car into the lot and went out. To save trouble, he pinned his pass to the lapel of his jacket. Nobody tried to stop him. Those who held such badges of trust were automatically considered equal. It wasn't like the early days of confusion when a man with the top clearance in some branch of atomics might find himself completely barred from some other, and certainly not allowed to go into an electronics firm. Security was now tighter than ever and had more power—but it wasn't quite as much of a nuisance.

The authorities were even working on the final problem of breaking research out of its tight little cubbyholes. Men in one branch of science might still do work that was marked top secret, and kept from another branch, where it might have saved years of work. Or two groups or more might be working on the same secret idea, duplicating efforts, but not knowing it. Now, however, one of the new, almost intelligent computing machines showed promise of being able to cross-check all work soon, and then Security could release what was needed to any group where it would help.

As long as the age-old hatreds of a tangled world had been coupled with new scientific powers to kill, Security had been necessary. And because there was nothing else to do, people had learned to live with it, almost comfortably.

Danny spotted a familiar figure on the field and let out a yell. "Red!"

The scooter shot over to him, and the man nodded. "Hi—I remember you. Went up with Jet, right?"

"That's right. Any idea of where Jet is now?"

The man shook his head slowly. "Haven't seen him for three-four days. Not since he took you up, whenever that was."

Danny tried to keep his expression calm. "I thought he was due to take one up yesterday."

"Might have been. I was down at the other end. Why don't you try Plotting, down in Building C?"

Danny thanked him, but he didn't head for Building C. The best way to learn anything was to go to the top; men there might not know the answers, but they knew how to find them. And the other departments could spend forever cross-checking and getting nowhere.

He wandered past the buildings, trying to seem as if he had business there, but nothing urgent. Once in a while he spotted a familiar face and nodded. But he was looking for Headquarters.

It was Dwyer's face he spotted next. His father's assistant had probably come out to examine some particular piece of tube lining with an interesting fault. Now he was stepping out of the cafeteria. He waved toward Danny and trotted over, his short legs making him look like a white-haired, good-natured dachshund.

"Want a lift back, Danny?" he asked.

"I've got a car now," Danny told him. "I'd sure appreciate it if you'd tell me where Headquarters is, though."

Dwyer nodded toward a large building across the field. "Over there. Any particular man?"

"The top man I can see," Danny said.

"Uram. Brigadier General Hawes, I suppose, if he's feeling good. You might try him. Room 1014, that entrance to the far left there. See you around, Danny."

Danny stepped up his pace. White Sands was a huge area, over a hundred miles long and forty wide, tapering toward the bottom where it touched Texas. They'd meant it as a good place from which to fire the early V-2's without causing damage. Now that rockets all carried pilots, they had no need for so much ground, but it helped to isolate the important work from spying, and also gave a convenient location at the northern end for other research work that had spilled over from elsewhere. But the presence of plenty of room had made for almost too much space between the buildings that had grown up here, one by one.

He found the entrance marked 10 and shoved in. Now he expected to be stopped, but the guard looked up, inspected his pass, and let him go on. There were some places marked Private with guards in front of them, but 1014 had no such restriction. His pass was enough. He walked into a great sprawling office, with little cubicles spUt off from it, and was stopped by a gate with a woman receptionist in a WAC's uniform.

"Do you have an appointment?" she asked when he stated his desire to see Hawes.

"Not exaedy." He reached for some excuse and came up with the first idea that hit him. "That is, I don't know. Jet Larson said I'd have no trouble seeing him."

"Take a seat," she told him. "I'll see. And you're lucky. The General's already in."

Half a minute later, to his surprise, he was going through a door into a soundproof room where a giant of a man stood up with outstretched hand. The rough, heavy face reminded Danny of pictures he'd seen of Andrew Jackson, except that it was heavier, and without the bush of white hair. Hawes was perhaps forty-five.

"Jet, you said?" he asked. "What did you want of Larson?"

"I'm his cousin, Daniel Cross. I was supposed to see him, but he seems to be lost . . ."

Hawes poured coffee slowly from a big pot, dumped cream into it and put a couple of lumps of sugar on the side. "Here, pull up a chair and join me, son. You're the boy he took up with him, right?"

Danny nodded, and the General considered it over his cup. Finally he sighed and put the coffee down.

"This is going to be a bit hard to take, son," he said, and there was reluctance in his voice. "I know you two were pretty close . . . I just learned the facts myself."

"He's dead!" Danny said flatly.

Hawes sighed again and gave the slightest nod with his head. "I'm afraid he is; we've just received word that he was on a special test mission with a new rocket. It exploded while he was still up. We haven't received official confirmation on this, but there doesn't seem to be any doubt. A brave man. I know it doesn't make it seem any easier now, but you'll have to remember he died in helping all of mankind find new horizons. Real devotion to duty. Oh, bother it. Look, Cross . .." His voice deepened, and he threw off the false expression of official sympathy, showing real feeling underneath it. "I liked Jet. And if I thought there was anything we could do, I'd send the whole blamed fleet of ships up. I—you know what I mean."

"I know." Danny had been prepared to hate the General at first, but now he felt a brief wave of sympathy for the other. "Yeah, I know. I liked him, too! Thanks for telling me."

He stood up to go, and Hawes came around from behind the desk. "Want me to send you back in a station wagon, son?"

"I've got a car." Danny went out on steadier feet than he had come in. It was the steadiness of numbed emotions. There should have been no shock at something he had been sure of before, but the shock was there, all the same. He stared across the field toward the rockets and half lifted his fist toward them.

Then he dropped it. There was no sense in hating the machines because men hadn't learned to make them perfect yet. They hadn't forced Jet to go up, when he knew he was risking his life in an untried model. He could have quit; test pilots were never forced to continue. But he'd gone ahead by his own choice. And there had been weaknesses in the ship nobody had expected.

Something honked behind him, and he stepped aside to let a scooter pass. But it stopped as it drew alongside, and he looked up to see Red staring down.

"You look bushed/' the man said. "Hop on. I'm going over near the parking lot."

Danny climbed on without thinking. It made no difference whether he walked or rode. "Things seem normal enough here," he said bitterly. "I guess it doesn't bother people any more when a rocket is exploded."

"Huh?" Red stared at him in bewilderment. "It bothers plenty when it happens. Only mostly they blow up the first time they're raised, before we ever get 'em. I've heard some real horror stories about what happened when they built the first few right here. That's why they put 'em together up at the north end now. In case one blows low down, it'll only blow up the shack they build it in. See 'em for miles, and parts rain down for the next week, seems like."

Danny had been puzzling over Hawes's indefi-niteness about his information; this seemed to fit with that, at least. The ship must have been taking off from the northern end. And naturally, the men here wouldn't have seen Jet that day.

"Suppose one went all the way up," he asked, "could they tell whether it exploded or not?"

"Sure. They got radar stations up in the mountains for tracking them. And the ships keep in contact with control men there. Probably they could see the thing happen, anyhow. I never seen one blow up in daylight, not at that height—but when atomics blow up, brother, they blow!"

He stopped beside the parking lot, and swung around to face Danny. "How come you're so all-fired interested?"

"I heard one exploded yesterday," Danny answered, wondering how much the men on the field really knew of what went on.

"Naw! I keep hearing rumors about rockets blowing up—town's full of talk like that. But you can't listen to everything you hear." He shook his head. "We've had the same ships here for the past two months. Supposed to be five others being assembled, but none due for a couple more months. They dropped the Falcon line and are going in for all Hawks now. Anyhow, they take them straight up and back the first time. If one blew, we'd have parts coming down all over."

He waved a hand to indicate the whole of White Sands, then shoved off toward a nearby building to make his delivery. Danny tried to picture it out of morbid fascination. But he knew that it couldn't be true. An explosion of one of the ships should be visible, even from Alamogordo.

It made less sense than ever. It depended on what part of which story one believed. More than five rockets had already exploded, and none had been seen by the people of the city.

He sighed, trying to convince himself that as long as there were holes in any part of the story, it might all be false. As long as part of it proved true, he couldn't deny the probability that it had happened.

ChaptCr 7 Crossed Trails

riANNY wheeled the car into the garage and went into his radio shack. The numbness was wearing off now, and he hurt with a dull ache that seemed to blanket his whole mind. Jet had been closer to him than most older brothers could be, and it was hard to believe that he was gone.

He dropped into the chair in front of his transmitter. It had been Jet who'd given him the most expensive parts on various birthdays, Christmases and other holidays. It had been Jet, in fact, who had first gotten him interested in amateur radio.

Then his eyes moved to the window and he jerked up, staring at the driveway and the open garage beyond it. Jet's car was parked inside!

Danny was across the yard and inside the house before he realized he'd been running. He dashed into the kitchen, yelling Jet's name. There was only silence and the monotonous cluck of the clock on the wall. He rushed to the living room, then on to the little entrance foyer. The clothes tree there held an assortment of odd clothes, but there was no sign of the jacket Jet would have thrown off on entering.

He shouted again, getting no answer. In his own room, he looked for any sign of disturbance and found none; there was no note, such as Jet might have left if he'd gone out on an errand.

There was only one place left, and Danny tried to tell himself that he'd find Jet there, sleeping, too tired to have heard the calls. But already the first flush of hope had died. Logic was returning, to tell him that Jet's car didn't mean Jet had driven it. Somebody might have sent it back from the field.

Danny hesitated outside Jet's room, and then pushed the door open carefully. The crack widened, to show the phonograph, then the chair, and finally the bed. The room was exactly as he'd left it, with no sign of Jet.

He stood there, staring about the room, trying to find something disturbed which would indicate that his cousin might be back, but he already knew it was hopeless. The bed was smooth, with none of the disturbances there would have been if Jet had come in and dropped down on it; the cushion on the chair was the same.

Danny let his shoulders droop and turned to go. Then something nagged at his mind. Somewhere in the room, something was wrong. He tried to find it, but there was only the nagging sense that some change had taken place. The record was still on the phonograph, things on the dresser were in order .. .

But the picture of himself was missing! It had been centered, under the mirror. Now the spot was blank, with a thin trace of dust to show where it had stood. Danny jerked open the drawers, to find the frame in the top one, but no picture.

With trembling fingers he went through the contents of all the drawers. The little souvenir figure of Ho Ti, the Chinese god of luck, that had been Jet's one superstition, was gone. The small leather picture album had obviously been gone through hastily. The pictures of Jet's dead father and mother had been pulled loose, and one was missing, apparently; at least there was a blank spot where none of those left fitted.

Danny could be sure of nothing else, though it seemed to him that a few other small things should be there. He went to the closet, trying to figure out whether anything there was gone. He couldn't be sure, but it seemed to him that there had been a small zippered leather brief case on the shelf. If so, it was not there now. Where he seemed to remember it, there was a scattering of loose change and bills, as if Jet had cleaned out his pockets.

It almost looked as if Jet had hastily gathered up a few things to take with him. But why should he have left his money behind—unless he'd forgotten it? Even that wouldn't explain why he would take pictures with him instead of leaving them here.

Why should a man want them with him on a test flight? Had Jet gotten cold feet and decided to duck the test and slip away, rather than face people after quitting? Danny didn't believe it. Jet hadn't been that much of a fool. If he'd decided that he couldn't test the ship, he'd have said so. He'd turned down a couple of such jobs when he was stationed in New York. It was perfectly normal for a pilot to decide that a ship wasn't right, or to give in to a vague hunch. There was no disgrace to that, though he might be kidded by his fellow pilots.

There was nothing else unusual in the room that Danny could see. He went through the wastebasket, but nothing proved anything there. He remembered the semisecret compartment Jet had in his big bag, lifted the luggage down from a shelf, and snapped the trick catch. Inside the concealed compartment there were instructions on the Hawk ships, with a layout of the controls. Nothing personal had been left there.

Danny finally left the room and went down the hall and back out through the kitchen, wandering idly about the yard while he tried to think. Now he wasn't sure of anything. There was no reason for Jet to have taken the pictures with him on a flight. But neither could he believe that Jet had decided to go somewhere else so quickly that he hadn't had time to tell Danny.

"Danny!" a girl's voice called from across the fence. He jerked out of his brown study to see Jane Hammond beckoning to him.

He went over. "Hi, Jane. I've been meaning to look you up, but I've been busy," he began. Then, because it sounded so weak, he gestured toward his private garage. "I—I've got a car now. Want to take a spin?"

She shook her head. "I've been meaning to drop over, too, but I knew you'd be all wrapped up with your family. But now I had to give you the key to Jet's car. The two men who drove it back left the key with me and asked me to give it to you."

"The two men?" Danny took the keys, staring at the car. He'd almost forgotten the return of the machine. "What two men, Jane?"

"Why, the garagemen, I guess. Short, dark men —funny, but they didn't look like most mechanics. Sort of foreign, I guess. One had an accent and a scar on his chin, like a letter Y. But they said something about the differential being noisy, and I thought . . . Danny, is something wrong?"

"Jet was killed in a rocket test," he told her flatly. The words sounded wrong in his own ears. Something had happened—something connected with the two men, who must be the same ones who had picked Jet up, and who'd gotten into the car when Jet drove off for the last time.

Why had they brought the car back? To keep anyone from finding where it had been left by Jet?

Jane was trying to express her sympathy. He brushed it aside, not wanting to talk about it while his head was whirling with confusion. "Sure you don't want to drive down for a soda?"

"I can't, Danny. We're leaving. That's what I really wanted to tell you. We re leaving—going back East. I wanted to say good-by."

"Leaving?"

"That's right. Dad couldn't get Security clearance for the new regulations—you know how he talks. So he's out of the Government service."

Danny started to protest, then stopped. Her father had always been outspoken against the growing tension in foreign affairs. And while it shouldn't have mattered much in his position as head of the experimental work in converting atomic power directly to electric energy, anything could happen now. With suspicions stirred up now, a man might be dismissed from his post for almost any reason.

Surprisingly, while Jane's face was composed into lines of regret, the expression didn't seem real. She seemed to glow inside, as if something wonderful had happened. Danny wondered suddenly how all the tensions had affected the rest of the people here. He hadn't thought of that. The families of most of the men in research must live under a constant cloud of fear.

Her mother's voice called, and she turned. Then she stuck out a hand quickly. " 'By, Danny!"

He took the hand, and then followed through by kissing her lightly on the cheek as she bent forward. "See you before you go?"

"We're leaving tonight," she said. "Now I've got to go. And Danny—don't think too much about Jet!"

She left at a run for her house. Danny started after her suddenly, then hesitated. As she'd turned, he'd seen a gray-and-green Security pass hanging from the chain around her throat. He'd always thought that was the highest pass given, well above his own. If her father needed more than that . . . Things must be much worse than he'd thought. No wonder she'd been glad to get out from under all the strain and worry.

But it didn't account for the glow he'd seen. She had looked as if she were nearly bursting inside, trying to keep up her act of disappointment, but with an inner excitement that was like a kid who'd just discovered the real Santa Claus living right next door.

Then he forgot it as he stared at Jet's car, trying to fit its return into all the crossed-up bits of evidence that lay over the trail. If he could have known the answer definitely, one way or the other, it would have been easier. But he couldn't adjust to Jet's loss while there was always an uncertainty clouding his thoughts, puzzling him with the things that didn't quite fit. Now as he tried to think his way through the maze, fear began to creep in.

Who would be next? His mind twisted at the idea, but he couldn't avoid worrying. His father and mother were both people with good scientific reputations. Would whatever was happening hit next at one—or both—of them?

By evening Danny had worked himself into a state where he was almost surprised to see both his parents come home.

His mother began bustling about the kitchen at once, and his father slouched in behind her. Dr.

Cross looked more tired than usual, and his shoulders sagged still further as Danny began to tell what he'd learned at the Proving Grounds.

They were interrupted by the arrival of a large car outside. Danny glanced through the window to see Brigadier General Hawes getting out, while the chauffeur remained, letting the big atomic motor continue turning over. The General came up the walk with a steady tread that grew more reluctant as he approached the front entrance. One glance at him was enough to kill any hopes that had risen for a second in Danny's mind.

Dr. Cross threw a quick glance toward the kitchen and started toward the door, with his finger to his lips. But Danny's mother must have seen the arrival of the car, too. She came into the living room, half-smiling at her husband's attempt to keep any bad news from her. She opened the door, just as the General's finger touched the button.

"Mrs. Cross?" Hawes asked. Then he corrected himself. "Dr. Cross, I mean."

"Call me Mrs. Cross," she told him and pointed to her husband. "One Dr. Cross in the family is enough. And you've already met Danny. I suppose this means it's—it's official about Jet."

Hawes threw her a grateful glance for saving him the difficulty of bringing the subject up and nodded. The sympathy on his face was a good deal more than required by his official role. "I'm sorry. Word just came, and I felt . . . Well, I decided to

80                                                                              fiocfeefs to Nowhere

bring it myself. They must have seen the blowup yesterday, but with cross-checking and everything . . . Observers reported the explosion over Dakar. It must have been very sudden. No time to worry or feel anything. I . . ."

"Dakar?" Danny asked quickly. The General nodded slowly.

It made the story sound much more believable. Red, out at the field, had sounded as if he knew what he was talking about, but Danny should have spotted the error before. A rocket didn't just go straight up. It circled the Earth after climbing, just as the Hawk had done when Jet had taken him up. And that meant that an explosion could take place anywhere; there was no set rule that said a ship had to circle in any fixed course—it could turn to head toward any direction of the compass, depending on what course Control had directed it to take. Unless it exploded before reaching full altitude, it might even blow up where nobody could see it, such as over the poles.

It ended some of the confusion and made it seem all the more certain that Jet was really gone. Danny dropped into a chair, trying to readjust his thoughts. "But—but if no ship has been missing?"

Hawes looked toward the kitchen and then at Danny's mother. "If I could impose on you for some of that coffee I smell, Mrs. Cross? It's been an unpleasant day for me, too. I'd rather lose any other man. Jet was—well, I liked the boy tremendously.

Good for morale. One of the old-time test pilots. He had a lot of spunk and nothing ever seemed to get him down. Ah, thank you."

He took the coffee gratefully and dropped to the couch beside Danny. "Look, young man, for some reason I don't know, I received instructions to explain things to you in more detail than we usually give. Frankly, I don't know anything about this test Jet was on, myself—there's a lot going on I'd like to have explained. I gather you talked to someone on the field?"

Danny told him as much as he could remember of what Red had said. The General studied it, mulling things over in his head. Then he shrugged. "It isn't that simple," he said after a few seconds. "There have been no explosions among our ships. Rut that doesn't mean a thing. When we retire the Falcon line, they don't get scrapped. They're used for long-range high-speed work by the forces. Right now, we're trying to find the bugs in the Hawk-class ships and get them to a level where they can be used for similar work. But while we're doing that, other places are working on new ships we don't even know about. Your cousin was on a model about which I know nothing at all. In fact, I didn't know we had as many plants as we seem to. I'm only aware of some of it now because of what I was told when I volunteered to take the official news to you. I suppose they figure Jet talked to you, and that with all these other disappearances, it's better to give you the information than to have any more rumors stirred up. But all this is strictly confidential. If you say anything about ships that aren't being built under our direct supervision, it will be denied at once—and you'll be in trouble. Officially, we neither deny nor admit that all the missing rockets came from the Grounds."

"I can see why that is," Dr. Cross agreed. "Naturally, we wouldn't want other nations to suspect that there were secret rocket-construction projects about which they hadn't already known. I suppose that means that the Detroit shops never were abandoned, as we thought they were."

Hawes looked uncertain. "I don't know. I'm working in the dark myself. When Jet disappeared, I asked a lot more questions than I had any right to, but there are a lot of answers I don't have, still."

"But could the disappearances of all the men we've heard about have been in rockets?" Danny asked. He was still trying to tie Jet into the same category with the others, in the faint hope that some explanation other than death might turn up. "In Falcons?"

"No. They'd have to be Hawks, if they blew up at the height claimed. And—well, I'd say it's possible. If that means there are more Hawks than I thought, and that some are apparently being used for experiments beyond what we're doing, then I guess that's the way it is. I've been told today that we've lost over eighty ships more than have been reported before!"

They discussed things a bit more, but it was obvious that Hawes had told all he could. And it was enough. It filled in most of the gaps in the picture. There was no question now but what Jet and the others could have blown up, as reported, and no more probability to so many such accidents than there had been before.

Finally, Hawes got up apologetically and went out, with a few final words of sympathy. Danny watched him go down to the waiting car and saw the driver get out to open the door. He started to turn back from the window—and froze as the driver turned to get back into the front of the car. The man was clearly Ned Audack, now in a uniform, but still the same man who'd checked his transmitter!

Then Danny was less sure as the man climbed back into the car. The light was poor, and he'd only caught a quick look. He started for the door, but the car began to roll away, the throb of its atomic turbine rising to a high hum as it went from a crawl to a roaring flash.

On a hunch Danny turned quickly and headed for his room. He flashed one quick look there, spotting the open window and the flutter of curtains as the evening breeze blew in. But nothing was wrong there. He turned and headed back quickly toward the room that had been Jet's.

The picture was on the dresser now, back in its frame and under the mirror, where it fitted the dust marks. Danny studied it carefully, but he couldn't be sure whether it was the same picture or a duplicate; it seemed browner in tone than the other, but he couldn't be sure. Nor could he be sure of the pictures from the album that were now back where they should be.

He pulled down the luggage and yanked open the secret compartment. It was empty—the instructions for the Hawk-class ships had been removed.

Somebody could have sneaked up during almost any part of the afternoon after he'd spotted the missing picture, of course. Danny threw the luggage back onto the shelf, noticing that the money was also gone, leaving no missing finks in the re-establishment of complete normality. Somebody could have known that Jet had taken things he shouldn't have taken with him, and come back here to make the facts fit the theory of his rocket test and death.

But why?

He shut the door behind him, shaking his head. This was something for Security, and not even for his parents. He'd have to keep it to himself, and report. . .

Then he realized he had nothing to report. All the evidence rested on his word, and he couldn't expect Security to accept a wild story without more proof than there was. If he wanted to report this, he'd have to do a lot of investigating first.

Outside, he saw the lights in the Hammond house go out, and he drew closer to the window to watch. The porch light was on, and the three Hammonds were coming out. Hammond came last, following his wife and Jane toward a waiting car.

Danny frowned as Mr. Hammond turned a smiling face back to the house, then handed his bag to a man waiting there. In the light from the street, Hammond's smile was too happy. And the man taking the bag looked familiar.

It wasn't until they were gone that Danny realized it had been one of the men who'd gotten into the car with Jet the morning beforel

Chapter 8 Blind Alleys

r

BSRE was no sign of Red on the field when Danny drove his little Morris onto the Proving Grounds the next day. He wandered around, watching the men who drove the little scooters, until he was sure Red wasn't among them. It didn't prove anything, but it was worth noting that the man had left the job the day after talking out of turn to Danny.

General Hawes was too busy to see him. The girl was polite, but she didn't even bother checking. Danny wasn't too surprised; it could be legitimate enough, since the men here had other things to do than answer his questions. But it was a little surprising, if instructions to satisfy any doubts he had were given out. He gave up finally and went out into the glaring sunlight again.

This time he wandered around behind the building. He hadn't been there before and wasn't sure there'd be a parking lot. There was. And standing well apart from the others was a car identical with the atomic-powered one which had brought Hawes to the Cross house the night before.

He was studying the machine from beyond the fence when he heard a throat being cleared noisily behind him. He swung quickly, to see a man with three stars on his shoulder strolling quietly behind him. Danny stepped aside, but the other seemed in

no hurry. The man moved up to the little fence beside the boy and looked over at the car.

"Admiring my car, young man?" he asked. He looked sidewise at Danny and smiled easily. "If you are, I agree with you. It's a beauty. Just got it myself. Say, wait a minute. I saw your picture on some of the papers ... oh, yes. Young Cross, cousin of the pilot who had it. Too bad about that, though I never met Larson. Just got in a couple days ago, myself."

It was too casual. Danny felt sure that the Lieutenant General had been tipped off as soon as he got into the building, and had deliberately followed him. Yet it seemed ridiculous to think of a man of that rank bothering with him. Maybe he was getting delusions of persecution.

"I thought maybe General Hawes might have some more news," he said. "But I guess not, so I might as well go back to town. I thought this was his car, though. He came in with it last night, with a chauffeur."

The General didn't move a muscle at the mention of the chauffeur. He went on smiling lazily as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny ultra-short-wave radio. He pushed two buttons on top of it, and put it back. "Matter of fact, Cross, I'm driving back to town myself. Like a lift? Better than the bus!"

"Thanks, sir. But I've got my own car over at the field lot. Maybe, if you'd give me a lift that far . . ."

"Delighted," the other said. "Ah, here comes my driver now."

The man in uniform looked remarkably like Ned Audack at a distance. But as he drew closer, Danny could see that there were differences, and ones that couldn't be covered by any disguise. He tried not to show his disappointment as he got in and let the General chat on about nothing of importance, until they reached his car. He thanked the other, and watched the big car take off toward Alamogordo. He was sure it would swing around and return, but it would do no good to check on that.

Danny climbed into his own car, frowning. It still seemed ridiculous to think that the General's appearance had been deliberately meant to quiet any suspicion on his part, and that the chauffeur had been brought out to prove it wasn't Audack. Yet he knew how fantastic some of the precautions taken could be. If they thought he might have noticed Audack—and if it had been he—they might have been all ready for any such event.

In his own mind he was fairly sure it had been Audack, though he couldn't get the tie-in. Probably the whole visit of Hawes in person had been meant to put Audack where he could straighten up the mess Jet had left; and the seeming openness of Hawes's explanation might have been only a time waster to give Audack a good chance. In that case, though, Hawes probably hadn't known it himself.

He had seemed too genuinely upset about Jet's passing.

Back in the city, Danny began investigating every loose end he could think of. He went to the plant where Hammond had worked, pretending to look for Hammond. His Security pass was high enough to let him wander around most of the plant, and he found the place where the physicist had been.

But nobody would talk, and he didn't know the other physicists. They shrugged at his questions and tried to seem uninterested, though their faces were unconvincing. There was a thick blanket of worry about something, and it might have been over the way in which Hammond had been removed.

Danny gave up and went boldly toward the office of the director. There he fared better. "Hammond?" one of the men asked. "Better see J. D. there about him. Wait a minute, I'll check."

A minute later Danny was led into the presence of J. D., who was head of the whole project. Danny had seen his face pictured in nearly every major science publication. He wasn't a man who would normally bother wasting his time about such things. But now he nodded pleasantly at Danny's questions and went to a group of file cabinets.

"Let's see. Oh, yes, here we are. Hammond. Hmm." He spread the records out too freely, so that Danny could see them without bothering to strain. "Too bad, young man, but I'm afraid your friend has left us. I recommended him for a higher position, but he couldn't quite pass the Security check for it, and he felt he'd do better in industry. I understand he was planning on taking a long vacation, running around the country for a few months, before making up his mind where to begin again. We've got a forwarding address, if you want to send mail. But you might not get any answer for months."

Danny thanked the man and left. There was nothing to the story that didn't check with what Jane had told him. But it seemed odd that Hammond would have left so suddenly, without even bothering to try to sell his house. And there was still the mystery of the man who'd been waiting in the car. Jane had thought him one of the garage mechanics in the afternoon, she'd said. Yet that night he'd been waiting to take the family to—wherever it was going.

Danny spent the rest of the afternoon trying to locate Ned Audack. But it was another blind alley. Audack wasn't listed at the nearest office of the FCC. All their fieldmen were accounted for. They refused to give out any real information, but Danny did discover that none there knew a man named Audack. By inquiring after the status of his license, he found there had been no record made of any inspection of his set. One of the men had looked interested at his questions at that point and had gone back to the rear office. When he returned, there was a sudden freeze. Within a few minutes, everyone was too busy to bother with Danny.

He wondered whether he'd meet Audack on the way out, but there was nothing so clumsy this time. It was two days later when he was wheeling his car down the street leading to his home that he spotted the man standing in the doorway of a drugstore. Audack grinned as Danny slowed, and walked over.

"How's the rig, Dan?"

"Too busy to test it out," Danny answered honestly. He'd been trying to trace the movements of some of the other men who had vanished, and getting nowhere. The one big question that remained was why such men as Bjornsen and ben David should have gotten anywhere near a rocket. And there was no apparent answer to that, beyond the very dubious supposition that they might have been trying to observe the reason for their failures under actual flight conditions. That would have explained one such occurrence, but not several so close together.

"Park and I'll treat to a soda," Audack suggested. "Then you can give me a lift to my place to make up for it."

It seemed like a reasonable offer. Danny found a spot half a block down and came back to find Audack with two sodas in front of him at the back booth of the drugstore.

"Black and white okay?" the man asked.

Danny nodded and dropped to a seat opposite. "Fine. I suppose you figured out by some elaborate system that I liked that kind. Or did you find it among some of my papers?"

"Among your papers," Audack answered quietly. "You're right. I was waiting for you to go by. You usually do at this time—I've seen you the last three or four days. And I don't work for the FCC. It's another office, and a bit more hush-hush. Not exactly Security business, but related. Also, believe it or not, I wouldn't have bothered waiting for you except that I had nothing else to do right now. It doesn't make any difference to me whether you wear yourself out hunting me or not. Anything else you want to know?"

"Plenty." Danny shoved the glass back and studied the other. The trouble was, he couldn't help liking the man. And that meant Audack must be high power. He'd probably been picked for whatever his job was because he was one of the men people couldn't help liking. "Why'd you seem surprised when you saw Jet at my place? Because you knew what was going to happen to him, but didn't expect to find him there? And why did you put things back in his room? Did Jet pull a blooper in taking things along that he wasn't allowed to carry, and did you have to fix it up, hoping nobody had noticed?"

"It's a nice day, isn't it?" Audack answered, and the grin lit up his face again. "Dan, if I answered your questions, you'd figure I was lying to you. And maybe I would be. I could give a completely logical answer to anything you could ask—and you'd figure out something else two seconds later. You're unwilling to admit that anything really did happen to Jet. I don't blame you. But just suppose I've been investigating the disappearances, too. Suppose I'd seen the men who were following Jet—sure, I know about them—and was surprised to find him connected with a boy who was careless about radio messages? Suppose after something happened, I slipped up to his room and that you caught me before I could remove material that couldn't get out, such as the dope on Hawk-class ships? Suppose I slipped out, in a hurry, taking stuff I had rifled with me to examine—and then had a hard time getting them back? Or suppose I'm connected to the office that had Jet sent on that ship in the first place, and had to check up on his personal things to see whether I could find anything in his character, rather than in the ship, to account for the failure? There are a lot of answers I could make. Suppose we leave it at that. Have another soda?"

"Suppose you're a foreign spy?" Danny suggested.

"Suppose I am? In that case, I'll have connections and alibis that you couldn't touch, boy. Let it drop. If you're finished, I'll take that lift home."

They talked about radio on the way, until Danny let him off at a small hotel nearby. Then Danny went home, knowing he'd drawn a blank. Any one of Audack's answers could have been true—but none of them were, he felt.

The phone was ringing when he got back. He lifted the receiver and was surprised to find Audack's voice coming over the instrument. "Forgot to tell you, Dan. There's an official investigation going on. Maybe you should let them worry about things. Some of the offices affected have pressured Security into setting it up. You'll find them wide open in Room 23 of the Security building."

The phone clicked off then. Danny was grateful, since his father and mother were just coming in, and he wasn't ready to let them know that he'd been so busy about the mystery. His father had enough worries already, now that he was heading the refractory research group and being forced to find an entirely new angle on it, after finding ben David's work ending in nothing. And Danny's mother had her own worries. She sometimes stood for several minutes, staring at her husband when he couldn't see her. Danny knew she was remembering what had happened to ben David and others who had headed important research recently.

The next morning he reported to Room 23 early. Surprisingly, there were others ahead of him. The four men in the room who were waiting had worried but determined looks. There was only one man to handle the investigation, together with a secretary who explained that it would be some time yet, and why didn't they all come back later?

Knowing how easy it was to be forgotten, Danny stuck it out until she finally beckoned him back to the office where the investigator was interviewing people. A dictating machine was on to take down the full conversation, but not much of the record had been used. Danny soon found out why.

There was a whole group of papers to fill out, most of which covered things his records with Security checks of the past would give in detail. Then there was a single sheet of paper which asked for all evidence in detail! Danny compressed his writing and began filling it in, conscious of how ridiculous most of the things he had to say would seem when written out like that.

The man snapped his picture quickly and attached it to the papers, together with a shot of his Security pass.

"When did you last have a full psychiatric investigation?" the investigator asked.

"You mean psychological?" Danny corrected him. A psychiatrist worked on sick minds, while a psychologist would be the one to make a regular examination. The man nodded absently, and Danny shrugged. "About two months ago, at Chicago. The records will be in my Security file, of course."

The other nodded. "All right. Thanks for coming. If we want anything more, we'll get in touch with you."

"But-!"

"Look, son, you're no more curious than most of the guys who come in here. But until we get all this material screened, how can we tell what we'll find?

Questions, questions! We're here to ask you the questions, not to answer yours."

Danny considered telling him that he'd asked no questions of any importance yet. Then the boy let it go. "Are you the only bureau investigating this?" he asked.

"Other bureaus in different places. All work about the same. And now, if you'll wait until we get in touch with you . .

Danny went out, frowning. It was obvious that an investigation such as that could only serve to ease the minds of the people who wanted "something done," without knowing what. The man and his secretary would have no time to screen through the papers; they'd spend all their time taking down the incomplete complaints, which would simply wind up somewhere buried in the Security files.

A good man in the position would have had his secretary handle the people complaining, letting them dictate everything into the machine, and filtering out what seemed to be important. Then, with the evidence, such as it was, he would have begun an actual examination of the situation. But the man here was obviously someone who'd been shuffled into a job nobody else wanted.

That night there were two interesting things in the local paper. One was a report of General Hawes's leaving the Proving Grounds for important work in the East. Apparently he'd found out more than a man in that position was supposed to know or else had been too curious. Now they were removing him.

The second item was something Danny's father pointed out. It was an account of the setting up of the investigation board—and a list of all who had filed complaints, with Danny's name among them.

Danny tossed the paper aside and got up impatiently. From now on, of course, he'd be poison whenever he showed up to ask questions. Nobody would answer. It almost seemed that the investigating bureau was deliberately making any real investigation harder.

He went out into the night, where the air was beginning to cool down. One of the street lights was out, and the lawn was a patch of darkness, but he didn't mind. He wanted to get out where he could think. Idly, he wandered across the thin grass toward the dark shadow of a bush, letting his eyes adjust to the lack of light.

Then he froze. Against the faint gleam of distant street lights, he spotted two figures behind the bush, staring intently toward the house. There was a soft, guttural whisper, and an answering nod.

Danny crept closer, trying to make no noise and to keep out of the line of light from the windows, but the men seemed too intent on the house to notice the yard. Danny glanced back, to see his mother start toward the bedroom, leaving his father silhouetted against the window, reading a magazine.

One of the men clicked a match against a fingernail and struck a light to his cigarette. As he did so, a Y-shaped scar showed up on his chin. Then he threw the match away and nodded.

"Alone," his heavy voice came through the night. "Good. Dobre Bog, it's time enough. Let's go."

Danny had heard enough. With a yell, he leaped forward toward them before they could move toward the house. He had his arms stretched out toward the man with the scar, ready to grasp him. Then his foot caught on a root of the bush, and he stumbled forward.

When he pulled himself up, the two men were heading at a fast walk toward a waiting car, too close to it for any chance of their being caught.

He stood there, feeling foolish, while they drove off. If they were spies for some other power, then it could only mean his father was marked down as one of the next on their list. He shook his head miserably, knowing it would do no good to warn his father. If he could only have caught one of them, it might have been different. But now it was too late.

Chapter ¥ Peace Offering

ANNY was right about his father. Dr. Cross listened impatiently and then brushed it aside, though there were traces of worry in his eyes. "Danny, if there were foreign spies behind all this, and if they do try to kidnap me, there isn't anything I can do about it. With every nation jumpy about the disappearance of their scientists—and every nation has lost some, or else is faking to make it seem that way—I'm not important enough for an international incident. I'd have to be considered expendable. But we don't have a bit of evidence, except your suspicion, based on highly incomplete data, and the fact that something unusual is going on. Besides, there are other things that fit better."

"You mean you've found out something?" Danny asked.

His father shook his head. "No, not really. And I think you'd better stop trying, too. You're a bright boy, Dan, but you can bet there are men better trained for the job working on it somewhere, even if we don't see them. No, I've been thinking about that space station idea you had. I don't see any possibility there, but I do find some things that fit. Look."

He drew forth a new batch of data. He'd obviously gone through a great many more magazines

than they'd investigated together, and his curve was more complete, beginning at a slowly rising rate and shooting up more steeply with each year, until it now seemed about to go over the top of the graph.

Then he pulled out other charts. "Types of people according to year. See. The first few years they represent the type of men who might conceivably be used for setting up the work on a station. Then, about eight months ago, you'll notice the shift to scientists and rocket men in larger numbers! If they had the station, they'd want the best brains in the world to use it until they were sure of themselves."

Danny studied it carefully. It could be that—but there was no proof. It could also have been a case of caution at first, so that only the lesser-known men were picked up; then, when their technique was established, they could have grown bolder. But the trouble with that was that he'd begun to sense an effort to prevent any real investigation, originating somewhere above the local level. And that didn't make any sense, if it were considered a kidnaping plot by foreign powers.

"But nobody can detect a station!" he objected.

Dr. Cross nodded. "I know. And I don't think we could be putting one up without giving it away to other nations. It would take so many rocket loads with the Hawks, even, that it would show up in various ways that any trained intelligence man could spot. Dan, I think the truth is that we're completely wrong somehow. There's evidence for spies—and evidence against. There is evidence that there might be a space station—and evidence that there can't be. When that happens, all it means is that we just don't know. And we'd better forget it."

"I still wish I knew somebody who'd really know about the chances of getting a station up," Danny said stubbornly.

Dr. Cross tossed the graphs into the wastebasket and grinned wryly. Fatigue showed around his eyes, and his stooped figure seemed even more bent. But he managed to chuckle. "All right, then. Go see young Douglas Smith, over at Las Cruces. He grew up when Wernher von Braun and Willy Ley were still sure there'd be a station. In fact, his father was a close friend of Ley's. Tell him I sent you. It's his chief hobby, and if there's any chance of a station, he'll probably know about it. But now I'm going to bed. Better do the same, son."

Danny went out to patrol the grounds before turning in, but there was no evidence of anyone else lurking around. He glanced up at the sky, where the clear air showed the stars brightly, wondering when men would be up there. If they weren't there already, that is.

*

The next day found him knocking on the door of the pleasant little house where Smith lived. A tall, thinnish man of about thirty answered, throwing a mop of hair back from his head and grinning. He listened to Danny's introduction and motioned him inside.

"Come on in, Danny. Grab yourself something to drink out of the icebox, and I'll be right with you, as soon as I finish this article I'm working on." He went back to a big noiseless typewriter of ancient vintage and began pounding away busily.

Danny located a bottle of ginger ale and went back into the living room, staring at the shelves of books. He noticed one whole shelf filled with what seemed to be science fiction magazines and books, the latter by a George O. Smith. He was just running down the fist when his host came back in, waving a glass happily.

"Okay, I'm done. Oh, you found 'em? Dad had a couple million words of that stuff in print before I was born, and he's still writing it. He keeps telling me as soon as he gets a chance to retire from electronics, he's coming out here and take it up full time. I grew up on it, which is why I only write articles. Now, what can I do for you?"

Danny picked up an early model of a space station from one of the chairs and sat down, to begin his story. The other listened, with none of the skepticism he'd expected. But halfway through, Smith stopped him.

"Uh-uh. You're on the wrong track, Danny. Forget it. Nobody has a space station, and nobody's going to have one in any length of time we're interested in. Here, wait a minute."

He got up excitedly and began pulling out articles, graphs, diagrams, and a pile of miscellaneous items. Both hands worked furiously as he went on talking.

But the gist of it was what Danny had heard before. When chemical rockets proved to be more expensive than Congress was willing to appropriate funds for, in the quantities needed for the building of a space station, the plans had suffered a setback. Then, when the atomic rocket came along, it had still suffered from the lack of a decent refractory tube lining, and more waiting had gone on. There had been no time when a station couldn't have been built, but funds had always been held up, waiting for a time when it could be done more cheaply. That time had always seemed to be just a year or so away.

Suddenly the nations had wakened to the fact that a station could be built at any time and had gone into a frantic hassle over its results. It was obvious that the nation that got a station up first could rule the world if it wished. And nobody was willing to trust anyone else that much. They'd tried to settle it by turning it over to the United Nations—had even appropriated funds, in fact—but had killed the idea when they couldn't figure how to man it without a risk. And instead of building a station, each nation had now concentrated on building elaborate radar watch stations and bigger atomic-armed guided missiles to prevent such stations being built by anyone else.

"Figure it out," Smith said. "Using Hawks to carry up the materials and giving them a pay load to a thousand miles out of a half-ton apiece—which they won't handle yet—you'd need about two thousand trips to assemble the materials. Then you'd have to feed and take care of the crew doing the work— the part that's always forgotten in discussing this —and that comes to more than the actual materials. Working in space would be slow going. It would take a lot of special machinery, too, and that would have to be carried up. Then all the energy at first would have to be electrical, and that means batteries until they can throw together a power pile out there. The Hawk power plants are too specialized to be used for that, even if they were willing to waste a ship. As near as I can guess, it would take five thousand trips up, all centering on one spot.

"They'd be spotted in no time. As soon as a hundred trips were made, all converging on the same orbit, there'd be a bunch of rocket bombs leaving for that spot. Blooie—no station! And when they also saw where the ships were coming from, as they'd see in their trackers, they'd figure that nation had started an act of war, and every other nation would set out to wipe out the aggressor. We wouldn't dare risk starting a station."

"But suppose they had a way of not being spotted."

Smith snorted. "Balderdash. You've been reading too much of the stuff my father writes, and he wouldn't write about anything that wild. Any nation with physics advanced enough to build radar-invisible stuff wouldn't have to build a space station. They could take over without anything else. And you can bet we don't have that secret. Nope. Only place a station might possibly escape detection would be over the South Pole—and it wouldn't stay there without falling straight down to Earth."

There was a lot more, but Danny couldn't follow it all. It was obvious that Smith knew what he was talking about, and soon obvious that nobody wanted a station there as badly as he did. There was no question of his being prejudiced against the stations. If he said they were impossible, it seemed probable that they were hopelessly, completely impossible!

There was a stranger sitting in Danny's car as he came out. He threw up the top indignandy and then stared at the badge the other held out. The man was of medium height and had a sandy complexion that gave him a washed-out, timid look. He had a grin to go with it. But the card was identification as an agent of the FBI.

"There's a real investigation, too, Cross," the man said quietly. "Hop in and head back. I found you were coming here and figured we could talk it over this way as well as any other. And judging by all the prying and probing you've been doing, you must have plenty to talk about. Oh, my name's Roberts, in case you didn't notice."

Danny spilled it all as he drove back, omitting only the things Jet had told him in confidence; somehow, he couldn't force himself to break that trust. He came to Audack, and Roberts snorted.

"I tried to trace him. I still don't know anything about him, but he's covered. I turned in a query on him, and the wires sizzled with a layoff from all the way up. So I laid off. But if you ever find anything ... well, go on."

He listened to Danny's account of the vanishing picture and its reappearance with a disgusted grunt. Danny knew it left no evidence that would be of any use. Most of the rest of what he had to say was equally useless.

Roberts lifted his eyebrows at the continued reference to the two foreign-looking men. "Interesting, but sounds like a job to locate them. You're the first to mention this, though," he said when Danny had finished. "Well, I'll see what comes of it. You might as well let me off as soon as we hit the city."

Danny was surprised to notice that it was already twilight as he let Roberts off and drove homeward. He'd spent the day with Smith, apparently. And it had all resulted in nothing. There was no chance of a space station now, which meant the men who disappeared must be kidnaped or taken for some other purpose. And on top of that, the Government was obviously seriously investigating things now, as the presence of the FBI man indicated. Also, apparently, Roberts was mnning into the same trouble he'd found.

Ahead of him, a car swung out of a side street.

Danny jammed on his brakes automatically, before he noticed it fully. Then he jerked up sharply. In the car were the two men he'd seen before. He could see the man with the Y mark on his chin clearly at the wheel.

The man glanced back casually. There was only a flick of his eyes, but Danny knew he'd been spotted. The car ahead began to creep forward, picking up speed. He stepped up his own power. The bigger car took a corner sharply, then doubled around another. Danny followed, but it was getting tougher. The leading car doubled back and opened up to a flat ninety, just as a pedestrian stepped out. The other car missed the man by inches and went screaming on. Danny groaned to himself and slammed on his brakes, just in time to avoid hitting the man.

When the way was clear again, the car with the two men was gone. Danny cruised around for a while, hoping he could guess the way they had originally been headed and that they would double back to it eventually. But there was no further sign of them.

Finally he gave up and wheeled the little Morris into its garage. The lights in the house were on. His parents were home, and he could see the shadow of his mother drifting back and forth across the kitchen window, indicating that supper was being prepared. Years ago, his father had tried to help her, feeling it was unfair for her to do the work when they both had jobs; but she'd finally convinced him that she liked cooking, and that it was the best relaxation she knew. Now she was usually complete master of her kitchen.

Danny went slowly around to the front of the house, making sure no one was lurking there. The street light had been fixed, however. There was no place for anyone to hide. He glanced toward the house and back toward the street.

The strange car was parked squarely in front of their house. And sitting in it, together with the two men, was his father!

Danny froze for a second. Then he saw that his father was nodding quietly, with no evidence of anger. Danny scowled to himself and headed up to the porch. In the shadows there, he settled down to watch. His father was speaking now. There was no evidence of violence, and a few minutes later Dr. Cross stuck out his hand and the others shook it. Then the door opened, and Cross got out and headed quietly toward the house, while the car drove off.

Danny waited until his father was almost beside him. Then he stood up. "All right, Dad. What gives?"

The older man jerked back and then chuckled faintly. "Spying still, son? I ought to keep you in suspense. In fact, I will—until after supper. But I'll tell you right now, you couldn't be more wrong about those two gentlemen. And the next time you see them minding their own business, don't start chasing them in your car. They thought it was a good joke!"

Danny studied his face as they went into the house. "So I suppose they came up and rang the bell like normal people. And you invited them into the living room, and..."

"I was out looking to see whether the street light was on when they saw me and called me over," Cross corrected him easily. "They wanted to discuss something with me privately before making up their mind whether to let the rest of you in on it. But I can tell you a few things now."

Danny considered it and wasn't entirely satisfied. His father looked excited, pleased, and bewildered, under an attempt at keeping his face normal. There was a peculiar tension there, but it was one that wasn't unpleasant for a change. Finally, the boy dropped the subject when his mother called them in for supper.

It wasn't until dessert, though, that Dr. Cross reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He flipped it over and tossed it onto the table. Face up was a gray-and-green Security pass—the highest in existence, so far as Danny knew, though it seemed there were others, judging by Hammond's experience.

"I'm going to need this in my—work," he said with a faint hesitation. Then he grinned, and plunged on. "Your mysterious foreign spies, Danny, were top Security men, it seems. You might say, a very special branch of Security. All they wanted of me and of Jet was a chance to check up on this family—and Jet told you what he did to cover up, though I guess he used a lot of truth about the planned flight to make the story good."

"And I suppose now we've all got the higher rating," Danny said doubtfully.

Cross shook his head. "Your mother and I have, son. But I warned you not to go too far with your spy-hunting. It looks bad for Security angles." He watched Danny's face change color. Having a lower Security badge than his family would mean he'd either keep them from their work or else he'd have to stay away. Then Cross chuckled again. "But don't worry. You won't need it. They had something else for you. Ever hear of Dr. Hayden?"

"Of M.I.T.?" Danny grimaced. "Who hasn't? He's the top rocket-engineering teacher in the world. It was because of him I tried for that scholarship a year ago. But..."

"But nothing, son. It took a lot of time and a lot of checking up, with things the way they are. But you made it. Those two 'spies' of yours brought the official notice from M.I.T. with them. Here."

He grinned at Danny and his mother and tossed across an envelope heavy with various documents. Danny ripped it open and began poring over it, but the facts were plain enough. He was to go to M.I.T. to begin under Hayden, at once. The scholarship would cover tuition and a regular sum for living expenses.

"But it's for next week!" he cried suddenly.

Cross nodded. "That's right. That gives you the summer to make up your math work and solves the problem of our different Security passes. Then, when you come back, you can probably get a higher pass yourself. You'll be leaving day after tomorrow."

Danny's mother let out a faint cry and then blushed and tried to smile. But he was busy trying to think it through. It was a chance no sane person could turn down, but . . .

Dr. Cross smiled again, with a sudden urgency. "Forget all your investigations, son. You can't help Jet now, and there are others who can investigate the matter better than we can. You see how wrong you were about those two men—and you could be just as wrong about everything else. This is an opportunity darned few men get, and I think you'd better take it. You don't have to, but I told them you'd be tickled pink."

Danny nodded slowly. "I guess it just takes time to get used to the idea. I—I—well ... Of course I'll take it!"

He started for his room, and his mother turned to follow. But there must have been some sign from Danny's father, since she turned back. Danny saw them drawing together at the far end of the room. Her face was half-anxious, half-afraid, and his father's expression was again a mixture of uncertainty and peculiar pleasure.

It was obvious they had things to talk about that they couldn't share with him. Danny felt hurt and

left out of it, for a moment, before he realized that he'd held things back from them. People couldn't always be as frank as they wanted to be, and it didn't mean any lack of love or trust. He waved to them and went on into his room.

Then he slumped down on the bed, trying to think. It was too obvious. The scholarship was a peace offering, a way of getting him off someone's neck. Maybe he couldn't really do anything, but someone had been annoyed by his investigation. And now they were bribing him to go away to school and stop bothering them. It meant that he'd been on part of the right track, at least.

Now, though, he couldn't stand in the way of his father's new advance in rank. They'd been very clever, whoever it was behind it all. They'd made sure he had to accept.

Chapter 10 Fresh Evidence

I

HEY had driven Jet's car to El Paso. Danny's mother had been too cheerful all the way, more so than when he'd first left for Chicago. His father had been almost as carefully cheerful this time, apologizing over and over for being unable to send Danny by plane, but the scholarship had included train fare; even with the sudden promotion, his finances were still strained from all the technical books and journals he'd been forced to buy.

It had meant nothing to Danny. He liked the monorail trains. But now at the station, he wished the express would never arrive. There was still that hard, false brightness on the faces of his parents and the quick exchange of glances when he wasn't supposed to be looking. Whatever those special Security men—if they were Security agents—had said must have been more important than it had seemed at first.

They sat in the station restaurant now, while Danny tried to stuff a banana split down his throat to please his mother. He could look through the windows and see the compartments being made ready to move out and contact the eastbound train. He saw his luggage being wheeled up to one and realized the time was growing short. A fine vacation this had been!

His eyes wandered to the figure of a small man slumped down on a seat near the compartments. The man had been sitting there for fifteen minutes, wearing a light coat and with a hat pulled down over his eyes, in spite of the heat. Danny wondered briefly at what had brought him here, before returning to his own problems.

He swallowed the last of the ice cream and shoved back the dish. His mother smiled again, too quickly. His father had been staring at the same man outside with a peculiar expression, but now he glanced at Danny and brought himself forcibly back to the current situation.

"Let me know as soon as you get set and find a place to keep it," he said quickly, "and we'll send out your car. You'll find it handy there, too, I guess."

"Sure," Danny agreed. He hadn't even thought of having the little Morris sent to him. He knew he should be happy to be going to study under Hayden, but somehow it seemed like being sent off to prison. He'd almost forgotten that a normal life was still possible. "And keep working on Chapman, will you? Maybe if I keep myself on good behavior, you can get my pass upped to match yours."

Surprisingly, then, his mother started to cry quiedy, making no sound, but turning her face away as the tears started to flow. Dr. Cross stared helplessly at Danny, who was dumfounded. It wasn't at all like her. Then she caught herself quickly, and turned back, the smile forced onto her lips again.

"Silly of me. But if it hadn't been for that darned pass, I'd have had you all summer, and now ... Oh, forget it. I'm all right now."

Danny nodded uncertainly. "Well be together again next summer, anyhow—all three of us!"

She looked away again. This time his father broke it up. "Come on. The compartment's all made up and our porter's signaling. Train must be right on time."

It was always on time, but bustling about getting to the compartment took their minds off things a little. Both his parents were smiling again when he finally got into the compartment and closed the door. He heard the signals go on and glanced back to see the little man who had been waiting making a sudden run for the next compartment. A ridiculous white beard was flopping over his shoulder and he was sprinting hard. He barely made it before the compartments began to move down the track to join the coming train.

Danny turned for a final wave. His mother was leaning on his father, and Dr. Cross was staring at him with an oddly hungry look, but they waved an answer. Then the compartment picked up speed and went humming toward the train, leaving his parents behind.

Compartments had already dropped off, and now the little group joining the train drew up beside the empty sockets just as their track neared the main one. There was a faint jolt and the hiss of air motors as the compartments were drawn into position and locked in firmly while the train hummed on at a steady clip. Then everything was quiet, and Danny was on his way toward M.I.T.

A few minutes later the train porter was unlocking the inside door. "Diner in the front, sir. Lunch is being served. Going right through, eh? Well, we'll sure try to make you comfortable, sir."

"Thanks." Danny had heard the formula twice before. Now he gestured back. "I noticed an old man in the next compartment from El Paso. Any idea where he's going?"

Blankness spread over the other's face. "No, sir, he didn't say. Got an unlimited pass."

The porter left quickly, then, and Danny puzzled over it. In a few cases, the Government issued unlimited passes to individuals, good for transportation on anything, anywhere. The idea dated from the worry over the movement of scientists years before, when they had found that foreign intelligence could guess fairly well what research was being done from tracing out the movements of key men. With the passes, there was no way to check up, since a man having one simply got on where he wished, traveled as far as he wanted, and then got off—to change to another mode of travel, usually. But they were rarely used now.

The man certainly hadn't looked like a scientist. He'd seemed to be more of a crackpot. It could be a disguise, such as the movies were showing, but

Danny had never run across an incident of a disguise being used in real life.

He deliberately let himself puzzle over it for a while, to take his mind off less pleasant subjects. Then it wore thin, and he began looking for something to kill time. He'd forgotten to get magazines at the station. He shrugged and dug into his smaller bag, looking for a textbook.

An envelope fell out, with his mother's writing on it. He studied it for a second and then opened it. Bills spilled out, together with a note.

"Hope you'll find more use for this than I could," she'd written. "It was for special clothes—as if I ever need any when I practically live in a lab smock. And don't tell your father, or he'll be hurt and wonder why we didn't use it for plane fare, if we had to use it at all. But I guess any boy can find better ways of spending it than that. And Danny—don't forget we think you're the greatest, even if we can't always show it!"

He swallowed and put the fifteen tens into his wallet. Then his face sobered further. Jet had given him the same amount when he'd left on his return back to Chicago after his Christmas vacation. And now Jet...

He snapped the bag closed and went out of the compartment, heading for the club car where he could buy something to read. The train seemed fairly empty. At this time of the year, most travel was toward the west for vacations. From Chicago east, however, he'd probably find a crowded train, since others moved toward the Atlantic cities for the "sights."

He found a magazine with an article on chances of increasing the average age from seventy-three to a hundred during the next fifty years. The subject didn't interest him, but he was curious about Smith's writing, once the picture and by-line caught his eye. He picked it up, together with several rental records for the player in his compartment, and headed back.

He was just coming into his own car when he spotted the old man. The beard was still flopping erratically with each step, but the hat and long coat had been left behind. The man had white hair to match his beard. If it was a disguise, it was consistent. He seemed more amused than fearful, however, as he headed toward the rest room.

Then he saw Danny, and his eyes dropped. He stepped aside at once, instead of waiting until they were almost together, and his face twisted away. Then Danny was past. The old man went on and into the rest room as Danny stared back.

Something seemed wrong, though. The boy puzzled over it as he went down the aisle. He came to the other compartment behind his and glanced in. The door was shut, but the curtain was partly drawn, and he could see a little table drawn out, with a group of papers scattered on it. The writing was too far to read, but from the arrangement on the sheets it looked more like mathematical formulae than normal writing.

That fitted with the unlimited pass, of course. Everything else seemed wrong. Most scientists were particularly sensitive about beards; they'd been drawn in the cartoons so often as old fossils, with long white beards, that most of them had come to hate the idea of anything more than a goatee; anyhow, a long beard was a nuisance in any laboratory, and most scientists were connected with some type of lab work nowadays—even the theoretical mathematicians used all sorts of calculating equipment.

Then he realized what had seemed wrong about the man. The beard wasn't just unusual; it had seemed awkward. Danny tried to remember the few men he'd seen with long beards, and he realized that they hadn't let their whiskers flop about that way. By habit, they seemed to have learned to handle them easily. This old man hadn't had that practice.

The white hair had been genuine, however, so the man must be about as old as he looked. Danny dropped onto his seat, trying to visualize the face again. Then he began moving the beard down on his mental image. It wasn't clear, at first.

Adding the rest of the body helped. A small man, on the thin side, with white hair. He ran through the men he knew who might fit, and shook his head. There were several, if it weren't for the age.

Then it hit him. One man had prematurely white hair. He'd been only forty, but nobody could remember when his hair had been any other color. Bjornsen!

He jumped to the door of his compartment Then he reconsidered and ripped out his toilet case. A metal mirror in there would serve. He propped it up carefully against the half-opened door and studied the result. With it, he could see down the aisle without being forced to stick his head out.

Almost at once, the door of the rest room opened, and the man came out. Now, as he walked, his age seemed false. In the mirror, Danny studied him, trying to strip away the beard mentally. It was harder than it seemed, but by visualizing Bjornsen's chin on the rest of the face, it seemed to work. Either the man under the beard was Bjórnsen or he was a nearly perfect double for him!

But Bjornsen had supposedly blown up in a rocket far above the surface of the Earth. The report had been official, and the reaction of the Government to the release of the news had been just as convincing. It had been Bjornsen's supposed death that had really begun the tight situation at the Proving Grounds and in all the divisions located at Alamo-gordo.

It made no sense at all. If there had been any need to put Bjornsen under cover, it could have been done in a much less spectacular manner. He could have been taken sick, theoretically, and have been buried in a routine manner; or he could simply have been transferred quietly to what was supposed to be some other work. There would certainly be no need to account for his death in a way which was so spectacular that any hint of it in the press could cause major troubles for the Government! That would be exactly what they wouldn't want.

As a genuine death it had been hard to explain. As a fake, it made things much too complicated for logic. Unless it was supposed to do that . . .

Danny pulled himself up grimly. His feet were tapping on the floor, and he stilled them, forcing himself to relax. For a moment, he'd almost jumped to the wild conclusion that having Björnsen still alive meant that Jet might also be safe. But it wouldn't stand up. Jet's death had been normal for his occupation. Björn sen's seemed more like a rigged fake on the Government than by it. If the man had been a traitor and had wanted to disappear to carry his knowledge to some other power, it might have made sense, perhaps.

Danny couldn't picture him as a traitor, but there had been other men who were as highly respected and seemingly as completely trustworthy who had somehow twisted to the other side. It was an idea that couldn't be automatically rejected. And in that case, Björnsen would naturally have known something of the other mysterious deaths and might have deliberately set up something to look similar.

But if so, how had he gotten an unlimited pass for travel? Danny thought it over for several minutes before the obvious answer came. The man must have had one before, and be using it still; there had been no general announcement of his death, so it would almost certainly still be good.

It all seemed to fit to some extent. But the trouble now—as it had been all along—was that Danny had no evidence beyond his own word. In this case, he couldn't even be sure of that. He'd seen a man who might have looked like Bjornsen and had spotted some papers that seemed to have mathematics on them. But he couldn't be positive about anything.

Danny went out and down the aisle again, but the curtain now covered the door completely and there was no sign of the man with the beard. He dawdled around for a minute and then returned, to prop up the mirror so he could see if the other door opened. He positioned his seat carefully and sat down to wait.

Other passengers moved up and down the aisle, while the miles hummed by, but there was no sign of the man he wanted. The door remained shut, and everything was silent.

They were drawing near Fort Worth when the door finally opened. This time the man glanced up and down the aisle carefully, paying especial attention to Danny's door. He frowned, but apparently decided to risk it, and began moving rapidly to the back of the car. Danny watched him intently until the man went into the rest room again.

Then he was out of his seat with a burst of speed.

He yanked the mirror up as he leaped through his door, and pocketed it. He grasped the handle of the door to the other compartment, half-expecting it to be locked; but he was lucky in that. The older man had apparently wanted to waste no time in fumbling with a lock, and the door opened smoothly.

The desk was still being used, and now there were papers scattered everywhere. Apparently the man was copying some of his material from a pad in front of him. Whatever was on it was in a different writing from that on the loose papers. Danny picked it up, trying to figure out from the brief sets of coded figures what it could be about. But there was no time for that. He saw one sheet from the pad in a small basket along with others that the man must have written and rejected.

He stooped quickly and grabbed up one sheet from the notebook and one of the scrawled sheets of manuscript paper. At a glance, it looked something like the writing of Bjornsen's he had seen, with a European t and g. He only glanced at them, however, before shoving them into his pocket and swinging back to the door.

He was too late! As he turned, the knob turned and the door swung open. The bearded man took one step forward, then halted, his eyes darting first to Danny and on to the papers. The first shock of fear gave way to a tense self-control as he saw that the papers were apparently undisturbed.

"What—?" he began. It was a voice at least similar to that of Bjornsen. Then it rose to a higher and older pitch. "Young man..."

"Sorry, sir," Danny interrupted him. If the man were Bjornsen, nothing would fool him, since he'd know who Danny was; but it was still better to try to cover up. "I guess I got in the wrong compartment. I was just going out when you came in."

The other scowled. Now Danny noticed for the first time that the man's hand hovered near his lapel, as if ready to reach in to a shoulder holster! Then the hand dropped, and the man nodded quickly. "Quite all right, young man. Mistakes will happen. But I'm in the midst of important classification of data on the ecology of Lonicerapericlymenum, and very busy. Very."

Any way it was translated, it still came out to a study of how "the woodbine twineth," Danny realized. Under other circumstances, he might have appreciated it as a mild joke, but now it had too much of the air of a test. He kept his face straight and apologized again as he left.

He didn't make the mistake of listening outside; he was sure that the man would have looked for that. Instead, he stepped hastily inside his own compartment and waited for a full minute. Then he moved out and began setting the controls on his compartment for leaving. He couldn't be sure that he'd done it right, or that it could be done without first locking the door. But he followed what he'd seen the porter do before as closely as he could, then went back inside and locked the door firmly.

It was less than half a minute later when the sound of running steps came down the aisle and stopped outside. There was a pounding of a heavy fist, and a voice came faintly through the sound insulation. "Open up in there! This is police!"

So the man had called the train detective!

The voice suddenly ended, and Danny threw back the curtain to see a heavy-set man outside, just reaching for the controls that he had locked. If they were released, and he was found with the papers in his pockets, he'd ...

A sharp hiss reached his ears abrupdy, and there was a sudden lurch and sound of wheels under him. The compartment had broken free just in time as they reached the entrance track to Fort Worth. He'd barely made it.

He watched the station approaching, gathering up his bags and getting ready to leap out at once. It might take some time to call the station and alert the detectives there, but he was forced to count on being pursued almost at once, now that his refusal to open the door and his flight represented an automatic confession of guilt.

The station flashed by as the compartment slowed. Then the automatic outside lock on the door released, and Danny leaped out onto the platform and began running toward the taxi stand.

Chapter II Among the Missing

ANNY'S eyes ran over the line of cabs waiting. Most of them were from a single company, but a few smaller concerns were there. Finally he spotted one that looked older than many of the others and showed signs of having had its original paint gone over with new colors. It belonged to none of the companies that he had spotted.

There was no way of being sure, but it looked like an independent, privately owned cab to him. If not —well, he could probably get out and try again, if there were time enough.

He opened the door and tossed his bags in. "Think you can find me a small hotel out beyond the business section?" he asked.

The man nodded and started the motor. Like most cabs, it was still a four-wheel model with a high-compression gasoline engine instead of a Diesel or atomic, but it seemed to be in good condition, which wasn't typical of cabs. Danny nodded to himself, hoping it was an independent. He put the question to the driver.

The man nodded. "Sam Nolan, with my own cab and no bosses," he said. "And believe me, sonny, it's no picnic. Seventeen years in this game, and this is what I've got to show for it. Not that I'm complain-

ing, /understand. Had three cabs once, but gave the others up. Hackies were robbing me blind."

"Yeah," Danny agreed without bothering to Consider the familiar story. "Look, Mr. Nolan, how much would you charge to take me to Alamogordo in this?"

The man turned a startled face back. "You kidding? That'd be cash in advance!"

"Half in advance," Danny compromised. It wouldn't make much difference, since he'd have to trust the man not to rob him, anyway, but it sounded more businesslike.

"Half—and you show me you got the rest. I had a fare once that took a whole day. Couldn't pay, his brother wouldn't, and what could I do?" He considered, pulling over to the curb. "A thousand miles or more there and back. I might pick up a fare if I case the bus station—but not for too much. And I'd have to stay overnight. Umm, how's two hundred dollars sound?"

It was a lot more than Danny had figured; but he'd overlooked the return trip. He opened his wallet and counted the money. With the bills from his mother, he couldn't quite make it. And he'd need something to spend for food on the trip. "Best I can do is one seventy-five."

"You got yourself a trip," Nolan answered. "Lem-me call the little woman, and we'll be off. Still make it sometime tonight if I push Lizzy a little. Aw, keep your money, long as I know you got it. Pay me when we get there, unless I need some for gas on the way."

He picked up the small microphone and called into it several times. "Do some neighborhood business," he explained. "Folks call the wife, she passes it on. Helps on dull days. Lou? Lou, I got a job out of town."

They talked for a minute, and Danny was relieved to find that the destination wasn't even mentioned. Trains, busses and all the airlines might be watched, but nobody would think that he had enough money to hire a cab. And nobody bothered to look at the passenger in the back seat, anyhow.

Maybe he could have called the FBI here. But Roberts knew him already, and at home he'd have his father to back him up on his knowledge of Björns en.

He pulled out the two pieces of paper and began going over them, while Nolan went into a nearby diner to pick up coffee and a sandwich, then stopped at a service station for gas and a road map.

The sheet from the notebook puzzled him. There was something completely familiar about the writing, though he couldn't place it. The data there was meaningful only when whatever it referred to was known, too. He folded it carefully and put it back, studying the sheet on which Björnsen had written. It only confirmed his belief that it must be the scientist. The writing had the tricks he had associated with the man, and one that was a complete check, to his limited knowledge of handwriting. Björnsen had always underlined his sub- and superscript numerals, such as the figure 2 over a number to indicate it was squared; the same things were underscored here. It was a useless habit, but one such as a man might pick up without ever realizing he had it.

The mathematics were meaningless to Danny, but he could follow the way they were developed. It was a job of simplifying an equation and checking it against others to get rid of factors which didn't have any real effect on it.

"Suppose I turn on the radio?" Nolan suggested. "It's a long trip, sonny, and well need something to take our minds off the springs in this hack. And don't blame me if you're plumb worn-out when we get there!"

Danny settled back. It wasn't too bad at first, but Nolan hadn't exaggerated. Even with stops for food and a chance to stretch his legs, he was dead on his feet when the cab finally drove up to the address he had given, a few blocks away from his home. He paid Nolan and lingered for a few seconds to give directions for a good, low-priced hotel and to listen to the man's advice about a good hot bath for his sore muscles.

Then he watched the cab move off and headed toward his parents' house.

He was just turning in when a voice spoke from a car parked beside the walk. "Hello, Cross. Hop in, will you?"

Danny jerked around as a dial fight came on, showing the face of the FBI man, Roberts. The man motioned again, and Danny turned reluctantly to get into the car.

"What kept you so long?" Roberts asked. "Nolan's cab got into the city over half an hour ago." He grinned sourly at Danny's amazement. "Yeah, we knew all about it. When the train dick found that both you and the guy complaining had got off at Fort Worth, he turned it over to our office. There's no official evidence against you and no complaint now that the other man skipped, but we don't like mysteries or boys who go charging around in cabs to avoid the cops. And with all this other business-well, I felt like talking to you."

Danny felt disgusted with himself for not seeing that the other compartment had broken off behind his. But it didn't matter now. "I was coming to see you, anyhow. The man who called the train detective was Bjornsen!"

"That's nice, but it doesn't—Bjornsen? The Bjornsen?"

Danny nodded, and Roberts shook his head. "You're crazy, kid," the FBI man said. "Bjornsen is dead. He's the one who touched off the big investigation going on. You were seeing things."

"I've got something for you to see, then," Danny told him wearily. "Some of Bjornsen's writing. And if your bureau is as good as most of us think it is, you can prove that the ink on the paper can't be more than a few hours old. Here!"

Roberts took the two papers and held them under the dash lamp. His face showed no expression, but he handed them back to Danny. "Keep them until we reach the office," he said, and cut on the motor. "Your family doesn't know anything about this, so they can wait. If you do have anything, that can't."

Danny started to protest, and then realized that Roberts was right. Anyhow, it would be better to break his return to his parents when things were straightened out. He refolded the papers and put them back quickly.

"If you want to save time," Roberts told him, "there's a tape-recorder mike in that compartment ahead of you. Push the switch—yeah—and you'll see the controls. Cut it on with the toggle, then give it a few seconds to warm up. The button on the mike turns on the tape drive, too."

Danny began talking, facing the other. Roberts had his eyes on the street ahead, though driving at this hour was simple, since there was very little traffic. He seemed to be letting the information soak in, rather than listening, as Danny went through his whole account. As they neared the office, he slowed the car to let Danny's conclusion check with their arrival. Then he reached out, cut off the motor, and drew the tape reel from under the seat. His hands were already reaching for his office keys as they jumped out of the car.

The office was completely dark and deserted. Roberts cut on the lights in the back, where there were no windows to show that this section of the

Security building was in use. The man moved to what looked like a standard teletype and began thumping out an account on it. He slapped the tape down and set it to spinning at a high rate when he finished.

"They'll get a duplicated tape at the headquarters," he explained. "Now, where's that paper?"

He took it and dusted it with a fine powder of some sort. With that finished, he mounted it on a large drum and set the drum to spinning. At the other end of the wire, a duplicate of the paper with all marks and writing would be completed shortly.

A bell sounded and he removed the tape and paper from the machines. The tape was filed away at once, but Roberts brought the paper over to his desk, studying it for a few minutes before putting it into a transparent plastic envelope. "Looks recent, though it will take an expert to be sure. Seems to be done with blue-black ink that hasn't fully blackened yet. Well, we should be getting a report soon, so well know whether it's worth bothering with. That powder brought out some fine prints, too—probably mostly yours, but some will be from the writer."

He began asking questions, trying to extract more details from Danny's memory. Finally he cut off the tape recorder and leaned back, shaking his head.

"I shouldn't be paying much attention to a story as wild as this, Cross," he said, but his voice was friendly enough. "But in this crazy mess, anything that looks like a break is a godsend. You think you've had trouble trying to get sense out of it? Kid, I've been having a run-around pulled on me that makes yours look feeble. Nobody knows anything. See the headman, they tell me; and the headman either doesn't know anything either or he gives me a story that explains everything—explains it per-fectiy—until I suddenly know the man's lying; you get a sixth sense for that in my business. It's too good, it sounds rehearsed, and all the little signs of a memorized story begin to show up. At least, I don't get that from you. And there are things that don't fit in your story, which is the way things should be when a man tells the truth. I don't say I believe you, but I believe you think you're telling the facts. Maybe you're shading it too much on that spy theory of yours."

"What else will explain it?" Danny asked.

"How do I know? I'm not trying to explain things until I get more facts. But I don't think you can figure on espionage. If there was a smell of that, the top men would be out here with me. Instead, when I ask for more men here, I get the brush-off. Sometimes I think nobody wants me to find anything. What do you know about that trip your father took the day before you were supposed to leave?"

It caught Danny by surprise. He blinked and straightened in the chair. "Trip? What trip?" Roberts sighed. "Yeah. What trip? He went tearing out of his office, heading in an official car for Las Cruces. Know anybody there he might have seen?"

"Smith, maybe. Douglas Smith." Danny knew now that the careless relaxation between them had been just a pose to spring this on him. But it didn't matter, though it was funny his father hadn't mentioned going to see Smith. Come to think of it, he wondered how his father had first known of the man. "He's the writer—"

"I know. The guy you quizzed. I talked to Smith, too. He's a nuisance in this whole case. Keeps dropping over here, interviewing everyone for those articles of his. He was the last man to see Dr. Bjornsen, too. But he's got a top reporter's pass, and I checked him through the channels. Got an absolute okay on him from the Old Man himself—and an order to lay off and not bother him. Talk about pull!"

"Why don't you ask my father?"

"I tried to. But all I got was the old routine about his being away on urgent business." Roberts shook his head, just as the teletype let out a warning cluck. He went over and began pulling out the tape that came spinning out at a speed no regular teletype could handle.

Danny watched, and something prickled up his backbone as he saw the sudden freezing of expression on the FBI man's face. Roberts came back to the desk slowly, frowning. Danny couldn't tell whether it was surprise, disappointment, confusion, or anger that lay behind the expression. He threw the tape onto the desk and motioned to it.

Danny picked it up reluctantly. It was short enough to skim at a single glance:

BJORNSENDEATH DEFINITE, HANDWRITING SIMILAR BUT NOT SAME, MATHEMATICS RELATE PURE EXERCISE, NO APPLICATION, SUSPECT KNOWN AND INCOGNITO OFFICIAL. RECOMMEND DESTRUCTION SPURIOUS EVIDENCE, NO FURTHER ACTION. SUGGEST CHECK NEUROTIC SUSPICION CROSS. ONE.

Roberts took the tape and the paper and dropped them into a small infrared oven, reducing them to ashes in seconds. Danny let out a cry of protest, but the FBI man pointed back to the message. "That One at the bottom means that the Old Man himself was called in. When he ends a case, it's finished."

Danny's lips tensed to protest, and dien he gave up. Roberts had to obey orders, and it was natural that he should believe his own superiors, rather than taking the word of a boy who was supposed to be filled with neurotic suspicion.

Apparently, Roberts wasn't familiar with higher mathematics. Now that the paper was destroyed, Danny couldn't prove anything, but he knew that the work on it hadn't been any exercise, unrelated to reality, any more than it had dealt with botany as the bearded man had suggested. Natural logarithms wouldn't be needed for botany! The paper had held formulae that dealt with certain definite laws of physics, and whoever had been working on it had been trying to cancel out all the meaningless terms, to find a solution which would simplify operations.

Danny couldn't argue on other things; he had no absolute evidence that it was Björn sen's handwriting, nor could he swear that the man had been Björnsen. Without the misleading and untrue official explanation of the math, Danny might have swallowed the story he was supposed to believe. Now he was sure it was all a complete falsehood, deliberately meant to keep anyone from getting the facts!

It was hard to believe that the top men of the Bureau could be involved in some elaborate plot to suppress facts which might indicate treason, but he had no other choice.

"All right," he said wearily. "Go ahead and investigate my neurotic suspicion!"

Roberts shook his head slowly. "No, I can't buy that yet, Cross. If you saw what you thought—and I still think you were telling the truth—you were dead right in turning it over to me. You've been doing a lot more meddling in this than you should, but I can't blame you when your cousin was killed and you think your parents may be next. After all the hush-hush, it's good to find someone who wants to talk. But now I've got to keep you out of trouble from here on. What's your phone number?"

Danny gave his home number, and Roberts went back to another desk. He picked up a phone equipped with a gadget over the mouthpiece to keep the conversation quiet, then turned back to Danny. "We'll just say we had you picked up and returned here for questioning on your cousin's death—nothing specific—and that you'll be kept for a few days in case we need to question you again."

He began dialing. There was obviously a long wait before he began talking. Danny watched his expression, but Roberts turned his back almost at once, so that nothing could be seen.

The boy pulled the other paper out of his pocket and glanced at it before he fully realized he still had the notebook sheet. The handwriting was not that of the bearded man, and would offer no proof now. But it might be interesting to find to whom it belonged. It looked almost too familiar.

Then the FBI man hung up and came back, with his face a frozen mask. "Your mother will be down for you soon," he said. "She's agreed to accept responsibilty for your discretion the next few days, and I'll square your staying with her temporarily with Security, even though I don't think you could qualify for a matching pass on her new level."

"My mother?" Danny asked. "How come you're not asking my father—?"

He stared at Roberts while the suspicion grew in his mind. Then, over the rising cold inside him, a wave of sudden shock hit at him as his eyes dropped again to the paper in his hand. It was in his father s writing.

At his first words, Roberts grabbed the sheet and dug into a file in his desk, to compare the writing with that on another paper. "You're right, Cross. He makes a trip to Las Cruces. Then you find this in the hands of your bearded friend after your father has seemed surprised to see him at the station. And now . . ."

"Now my father's listed among the missing?" Danny asked, while the fear grew inside him.

Roberts hesitated. Then he nodded slowly. "I probably shouldn't admit this, but after you show me this writing . . . Cross, your father wasn't at home. Your mother says he's been given an assignment for secret work out of town. No idea where to reach him or when he'll be back. And I don't like it! It feels wrong. It's the same as too many other cases recently. Two days ago, I know your father put through requisitions for half a million dollars worth of new equipment to start a new line of research. It was approved, too. That isn't the way things are done, two days before a man goes on a hush-hush assignment! We don't know anything— maybe it is a genuine secret mission. But . . ."

He let it hang there, but Danny wasn't paying attention to the possibilities that didn't fit the case. There was only one explanation that would fit— whoever was behind the vanishing men had added his father to the fist!

The Uncoded Letter

TRYTO KEEP my eye on all who have gray-and-green passes," Roberts said. "I've noticed only one thing so far, and that is that most of the men who disappear or blow up seem to have them. So, when your father went over to Security to apply for one for himself and your mother, just before he began requisitioning all that new equipment . . ."

"I thought he got it from the two men," Danny interjected.

"What two men? He got it the only way anyone gets one—by proving he needed it. And his proof must have been good, because it came through in about six hours I"

Danny described the two men, and Roberts shook his head. "Oh, those! I've already checked up on them. They're local representatives of the United Nations, all right. They're hangovers from the days when all atomic material was being checked by the UN, and nobody pays much attention to them now. But they wouldn't have anything to do with Security passes. I thought I was the only one who'd worked up suspicions about them. Danny, you've managed somehow to see too darned much!"

"Or not enough," Danny answered. He noticed that Roberts had used his first name and wondered for a second whether that meant the man felt more

friendly, or whether it was another trick to throw him off his guard. But in the numbness from the news about his father, he couldn't worry about it. "I intend—"

"You'll do exactly nothing," Roberts said sharply. *I don't like the smell of things myself, but officially there's no evidence. I'm leveling with you for just one reason—so you won't think nobody else is onto things, and so you'll leave it up to me. You can't do anything more than I can; it's my job, and I know how to do it. As long as I'm assigned here, I'm going to keep digging. But you'll only get your mother, yourself and me into trouble if you go trying to ask questions of people!"

"I can't help thinking!" Danny protested.

"I don't want you to. I want you to think and to react. If anything seems wrong, drop around and have a talk with me. That's what I'm here for . . . Umm, must be your mother."

He got up and went out quickly. Danny heard a mutter of voices in the hall before the door opened again. He got up on legs that were beginning to get stiff and headed for the door, just as Roberts came back with his mother.

He'd expected to see her face lined with worry and grief, but there was no sign of that. There was a tightness of some kind of strain, but with it was now a normal smile as she saw him. She dropped an arm around his shoulders as a man might have done and squeezed once. "Bad pennies always turn up, eh, Danny? But I guess we can find a piggy bank for this one. Is he all clear, Mr. Roberts?"

Roberts half bowed with more deference than Danny had seen from him before. "Absolutely, Dr. Cross. Sorry it couldn't have been done before this, but you know how things are."

She smiled again and began thanking him and saying good-by. Apparently she must have accepted the story of his father's being assigned new work without question, though he couldn't understand how. His mother's mind was as good as anyone else's, and she had known more about his father's work. But she had never been as seriously involved in the investigation of the situation as he and his father, and perhaps it didn't seem so strange to her.

She shook her head at his inquiries, however, and concentrated on her driving until they were home. There she went back into the kitchen and came out with hot chocolate and a light snack. He was surprised to find that he was hungry, in spite of everything. It was easier to talk over the food.

Apparently she knew very little. Dr. Cross had been on the trail of something of the utmost importance. He'd thought that he was about ready to solve the big problem of the refractory tube linings by a lucky break. She knew about his trip to Las Cruces, but couldn't—or wouldn't—give any information on it. And after they had seen Danny off at El Paso, she'd gone back to her job.

"I'm doing important work, too," she told him. "I think I've almost found the ideal plant mutation to restore oxygen to the air. The last bunch I mutated have everything. They take very little minerals in their tanks, they grow faster than anything you ever saw, and they don't even need a rest. I've got a little room only about three feet on each side, and the plants in it are breaking more carbon dioxide back to oxygen than two men can breathe outl And they bear edible fruits continually, too. That's why I was given the same pass as your father. I should have applied for mine first, but . . *

But she'd have stalled first, Danny knew. She'd switched research jobs once because her work would have meant the effective separation of different passes for herself and Dr. Cross. Danny took it for granted that she couldn't give him more details and let her go on.

His father had gone back to work, too. And just before she quit, she'd gotten a phone call from him. He had said he had to leave at once, with almost no information beyond what Danny had already received. She'd rushed home, barely in time to kiss him good-by before he grabbed up the bag he'd packed and rushed out.

"Anyone with him?" Danny asked.

She gave him a sudden sharp glance and hesitated. Then she nodded reluctantly. "There were a couple of men. One in a car outside, and one with him."

"Foreign-looking, dark and short?"

"No!" She said it too strongly, and seemed to sense it herself. She softened her voice, and took back a little of it. "Well, I didn't notice anything like that, son. But I guess I wasn't paying much attention. Danny, forget whatever you're thinking! Your father was a great man . . ."

"Was?" he cut in, and his voice broke on the word.

She reached over and took his ears, shaking his head from side to side half playfully. "Let me finish sentences, young man! He was a great man a long time before most people recognized it, but now he's proved it. And sometimes when that happens, it's hard on a man's family. But his country has to come first. And that's enough of this. Do I look as if anything had happened to your father? And did it ever occur to you that maybe I couldn't tell you everything if I wanted to—which is your own fault! If you'd made less trouble, your father might have gotten you a green pass, too. He applied for it, I know."

Danny stared at her. There was no evidence that she was worried about his father. Instead, there seemed to be a strange pride, mixed with the same look he'd seen on her face once when his father had made a business trip that would take two weeks— a look that meant she w as going to be lonesome and wasn't going to show it.

But he couldn't accept her looks as proof. If she knew he was worried about his father, she'd have managed somehow to keep her own worry from showing. Sometimes she acted as if he were already a man, but at other times she seemed to slip back to the days when he was under twelve and worried about the nervousness he was developing; she could treat him like a man, but she couldn't seem to let the rest of the world treat him that way.

He sighed as she got up to go back to the bed from which Roberts' call must have wakened her. He waited until she was apparently satisfied that he was through, and then sprang his final question on her. "Did you leave Dad's note to me in my room?"

She swung back, and the mask was suddenly gone. There was shock and pain on her face for a brief second, before she covered it by throwing her hair back with her arm. The mask was back when the arm came down, and her voice was normal. "There wasn't time, Danny. He said he'd try to write the first chance he got. Now go on to bed. You must be dead."

He was, physically. But his mind churned over things in a frenzied muddle as he lay in the darkness. From her room, he could hear the sounds of telephoning and then her voice. There was an odd tension to it she'd masked around him. He began to feel ashamed that he'd troubled her with his questions when she must be feeling worse than he could, and started to go in to make it up somehow. Then he realized it would only force her to return to whatever act she was putting on, and gave up the idea.

But he couldn't keep himself from wondering how his father could have been too busy to forget to write even a few words—unless the man with him had refused to let him do it!

He lay there, vaguely imagining things to do to the two men who'd been mixed up in Jet's death, in the departure of the Hammonds, and now in his father's disappearance. But he knew it was nonsense; there was nothing he could do, and he'd agreed with Roberts not to try anything.

His dreams were ugly, when he finally fell into a fitful sleep; nothing was clear in them except a feeling of horror. Once he jerked up with his heart pounding and a voice calling his name, ringing in his ears. He stared at the foot of the bed, but there was nobody there. He hadn't had a dream like that since he was fourteen. Somehow, though, he managed to sleep again.

It was the ringing of the doorbell that wakened him. The little electric clock showed that it was already early afternoon. He grabbed up a robe and tried to hurry, but his legs seemed to be full of knives. The long ride in the taxi had left him stiff and sore all over.

He saw the table set for his breakfast as he went past. Then he swung the door open, blinking against the blinding light that poured in. "You!"

"Me!" Ned Audack answered. The man moved inside, glancing at Danny's pajamas and robe. "I heard you were back in town. Mind if I join you for breakfast? I haven't had anything yet myself, though I've been up since early morning. Get some clothes on, and I'll fix things here."

He had moved confidently toward the kitchen and began to light the gas under the coffee. Danny scowled at him. "Would it make any difference if I did mind?"

"Not a lot, Danny. Better get dressed. Oh, how do you like your eggs?"

"Over," Danny said, and went to dress. He'd almost forgotten Audack. The man didn't seem to be directly mixed up in anything, and seemingly had some kind of official right. Yet he was a constant puzzle in a situation where there were too many loose ends.

Breakfast was on the table when Danny came back. From the looks of the kitchen, Audack was as smooth a cook as he was a radio expert. The food was done as well as Danny could have asked. "Why?" he asked around a mouthful of food.

Audack reached into his pocket and drew out an envelope. "I'm a messenger this afternoon. Go on, open it. It's from your father."

Danny ripped the plain envelope open and glanced at it. It was his father's writing all right, but a great deal of the middle of the letter had been scratched out with thick, black lines that seemed to have been worked into the fabric of the paper. "A little censorship/* Audack said apologetically. "I'm afraid you can blame me for that, Danny. Most of my jobs come under the heading of making a nuisance of myself/*

Danny read it hastily and then went back over it again more slowly. He was convinced his father had written it, but the words might have come from anyone. It began with apologies for leaving without letting Danny know, and went on to assurances that all was well, that he was on important work, and that Danny wasn't to worry if he didn't hear again for some time. The lines of censoring seemed totally unnecessary, as if they had been added to make it ring true, rather than to conceal anything.

Danny frowned and went over it again, this time trying to locate the code his father and he had always used. It began with two short words, which would be two dots, or J in Morse code. But then it made no further sense. He tried it backward, and using only the first words of each line, then of each sentence. But there was no evidence that the code had been used.

Last night he had asked his mother about a note. Today Audack brought one—his mother had been telephoning. It was almost as if she had prompted it. He puzzled over it, and then saw that it wasn't necessarily the case. If anyone had his father and then found Danny was back in Alamogordo, it wouldn't take too much cleverness to figure that the best way to quiet him was to send a letter. Or they might have had it ready, in case the bribe of the M.I.T. courses failed to work, and he somehow returned.

He read it again, looking for some phrase or other sign that it was geniune. Finally, sick inside himself, he crumpled it and stuck it into his pocket.

The writing was his father's—but the words must have been dictated by someone else! Instead of making things seem better, it was worse. It could only mean that someone was kidnaping the men who disappeared, either to put them out of the way before they could contribute badly needed knowledge to the rocket program of his country, or else to force them to turn traitor and give up that knowledge.

Danny got up slowly and went out to the kitchen. He saw Audack watching him and began filling a cup of coffee. The man turned back to his own, relaxing again. Danny's hand snatched up the nearest kitchen knife, a stainless-steel butcher knife with an eight-inch blade. He moved back as normally as he could until he stood behind Audack.

"Where's my father?" he asked sharply, and moved the point forward to touch the man's ribs.

Audack jumped slightly. "A knife, eh?"

"A knife," Danny answered. "And I'll use it! I want to know where my father is!"

Audack nodded his head, and suddenly fell out of the chair, doubling over to miss the edge of the table. His body twisted, his arms snapped out, and he was jerking himself sideways and out of reach. With what seemed to be a single fluid motion, he doubled his knees and came to his feet, facing Danny. One of his hands snapped out for Danny's wrist. The other caught his thumb and slipped his palm open under the pressure. He caught the knife as it fell.

"I don't think you're a killer, Danny," he said, tossing the knife back toward the kitchen. It landed point first on the wooden pegboard and quivered there. "But it's still a rotten way to show your gratitude for my trouble."

"What's been done to my father?" Danny asked stubbornly.

Audack settled back to finishing his eggs. "He's alive, Danny. He isn't being hurt. And he won't be hurt, either. You can believe that. But I can't tell you any more. I gather there was something about the letter you didn't like?"

"It might as well have been written by a robot trained to write like my father." Danny began. Then he gasped and dropped to a chair, staring at the other. "Brain surgery! I've read about ways of operating that leave a man with all his intelligence, but no will of his own!"

"The trouble with intelligent people," Audack said bitterly, "is that they can think of more things that might be! As a matter of fact, men on secret missions have to write letters that sound that way— they have to clear every sentence with an adviser

—and then have it cut when it reaches men like me, sometimes. We were doing you a favor in letting it go through."

"You were trying to keep me from finding anything out, you mean." Danny could feel his muscles quivering with anger and frustration at the complete helplessness of his position. Naturally, if they had a spy ring capable of kidnaping the best brains of the world, whoever was behind it would only use operators like Audack—men who were skilled at everything, from ham radio to the finer art of all forms of fighting. "Now I suppose you'll try to tell me that you aren't trying to get my father to use his abilities against the Government of this country?"

"Oh, for Pete's sake, kid! Stop playing international spy, will you?" Audack stood up with a grimace on his face. He walked to the door and opened it. "And don't try following me. In the first place, you won't find anything. In the second place, if you try it, I'll have your pass picked up and have you bounced out of this whole territory! I've tried to be nice about it. Now behave yourself!"

He closed the door and went down the walk. But Danny noticed that he hadn't answered the last question.

Then he kicked at the table leg before he realized the silliness of it. The trouble was that he couldn't help admiring the man, somehow. Whoever had picked him and put him here had known enough

to find the perfect man for the job. It wasn't hard to imagine Audack even working his way into the confidence of the highest men in the country. Apparently he'd done that, since neither the FBI nor Security felt they could question him.

But the men behind him might not be so nice, even in outward manner. Danny tried to picture the type of man who could tear a scientist away from his work, lock him up and force him to betray everything he believed in.

He was sure now that most of the men had never been killed in the rocket explosions, if there had been such things. Jet—well, that was hard to decide. Jet hadn't been a scientist, but he had known a lot about rockets. He might have been picked up, too.

It wasn't any comfort to think that they were alive, however, and then to think of what they must be going through. If he could find where. . .

Then he frowned in sick disgust. In spite of all the proof Douglas Smith had given him, there could be no place on Earth where so many men could be held and made to work in secret. It had to be out in space. There might be a radar-checldng system that covered the whole planet, but somehow a group had found a way to avoid it and to get out beyond the atmosphere. He was sure of that now.

Chapter 73 Security Risk

riANNY didn't tell his mother of the letter Audack had brought, and she seemed to know nothing | about it. She was apparently more interested in the preparations for his return to M.I.T. He caught her at times glancing at his father's picture, but there was more pride and the same resignation to loneliness than any trace of fear or worry. He wondered what land of story Audack or the two other men might have told her under a claim of Security to maintain secrecy.

If anyone were watching the house, they must have thought Danny had abandoned all idea of a search for the truth. But he went about it just as grimly as ever, without ever leaving the house. He'd tried going outside before; now he was trying to find some sign here. He'd begun on Jet's room, since it was simpler. There had been nothing there, except another copy of instructions on the Hawk-class rockets, apparently an earlier version, which had gotten stuck behind one of the bureau drawers.

His father's little study, built into a former large closet off the big bedroom, was a richer source. There were innumerable papers, books, and magazines there, as well as his father's notes. Apparently his father had bought back issues of nearly every

scientific publication in an effort to expand his chart on the missing men. Many of them had scraps of paper or notes between the pages that had to be checked.

If he could find his father's latest notes, it would be enough to awaken the FBI man to action; and it also might give the necessary clue to other men who were working on the problems of rocket flight. They would be poring over his laboratory notes, of course, but they might miss it because the important fink was here.

He had begun to think it was a blind alley on the third morning. The notes ranged all the way from completely meaningless figures to fists of groceries. Danny picked up an engineering journal from near the bottom of one of the piles and riffled through it. A slip of paper fell out. He picked it up and saw that it was blank, probably having been used as a page marker.

He started to put the magazine down, but there had been something else that had caught his eye. Again he riffled through the pages. This time he saw it clearly—a big red circle around the page number. He looked at the single-column article there, and could find nothing in it.

But the advertisement beside it had tiny pinpoint marks, as if a pencil had been tapped on it. Danny remembered his father's habit of reading with a pencil jiggling along the line. He sat down and began translating the German of the advertisement, using a heavy dictionary to help him.

He was only halfway through when he realized this had to be it. It was an advertisement for crucibles for use in the handling of metals in a steel mill, one of those typical ones which began with the statement that this had been done by the company's product to help out an ailing mill, and they could solve the problems of other companies, too.

But it was the table of characteristics of the crucible material that caught his eye, together with the statement of what type of material it was. Extremely high temperature, great strength, a nearly impossible ability to conduct heat out in a hurry, together with high resistance to abrasion under almost incredible conditions.

He glanced at the date on the paper and whistled. For ten years, in industry, there had existed exactly the refractory tube lining the rocket men had been seeking! Made by a small company in a country which had never gone in for extensive work with atomic rockets, it still seemed incredible that its existence could have escaped notice. He grabbed up another magazine of a later date and looked through it. There was a similar ad by the same company, announcing an improved crucible—one which might have been better for industry, but which lacked the necessary abrasive resistance. That apparently explained the puzzle, since the refractory the rockets could use had been on the market only a few months.

With that in the present rockets, men could start almost at once for the planets. A space station would be a simple matter. The tube-lining was the great solution still needed. There would be no need to change cumbersome linings for others.

And—if someone else had noticed it, then there could be a space station up already. Such a station could have been built long since, before the full radar screen had been erected. How it escaped detection was a mystery, but at least it could have been built

Danny ripped the sheet of specifications out of the magazine quickly and glanced over them again. On a sudden thought, he drew out the sheet from his fathers notebook and compared the figures. They were the same! Apparently it had been this information which had forced the group behind the disappearances to kidnap him.

And it must have been the same information which had lain behind his sudden requisition for all the new equipment. The tube lining would have to be made and tested, of course, as quickly as possible.

He considered calling Roberts, until the thought that the telephone lines might be tapped occurred to him. He frowned at that; it wasn't legal, yet it would account for the ability of the group to get information quickly. It might even explain how Audack had learned that he had asked for a letter, if his mother had called some friend or had even called Roberts back.

Finally he shrugged and went down to his little Morris. He swung it out and headed for the Security building, being careful to look first and make sure that the road was clear of any suspicious car that might carry either Audack or the two foreign-looking men who were supposed to represent the UN.

But there was no trouble until he reached the office Roberts had used. There he stopped and stared. The teletype was gone, along with Roberts' desk. There were three girls working from dictating machines there now and nothing else. He checked the door number, but it was the right one.

"Can I help you?" one of the girls asked.

"I'm looking for Mr. Roberts," he told her.

She shook her head. "Mr. Roberts isn't here any more. He was called back to Washington two days ago. They decided to close up this office and turn it over to our own local investigator. You'll find it down in room—Wait, are you Daniel Cross?"

He nodded, and she looked through some stuff in her drawer, then handed over a slip of paper. He stared at it for a moment, before the meaning sank in.

"Tough luck," it said. "We were both nuisances. Forget it, as I intend to. This is too big for us, and we'd better leave it to One. He knows his business, tool"

It was signed with only an initial.

Danny turned toward the room below where the local investigation committee was going through its monument of useless red tape, crumpling the note into a hard ball in his hands. He'd counted on Roberts more than he'd realized. And now the only real hope he had was gone.

Roberts had his loyalty, of course; he had to believe in his own superiors. But Danny wasn't sure of any man who would stop such an investigation. And they didn't know what he knew. They hadn't actually seen the bearded man or found the connection with the long-sought refractory material.

For a second he debated going straight to his father's former laboratory and throwing the information in the laps of the men who were running the various departments there. He had little faith in the local investigation, from what he'd seen before. They were nearer, however. He might at least try to use them.

He found the office there unchanged, except that now there was no one else waiting. The girl took his name and sent him back to the man fairly quickly.

"You were here before," the man said doubtfully. "Your complaints are in the files, being processed."

"I know it. I've got some new information," Danny told him.

The man grumbled over it, but picked up his phone to call for the file on Cross, Daniel, to be sent down. He listened for a second, lifted an eyebrow, and then grunted. "Yeah. Sure. Okay." He swung back to Danny. "Wait out front, kid. It'll take a little time to get your folder here."

Unlike the man, the girl at the front desk seemed to have plenty of work and to know what she was doing. She was busy with a big computing machine, from which data came out now and then as she fed in the coded detail on complaint sheets. Probably eventually some of the information acquired here would be useful. But by that time, the entire scientific personnel of the rocket and atomic projects might have been kidnaped.

"How come my card isn't kept here?" he asked her.

"It's here," she said. "Back in the file."

He frowned and puzzled it over. Then the feeling inside him caught him up. He got to his feet and strode out of the room quickly, heading down the hall. Something wasn't as it should be, and he intended to get out before he found out how bad it could be.

But it was already too late. As he swung around a corner, Chapman was coming toward him down the side branch. The Security agent quickened his pace, smiling a purely mechanical smile. "Got tired of waiting, eh, Daniel? Good. Saves me a litde while. I was just coming down. Come on back to my office, will you? We've got to have a few words."

Danny felt the old sickness and half-instinctive fear that almost everyone felt around Security men. But he tried to control himself as he took a seat before the other's desk. He felt his leg twitch and his foot begin tapping the floor. He forced it to quietness.

Chapman cleared his throat. "Let's see your Security pass, will you, Daniel? Good."

He took it and studied it as if he had never seen it before. "Umm. Too bad we couldn't give you clearance equal to that of your parents. We wanted to, but I'm afraid some of your actions weren't as discreet as we like."

"Discreet!" Danny said bitterly. "My father was discreet enough to get the pass, but not discreet enough to keep from being one of the missing!"

Chapman shook his head. "That's what I mean, Daniel. You assume that something has happened to him; yet I received official word that he was detached for official work. And you've probably mentioned your ideas to other people. That sort of thing can be very upsetting, particularly when we have genuine troubles. A rocket exploded last night— you'll know about it, since word has already been running around. Two of our best men on high-temperature atomic engines. Those men are dead, not just off on official business."

"I haven't been talking to people without Security passes as high . . ." Danny began.

Chapman shook his head reprovingly. "I'm afraid you have, Danny. There was Roberts, for instance."

"But he's the FBI!"

"Certainly. But you should still have cleared it with us before you talked to him. Also, when you returned here after leaving for the East, you should have reported at once."

Danny knew the man was theoretically right. Usually such rules were disregarded by all having passes higher than the orange and blue ones. They hadn't been enforced for several years. But the rules still existed.

"Does that mean I'm going to be downgraded?" he asked finally.

Chapman twisted the card in his hands, turning it back and forth. "I don't want to do it, Daniel. You've been a good boy here and a bright one. We actually have a great deal of hope for you. In fact, I had been urging the M.I.T. recommendation for the last two years, before it came through. But I'm afraid you don't take the authority of other people very seriously."

He looked up suddenly as the door opened. Danny swung around to see Audack there. The man nodded to him and then waved a hand at Chapman. "Sorry, didn't know you were still busy. Lunch today, or are you going to be tied up?"

Chapman grinned back. "Sure, Ned. This won't take long. You know young Cross, don't you?"

Danny had swallowed enough of the cat-and-mouse game to last him for a long time. He stood up, facing Audack. "He should," he said. "Since he's made good his threat of complaining about me, here, he should know me!"

Chapman started to protest, but Audack cut him off. "As a matter of fact, Danny, you're right. When

I caught you in my place, I warned you that if you didn't turn over all the papers to me, I'd have to complain. But you've still got one sheet from my notebook!"

Danny's hand moved automatically toward his pocket before he could check the gesture. The outrageous lie had been delivered so smoothly that he'd almost begun to wonder about it himself. Audack chuckled and dropped a hand on Danny's shoulder. His other hand slipped into the pocket and out with more speed than a professional pickpocket should have had. Then he whistled.

"Both of them, eh? I knew you had to have one. I just came from your place." He winked faintly, grinning at something that must have been a big joke to him. "And since you didn't leave it there, it had to be on you. Good thing Roberts was told to co-operate with me, or I might never have learned what happened to it."

He ripped the papers to small shreds and stuck them in his pocket. Danny stood there, helplessly, while Chapman looked annoyed. But the annoyance was at Danny, not at Audack.

"I didn't believe it," the Security man said slowly. "When you reported it this morning, Ned, I thought you must be wrong. Well, I guess that proves it."

"Oh, he meant well enough. No harm done as long as I got it back," Audack said easily. "I'll drop the complaint now, if you'd rather."

Chapman shook his head. "It stands. We can't have things like this." He swung back, all business. "Danny, sit down. And I'll see you at lunch, Ned!"

Danny sat, as the door swung open and shut again. He'd been taken neatly. Somehow, Roberts had been convinced and had turned against him. Audack must have been spying for some time, waiting for him to leave, in order to make a search. And then he'd come straight here, sure he could steal it from Danny under the eyes of the man supposed to make sure no dangerous secrets were revealed—or lost!

Chapman regarded the boy thoughtfully. "Mr. Audack was easy on you, Daniel. And I've got orders to co-operate with him, so there won't be any fuss made about this. Otherwise, I'd have to turn you over to a marshal for an attempt to obtain information to which you have no right."

"I suppose he's got a gray-and-green card," Danny said. "Or maybe he's the head of every agency here, or something like that. And I suppose you'd call me a liar if I said I'd never been inside his place."

"Mr. Audack has a black pass," Chapman answered, and there was something like awe in his voice. Now Danny could understand it. He had heard about it as something legendary since he was old enough to know the order of passes from plain white through the first five orders. There were only about fifty such passes in the country, and they carried absolute right to go anywhere or ask any question. A man having one could even ask for and receive full details of the most secret weapons, with only the provision that he'd have to have sufficient means of protecting them.

There was no use protesting. In theory, one man's word was as good as another's. In practice, Audack's word was worth more than his own would be if backed up by a hundred witnesses. No wonder Roberts had turned over the information when Audack had shown his pass.

Could such a pass be obtained improperly? Danny wondered. And the answer to that was as old as the attempts to use a means of positive identification. When the pass couldn't be forged, the man carrying it could be a fake. Audack must be someone carefully picked to replace the real man to whom the real pass had been issued—someone who looked like the original Audack and could fool even his best friends. It was at least possible.

Chapman interrupted his thoughts by slowly tearing up the pass he had taken from Danny. "No replacement for one year," he said. "And you re lucky, Daniel. I'll notify your mother, and we'll make arrangements."

Danny stumbled out of the room and toward his car, numbed by it. He'd expected to be downgraded. But to have no Security rating at all was ... was ...

He couldn't think of a term for it. Even the shopkeepers here had some kind of a pass. It was necessary.

Without a pass, he couldn't speak to most of the people except as some outsider. He couldn't live in the same house with his mother. He couldn't go to M.I.T. In fact, he couldn't even study any advanced branch of physics, engineering, or mathematics.

For a year, he was outside the circle of everything he had been brought up to know!

Chapter 14 ua*.o9

nANNY had money enough to fill the tank of the little Morris and to pay for the lunch he bought. II It lay beside him on the seat as he sat parked behind the garage his father had built for him. By rights now, he had no business even going into his own house.

Then he shrugged. They couldn't do much more to him. He climbed out of the car and headed inside. Anyhow, there had to be some way for his mother to get in touch with him. Chapman should have arranged all that at once, but he'd apparently been too anxious to get out for lunch with his too-good friend, Ned Audack!

He went inside and toward his own room. Audack had been smooth, if he'd really searched the place. The things there were just as he'd left them, and so were the magazines in his father's study. But one was missing—the copy with the page from which he'd torn the ad. It could be found again, since he knew the name of the magazine and the approximate date. But it would make things harder for him.

He packed a bag dully, trying to figure out what he should take. This wouldn't be like going to school. He'd probably be sent to some camp where there'd be routine work to do. He'd need rougher clothes.

He made his selection, realizing that even some of his textbooks wouldn't be permitted.

Finally, he went into Jet's room for a last look. It was something like saying good-by to the man for the final time at a funeral. He stared about, wondering whether Jet had really blown up, or whether it had been another concealed disappearance. If Jet were alive, Danny wondered whether they'd left enough of his personality to appreciate the fact that he was really out in space now.

There could be no other answer, in Danny's mind. It had to be space. Men were out there. And having a group there in secret was a worse threat to the world than any number of hydrogen bombs could be. From such a position, they could rule the world. They probably intended to. Men wouldn't play such a dangerous game as the one Audack seemed to be mixed up in unless the stakes were high enough to justify it.

There was no sign this room had been checked through. Probably Audack hadn't bothered. Danny went to the drawer where he'd tossed the second and older instruction manual for the Hawk rockets and pulled it open. The manual lay inside. He picked it up, realizing that it would now be technically a grave Federal offense for him to look at it—even though he'd studied it through quickly already.

The controls in the diagram were simple enough. Even the operation for take-off and for landing was simple enough. It had been a wild and furious test of skill for a pilot in the older rockets, but things had been improved now. Most of the operation was automatic. In as valuable a machine as a rocket, nothing could be left to chance.

He could probably operate one himself, he thought.

The idea seeped down through his mind, setting off little triggers as it went. If he could get into one of the Hawks and get up above the atmosphere—up where the space station had to be—and coast along there, watching his radar screens and using his television panels, he might find the mythical station.

He considered it more logically for a moment. In an orbit at a height of more than a thousand miles, he'd be sure to cover almost every possible place where a station could be, given time enough. And no method of concealment would be perfect. There were plastics which were nearly transparent to radar, just as glass was to light. That could explain the difficulty of seeing the station. But there would have to be something more than plastic there. Within a hundred miles, the radar should pick it up. If he could locate it and bring back that information, even Security couldn't refuse to train their radars on it. Knowing where to find it, they couldn't miss.

The chances were not too good. By sheer bad luck, he might find an orbit which would just miss the station. Or it might be farther out than he'd thought. It would be less useful at two thousand miles, but it would be easier to hide. Men might have taken it out that far in its early stages, and now be planning to bring it back in when they first announced its presence and warned the Earth below that any hostile act would mean death. Once a station was complete, it could successfully frighten and fight off any attack on it. Only during the early stages was the station vulnerable, before it could establish its own supply of hydrogen bombs and bombing equipment.

But with a little luck, it would be worth trying to find the station.

Then he sighed. A little luck? It would take three miracles. He couldn't go near a rocket field now without a pass. Once there, he couldn't get aboard a ship. And if he did, there was still the problem of avoiding the deadly guided missiles that would be sent up against any unauthorized ship.

He started to throw the manual back in the drawer. Then he put it slowly into his pocket and began looking for some of Jet's clothing. Impersonating a rocket man wouldn't help him any, but it was a minor offense compared to everything else.

He had only one chance—and that was the possibility that nobody had been informed yet that his pass had been lifted. Men grew careless after a while; if they saw someone who had always had a pass, they took it for granted it was all right to let him go ahead.

He was too tall for Jet's clothing to fit properly, but it wasn't as bad as he had thought. He put on the pants, rolling down the hem and clumsily re-stitching it with a needle and thread. He dropped the jacket and tie into a paper bag, added a cap, and went down into the kitchen. He'd need food if he planned to stay up long enough to do any good.

That went into another bag. Then he grimaced and went back up to get a smaller piece of luggage from Jet's room. A rocket pilot wouldn't be caught dead using paper bags.

Finally, he went back to the little Morris and stowed everything on the seat beside him. He debated leaving a note for his mother and then shook his head. It would be better to have her think that he was one of the missing, rather than that he had done what he was planning—unless it succeeded.

He no longer dared to think of his chances as he gunned the motor and went rolling out toward Route 70. If there were a station up there getting ready to declare itself and bring a reign of terror and oppression over the whole Earth, he had to get up and find it! It might take much too long before someone else had enough evidence to know the station could be there or enough worry about the vanishing men to suspect that it was there!

His first hurdle was at the entrance to White Sands Proving Grounds. But it proved as simple as he had hoped in his wildest optimism. The guards came to the entrance. He slowed down, lifting the top of the car so they could see him. One of them nodded and motioned him through. He'd been there often enough to have become a recognized person, and they had no word that this situation was changed.

He picked up speed again and went on, trying to figure out his next moves. There was a bulletin board in the administration building where flights were posted. He couldn't be sure how much it told, but he seemed to remember that it gave the pilot's name, the number of the ship, the time, and the orbit selected for that trip.

If he had enough luck, there would be one that day within a reasonable length of time after he reached the field. Somehow, he'd have to take the pilot's place.

There was no trouble as he drove up to the parking lot and got out. The simple uniform pants were enough like any ordinary trousers to arouse no suspicion. He left the rest of the uniform in the bag as he wandered about, heading casually toward the administration building.

His first luck came when a scooter pulled up, and he saw that the man on it was Red. "Hi," the scooter jockey said. "You got me in a little trouble, bud. Or I did, shooting off my mouth. But I needed a week off, anyhow. Hop on if you're going up to HQ."

Danny climbed on quickly. It gave him the best possible semblance to someone who had business. He jumped off before the building and sauntered in. The guard there started to stop him, then looked at his face and waved him ahead.

There had been Security for over thirty-five years; most people had grown up under it. There were constant warnings that it must be taken as a serious duty, not as a routine, but the weakness was showing up just the same. After all that time, most of the people took it for granted that anyone who went where a pass was needed would have such a pass. And after all those years, the feeling of pressing danger connected with the original Security measures had disappeared. Men were used to it.

No wonder Audack got by. The cards were all stacked in his favor. With a few letters of recommendation and authority which could be forged easily, and with the black pass which would stand inspection under the most careful black-light checker, nobody would think to confirm with the few top offices where the facts might be found. For that matter, even at the top each office might assume he was attached to another and go ahead with his requests. He'd have to be nearly perfect as a duplicate of the man who had the original card, of course ...

Or he might even be the man! There were records of men high in governments before who had turned traitor when the stakes were big enough. Maybe Audack was genuine in everything except his loyalty!

Danny found the schedule posting, and ran his eye down it. He shook his head unbelievingly. His luck was holding almost too well. There was a flight listed for the next hour on Hawk XI, piloted by a man named Halloran, whom Danny had seen briefly. He was almost Danny's height and build. The orbit listed was marked as C-213-B-21.

Danny moved out past the guard and began heading back to his car. There was no sign of Red this time, but nobody stopped him.

He spotted XI on the way and XII beside it. There was only a small number near the tail to tell which was which. The big United States star and circles on it were necessary identification, but no nation tried to make its numbering too plain; if other countries had no idea of how many rockets there were, it was all to the good.

XII had been listed as taking off three hours later, which meant the ship would be fueled and ready to operate. It was a nearly perfect setup! And about time he had some good luck, Danny thought.

He climbed into the Morris and polarized the plastic top so nobody could see into the dimness inside, blessing the change in design that had taken place in the last year. Before that, the smaller cars had been equipped with plain plastic tops only. The plastics that could be polarized so light could be partially cut out had been a luxury. But since the new design permitted adjusting the light "gates" against even the strongest sunlight, his father had bought the car for him in this new and improved version.

Changing to the uniform jacket was harder than he had thought in the cramped quarters, but he made it. He stuffed his clothes into the bag, picked it up, and stepped out. Nobody had seen him go in or come out of the car. He moved casually over toward the lunchroom, checking his watch. Then, as if he had just finished eating and had decided to go to his ship early, he moved out onto the field and headed toward the rockets.

Now Red was a danger. The man would recognize him and spot his false appearance in the uniform. He looked for the scooter carefully and finally spotted it down at the far side of the field. With a sigh of relief, he moved on toward the Hawk XII.

Somebody from across the field waved as he reached the ships. He waved back, hoping it wasn't a signal. Apparendy it was only a friendly gesture, since the man turned back and went into one of the buildings.

Danny climbed up the ladder and passed through the seals of the lock, snapping them shut behind him. He checked the air gauges and found them with the needles indicating full. Finally, he settled into the pilot's seat and threw on the screens. There was no sign of disturbance on the field.

He opened the manual before him and put his watch beside it, studying frantically. He was almost certain that these ships were all set to the control-tower frequency. The hints in the manual had indicated that. If not, he'd be spotted as soon as he threw on his radio. If his guess was right, he'd crossed the last hurdle except his own lack of skill.

Bit by bit, he memorized the control panel and the operations that would put him into orbit C-213-B-21. Another orbit might have been better for his purpose, but he couldn't know; and this was the only one cleared at that time, so that the radar spotters would pay no attention to it.

He began to sweat. In the screen, he saw Halloran —or someone who must have been the pilot—come out of the officers quarters and head toward the other ship. There were still fifteen minutes until take-off. He flipped his radio onto "listen" position.

The figure of Halloran disappeared into the XI, and Danny really began to sweat. He heard a click in his receiver.

"Halloran in Eleven," the speaker said. The television screen connected with it remained blank. Danny knew from some of Jet's accounts that many of the pilots didn't bother with vision, and had been counting on that, "Control, I'm a busy man. Check me for C-213-B-21, thirteen hundred sharp."

"You're checked, Halloran," the voice from control said. "What's the urgent business. Got a new theory of planetary formation brewing?"

"Got a letter to write my girl friend. She's visiting her mother." There was a laugh with that. "Be a good boy and I'll introduce you to her sister when she comes back."

"I'm always good," Control stated. "When s the wedding?"

"November. Hey, give me a break. I need a cat nap. Buzz me at a minute of, will you?"

"Right." There was another click.

Danny took a chance that it had been Halloran s and cut his own "talk" switch on before the second set could switch off. He tried to lower his voice to match Halloran s and to sound as confident. "Hey, hold it! Can't you guys catch a gag?"

The other voice was that of Control, and it sounded suddenly weary. "Okay, okay, so you want to talk. I wish you would sleep. Okay, I'm only up to my ears in work. Fill them and make it a hundred per cent."

"Nah." The few talks he'd had with Jet and the conversation he'd heard among other pilots was coming in useful now. "I'm serious this time. I want to try a high turn into orbit. This baby needs a little working. Can you fix it?"

Control took it for granted that such things came up at the last minute, apparently. It was another case of overfamiliarity with the proper form, making it seem too much like an endless and useless bunch of red tape. Such a change from the normal rise upward and the turn sidewise at the normal synergy curve for best efficiency should have been checked through administration and several other bureaus. But pilots sometimes changed their minds, and wanted to try out their ships. Control seemed as bored as before.

"Okay, will a ten per cent upgrade do you? Then you'll have to take off at—umm .. ." There was the rapid whir of a counter, and a final check. "Yeah, take off at twelve fifty-nine twenty-one. Still want me to buzz?"

"I'll buzz," Danny said, and cut off.

So far, luck had been good all the way. And yet, he knew, most of it wasn't luck. Most of it was making use of the fact he'd only just fully realized—that men were naturally careless about what they were used to.

He prayed silently that Halloran really was taking a nap and that he wouldn't wake up. In that case, the confusion in the ships might not be discovered until he did wake up. When that happened, there'd be trouble, but it might be hours away.

He went over his figures again. He knew that he couldn't hope to rise higher than he'd been routed. It would upset the charted orbit and bring too much attention on him. He'd have to wind up at the thousand-mile height which was normal. The new curve was based and timed to bring him into the official orbit, in spite of his moving upward longer than usual before turning. But he couldn't upset the orbit by continuing upward beyond the path selected for the rocket. That had been a plan based on lack of thinking things out.

Still, the idea of carelessness came into play again. Even at the height of a thousand miles, he might have a chance to spot the station where others had failed. They had taken it for granted that there was no station, and had only kept a routine check, blaming everything on meteorites. By making the most

careful use of his screens and radar, he might spot something they had missed.

Finally, the hands of his watch drew near the appointed second. He cut on his switch, not using the buzzer and began calling. A second or so later there was an answer.

"Halloran?"

"Here."

"Then use your signal. I was getting worried until I saw the light. You've got ten seconds. Start counting!"

"Counting nine," Danny answered. "Hawk upstairs!"

"Seven," the voice confirmed. Then finally, "Take her up!"

Danny hit the firing stud and the Hawk XII blasted off.

Chapter 15 Clear Ether

fjCELERATiON slapped him back into the cushions, squeezed down at his chest and made his arms seem like stone pillars about to fall. His head throbbed with it and with the savage roar that came from the great rockets behind him. But mixed with it all was a feeling of relief.

He wasn't too worried about piloting the ship. A Hawk could literally pilot itself into an orbit, once the main controls were set. The real danger had come during those minutes of talking to Control when any of the dozens of errors he must have made could have been picked up and led to a hasty investigation. Now that was behind him.

The only question was whether his hastily figured nonstandard curve would bring him into position correctly. And it was too late to do much about that now.

The ship was rising steadily, but less smoothly than it might have done in the hands of a skilled pilot, who could somehow anticipate each slight twist and wobble and correct them in advance by moving the little vanes inside the big nozzles. He was probably making a sloppy ascent—but it was taking him where he wanted to go.

He kept his eyes glued on the chronometer until the proper moment to start changing from his

straight-up course. And again, doubts struck at him. It would have been easy to misfigure the point of turn. A slight error would be enough to throw him completely off the schedule posted for his orbit.

A rocket, of course, went straight up through all but the thinnest part of the atmosphere. It was important to get through the heavy resistance of the denser air as quickly as possible, and to travel through as short a course in it as could be laid out. Once above that, however, the ship had to be turned to a course that would swing it around the Earth in a slow spiral up to its maximum height. After the first rush through the atmosphere, going straight up would have meant the waste of enormous energy in building up the circular momentum needed later. And finally, when the orbit was reached, all outward speed had to be cut, to leave him turning in a full circle around the Earth, as the Moon turned.

The whole procedure was known as a synergy curve and had been carefully worked out to use the smallest possible amount of fuel. Danny had changed it by rising for ten per cent longer before turning, and now had to take a flatter curve around the Earth. He could no longer depend on the prepared tables, but had to use his figures, derived from the formulae fisted.

Now the hands of his watch touched the critical second, and he began to turn the ship. He was still within the view of the Proving Grounds radar, where any mistake would be noticed. He had to make it good! He groaned as his arms trembled under the tearing strain of the momentum and his hands threatened to slip from the controls. The ship's machinery could turn her, but only human hands could smooth out the roughness. He knew the theory, but putting it into practice was another matter. In spite of all he could do, the Hawk bucked and wobbled while he fought her around.

Then the curve was finished and he sank back, shaking. In a few moments he could cut off acceleration and coast on momentum out to the orbit.

A light blinked over the radio, and he cut it on with a desperate need to beat the buzzer. If Halloran back on the Hawk XI were still coupled in, the buzzer must not be allowed to sound.

"Halloran," he said. "How m I doing?"

"You sound sick," control said. "Sloppy blast-off, and you fuzzed that swing. About what I'd expect of an egghead like you. But you're on course. Want me to keep tab on you?"

"Go back to your knitting, chum," Danny answered in quick relief. "If I get lonesome, I might ring you up. Make it thirty!"

"Dirty thirty," control acknowledged. The set clicked off.

Danny cut his acceleration to nothing and sighed in relief at the complete lack of weight. He'd heard horrible stories of what it could do to people, but his own system seemed to be adjusted to it already. Maybe Jet had been right—maybe there had been a mistake in turning him down for a piloting berth. Contact lenses could have taken care of his slight eye weakness.

He lay back, watching space grow before him in the screens while the Earth shrank behind. Back on the ground, it had all seemed so easy to go up and locate the mythical space station. Now—it didn't look at all hopeful. The trouble with space was that there was so much of it. All of Earth was only a small lump in the middle of it. And beyond lay a vast immensity in which anything so small as a station would be insignificant.

When he finally reached his orbit, he left the corrections to the automatic controls. There were a few seconds of acceleration again, less violent this time. Then he was swinging around the Earth in an orbit that carried him over the poles. It was an uncommon orbit, since most of the rockets were sent up in paths that slanted across the equator at greater or lesser angles. But Halloran had apparently been assigned the job of taking one of the infrequent weather checks of conditions at the poles.

He checked his position and breathed a long sigh of relief. He was about a second behind schedule, but that was within the normal limits. He'd probably be safe, since nobody would waken Halloran.

If Danny had any luck, he'd be coming down before Halloran woke by himself. Once Security knew about the theft of the ship, space wouldn't be safe for him. The value of the ship would mean nothing when they suspected him of being a spy, as they probably would believe. To them, it would be unthinkable that a kid had taken their rocket; they'd automatically think in terms of an alien pilot trying to steal its secrets. At the first suspicion, the big guided missiles, loaded with atomic warheads, would come roaring up for him. And space would literally be too hot for any ship.

He shivered and shoved the thought from his mind. His job now was to find the necessary evidence before they could discover the switch. And that meant using the utmost of his attention on the radar screens.

He set the controls to stretch them out to their maximum limits. The radar was set to neglect the Earth automatically, but anything else within thousands of miles of him should show up as a spot on the screen.

Almost at once, there was a spot. He caught his breath, while his feet beat nervously on the deck, threatening to throw him upward against the low ceiling. Far to the left, and traveling at a wide angle from him, a tiny spot was growing brighter. He leaned forward, holding his breath. Luck couldn't be this good, but...

A pattern at the bottom of the screen suddenly flashed, and he dropped back. The IFF—identification friend or foe—device had analyzed it as another rocket from some other country.

The ship was totally unimportant to him. At the speeds with which they were traveling, it would have been impossible for either to have done anything to the other, even in time of war. Once set into an orbit, a ship had to stick to it. Swinging around to another would have taken more fuel than could be spared, or rather, would have burned up the tube linings, leaving no way to return to Earth.

He spotted the same rocket again twice more, before it apparently headed back down to whatever country it had come from. But beyond that, there was only clear ether. At the maximum power of his radar, the whole of space seemed to be completely empty. He sat sweeping it about, trying to locate even a faint response. There was only the faint burst of static now and then that could be expected from the action of the Sun's radiation.

If there were a space station, it must be higher than he had allowed himself to believe. If there weren't one up here . . . He grimaced, forcing his mind off the reception he'd get back on Earth. Maybe it would be better to let them send up their guided missiles for him!

Then he jerked forward as another pip showed on the screen. He was scanning down close to the North Pole, and something was rushing upward there. He steadied his scan on it. The IFF went on at once, this time indicating it was a friend.

But this ship had no right being where it was. America had long since abandoned the idea of a rocket field in the Far North. It was too hard to supply, and offered none of the advantages of the ones closer to the equator, where the spin of the Earth could be added to the ship's speed to save fuel and tube linings.

He passed near the rocket, scowling harder as he studied its wild course. It seemed to be bent on going straight out from the pole, moving upward without turning, as if trying to put the maximum distance between itself and the planet, rather than to find a stable orbit.

The whole thing was insane. The pole was the worst possible place in every way. Even the gales that howled down there were a constant menace to the big rockets that had to stand upright on their tails.

It was a take-off spot good only for one thing-concealment! Earth's radar screen was weakest in its coverage there, and the other rockets crossed that section less often. The chances of a ship going straight up from the pole without detection were better than from any other spot.

His course carried him beyond the spot where he could keep them on his screen, and he hunched over, tapping his foot and worrying for fear that he'd miss them on the next round. It was the one clue to the location of the station, and he didn't dare miss it.

He was circling the Earth once every two hours, and the wait seemed to take forever. But at last he was back where he could search again. He began frantically scanning. Minutes passed with no sign.

He began sweating in the tiny cabin, but kept on doggedly. Then, high above the Earth, but turned to head parallel to the Earth's orbit, he finally spotted the rocket. It was at the limit of his screens and showed no sign of slowing. If it were heading for a space station, then the station must be out beyond even his furthest imaginings.

With desperate haste, he estimated the possible positions at which it might intercept a station. He could never locate it, but the big radar rigs on the Earth could, if they knew where to turn their beams. He had proved that men were taking off from Earth and going out on more than mere circular orbits. Someone had actually achieved a fuller conquest of space than was supposed to exist. And from the IFF information, it was a ship of the United States. It was no foreign power, but some group from within his own country!

He reached for the radio key. If the big radars could be centered on the almost insignificant trace of the vanishing rocket, they could follow it to its rendezvous with the station, and then plot the exact course being used.

Somewhere in the depth of the control board something made a sudden clucking sound, like a relay being thrown. The rocket tubes came on at the same second, throwing him violently back into the cushions. He gasped and reached out heavy hands for the controls, swinging them back toward neutral. But nothing happened. The ship was running wild!

Then the communication screen lighted, and the face of a hard-lipped, grim-eyed man in a colonel's uniform looked out at him. "Daniel Cross, you're under arrest. Your stolen ship is now controlled from the ground and is being returned to its field. You will maintain radio silence until you land and then turn yourself over to the authorities at once!"

The screen turned black again, and the ship went on blasting back to Earth. There was nothing in the manual to show that control could be seized from the ground. But apparently even the possibility of theft had been considered in its design.

Danny jerked his eyes to the screen, where the pip that marked the strange rocket was just disappearing. It was too late to prove his discovery now. This was just another in the long line of finding facts, only to be unable to show any evidence of them. Unless his unsupported word would be accepted, his trip up here had accomplished exactly nothing! And the chance of anyone listening to a boy who had stolen a rocket ship was too small to consider.

The picture was complete. There was a group, operating with men in the highest regard and from his own country, trying to gain the incredible power that a station in space could bring. They had such a base, too—otherwise there would have been no point in a rocket that headed outward in such a crazy course. But nothing he could do would stop them. Step by step, they had blocked his efforts, almost as easily as a man shoving aside the annoying leaps of a puppy. He hadn't even been important enough for them to kidnap or silence completely. They could simply reach out into some high source in the Government and remove what little evidence he had found.

The ship was dropping smoothly now, with none of the roughness of his attempt to pilot it. He heard the sharp hiss of the atmosphere. They were bringing her down at maximum speed, letting the air act as a brake. The hull would turn red-hot, but it was designed for that, and the cabin would be cooled for the short time it would take.

In the screens, he could see the Proving Grounds ahead. Now the ship swung itself up on its tail and began riding down on the blast of its rockets, cutting off his view. It seemed to hover, dropped a trifle, and then settled slowly to the ground with almost no shock. The tubes cut off, and his wild flight was over.

Another hiss came from the hull, and the screen showed men outside with hoses, cooling the glowing hull to a point where he could emerge. He stood up and began changing to his own clothes. There was no point in carrying the impersonation further. He was already moving toward the exit when the screen came to life with a brief order for him to come out.

The seals seemed to be like lead in his hands, and his feet dragged. But he went through the inner one and finally opened the outer one. The hull was still steaming, but it was cool around the little port. There was a glare of light in his eyes from a big searchlight, and he realized for the first time that night had already fallen.

There were only a few men there, and they were all in military uniform, he saw.

"Come on down, Cross," a voice shouted through an amplified megaphone. "With your hands up."

He grinned wryly to himself at that. Holding his hands up while descending a steel ladder was impossible. But apparently it was an automatic order, having little meaning. Nobody protested when he came down the normal way. He hesitated midway down, wondering what would happen if he were to shout the facts at the men. Then he shrugged. Nothing would happen, of course. Whatever he said now would be put down to the ravings of someone slightly mad or to a kid trying to cover up for an unforgivable piece of foolishness.

Maybe it was foolish, he realized. Inwardly, he seemed to have grown ten years older. But it was too late to let his hindsight worry about what might have been.

He stepped down, and the arms of two men in uniform came up to catch him above the elbows. They turned him smoothly about and began heading him toward a waiting car. It was the car of the Lieutenant General, he saw, and the man was waiting beside it.

CharBher                                                                                                189

Another car screeched to a halt beside it, and a man in uniform got out to open the rear door. Danny saw a glance of surprise run aroimd the ranks of the men there. The General nodded, and then relaxed.

Then he looked again, and a full measure of sick realization began to hit him. From the car, his mother was stepping down. Her eyes were on him, and there were tears on her cheeks. This time the smile that she managed to muster up from some final reserve of strength couldn't conceal the worry she felt.

He wanted to kick himself or to fall down and cry like the fool he had been. He'd overlooked the results of failure to anyone but himself. He'd gone blundering off on his wild mission, too full of his own thoughts to think of his mother. And now she'd have to pay for it, perhaps even more than he would. With a son who had committed something close to treason and who had broken all Security regulations, there would be no question about what must happen. Her pass would be revoked, and she'd be automatically released from her work. She wouldn't even be able to go back to teaching, with such a cloud over her head.

He tried to turn to her, but the men holding his arms went steadily on. The door of the General's car opened, and he was forced in quietly between the two guards. Almost at once, they were in motion toward the big administration building.

Chapter 16 Judgment Day

I

HE room was big enough for a hundred to watch, but there were only a dozen there. The General and two other officers sat behind a table on which a tape recorder lay. His mother was at the back of the hall, watched carefully by one of the men. And a few others, none lower than a lieutenant, stood guard around the room. Danny let his eyes wander about and then stopped.

Audack had just come in and was now moving forward to take a seat. The General nodded to him curtly. Danny should have suspected it. The covering up the General had done for Audack indicated some strong tie-in. With their men planted throughout the Government, ready to rush to the defense when needed, how could the group be revealed for what it was?

Then a commotion at the door was followed by one of the men moving to the General for a quick conference. A moment later the door swung back, and Roberts walked in beside a man whom Danny recognized as the head of the FBI, Stanley Fowler.

Roberts didn't look at Danny, but went at once to the table and began talking quietly. A few minutes later, in answer to a reluctant nod, he came back and settled down near Danny.

The General cleared his throat and waited for

complete silence. "Daniel Cross, you re under arrest for crimes too numerous to mention. But this isn't a trial. We could properly have shot you the moment you stepped from the ship or have bombed you in space. But we don't want to be harsh. Both the military forces here and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are agreed on showing you every leniency we can. In return, we want your co-operation and some information. Now—why did you steal the Hawk Twelve?"

Leniency? Danny wondered. Would that mean only life imprisonment? Or would it mean that they'd accept a plea of insanity and confine him to an asylum? But he nodded slowly in agreement. He might as well co-operate. He had nothing to lose.

"Because I believed that a group in a space station were responsible for the number of men who are disappearing, sir," he answered.

"You were told there was no space station, however?"

Again he nodded. "Yes, sir. I was told a lot of things. Most of them were partly true. But I knew there had to be some base in space. And there is! I saw a ship taking off and heading for it. I . . ."

The General's face hardened suddenly. "You are calling the whole radar and rocket network liars, I take it? You claim that you are far more clever than all the rest of us."

"I'm claiming only that you've been careless," Danny flared hotly. "I saw a ship leave the North

Pole, where you think there are no ships. I saw it go straight out, following a path where you've let your radar network get too thin. And I saw it go up better than five times the distance you think ships can rise."

The General's smile had turned into a sneer now, and he leaned forward as if to speak. But suddenly Roberts stood up and moved to a position beside Danny. He turned to the boy. "Did you get any evidence to prove this, Danny?"

"No, I couldn't. I was put under radio silence before I could report!"

"But you saw it. There was no mistake?"

The General cleared his throat again. "Mr. Roberts, I'm conducting this, if you don't mind."

"But I do mind, sir," Roberts told him quietly. "I think you'll understand why when I tell you that I consider this to be under our jurisdiction—and not that of any military force—and that the FBI is willing to accept any statement made by this boy as sufficient evidence for a serious investigation."

Audack was frowning now, and the General threw him a quick glance. Danny only saw it out of the corner of his eye. He was staring at Roberts, incredulously.

Roberts smiled slowly. "I didn't desert you, Danny. I found a few things myself, such as a peculiar tie-in between several men here and certain disappearances—evidence you hadn't turned up. I went back to Washington to see Mr. Fowler."

"To shove the facts down my throat, I believe you put it." Fowler said. "And to prove to me that some of the material in our files was false, and that certain men were giving me distorted information. The FBI is more than slightly grateful to Mr. Cross for providing us with evidence that has led to our discovery that Dr. Bjornsen is still alive and somewhere in this country today! If the young man claims there are mysterious ships taking off from the North Pole, that is going to be investigated. At once!"

Audack stood up then and moved forward. His face had a trace of tenseness to it, but his voice was casual and assured. "As General Meisner is aware," he began, "I operate directly from the Office of the Chief Executive. And much as I hate to go against Chief Fowler, I have orders that the FBI is not to interfere in this case. It's a military matter, and I'm sure you'll find the President will personally agree on all counts."

Danny's head was swimming, but this jolted him back to himself. If Audack were right ... It could only mean that the President was part of the group. He shook his head to clear it. All this meant nothing necessarily, beyond the fact that the group had somehow been able to persuade the President on this one issue. Even Presidents were human, and any man could make mistakes.

Apparently Fowler had the same idea. He shook his head slowly. "The laws of this country are made by Congress, Mr. Audack, not by executive fiat. With all due respect for the President, I have certain duties to perform and I intend to perform them. But I have no objection to letting General Meisner conduct the questioning."

Audack settled back slowly, and General Meisner mopped his brow with a handkerchief. Then he turned back to Danny. "All right, then, young man. Suppose you answer one question at once. You claim this ship you supposedly saw was rising to a height of five thousand miles or more. Just how were they able to make a rocket perform such a miracle, unless they think they can land without using any power at all? Or do you have some secret information?"

Audack was on his feet again, and this time his hand was furiously motioning toward the General. But Danny had the opening he needed.

"There's a perfect answer to that," he cried out loudly. "On page 127 of the Allgemeine Stahl . . ."

The sound of a shot cut through his yell, and he swung to see Audack standing with a pistol in his hand. From the table, Meisner had sprung back, and was also pointing an automatic at the rest of the room. Audack swung up beside him, motioning the two other officers back. "All right, everyone down on the floor—on your faces—with your arms behind your necks. That first shot was a warning. The next one won't be."

Danny dropped with the others, with a thousand wild schemes churning through his mind. But from the awkward position, he could just make out the alert figure of Audack with the automatic, and the plans died before they could be fully born.

"I tried to warn you," Audack said thoughtfully I staring over the room. "The kid really did know! But no matter. We can tie them up. I've got enough of the new anesthetic for the ones we take with us. With luck, we may have an hour before anyone gets curious about what's going on. We should make it. Better tie their wrists and ankles together tightly and muffle them."

Danny could see Meisner go down into the group on the floor, and there were the sounds of other footsteps. Apparently someone else was playing along with Audack and the General. At the edge of the boy's vision, Meisner began drawing the ankles and wrists of a man together, using pieces of the microphone cable from the tape recorder.

Then there was a yell. Danny jerked his head up to see Roberts already halfway to the door. In mid-stride he changed his course and leaped for the windows as if he would crash through them. Then the gun in Audack's hand spoke, and Roberts crumpled. The few who had started to come to their feet dropped back quickly. There was nothing to do now.

Danny was praying that the sound of the shot might attract attention, but he knew there was little chance of that. The room was soundproof, and there had been no response to the first warning shot. And . . .

Something was suddenly cupped over his nose, and a hand closed over his mouth. He tried to hold his breath, but his lungs could only stand it for a minute or so. Then he breathed in convulsively. There was a faint aromatic smell, followed by almost instantaneous unconsciousness.

He came to with none of the fuzzy sickness of recovery from ether, in a small room fixed up as a combination bedroom-living room. There was an open door that led into a hall and the smell of disinfectants in the air. There were no windows, he noticed. But there was someone else with him—the man with the Y-shaped scar on his chin.

"You're underground, in a lot of ways," the man said, with the faintest trace of accent. He smiled, making the scar stand out sharply. "Mr. Audack wants to see you as soon as you feel fit."

"I'm ready," Danny said. He felt emotionally twisted, as if someone had squeezed and mauled him around, but there was nothing wrong with him physically. "As ready as I'll ever be."

He got up and let the man guide him out into the hall and down a corridor of closed doors. There were sounds from inside, but he saw no one. Then they stopped before a small door, and Danny was led into a fairly comfortable office. "There were plans for an office and factory here once," the other said. "But strangely, they only dug out a stupidly big basement and began cementing it when the project was abandoned, and the land filled in. It was good luck for us, and one of our contractor friends took on the fill-in job for a very small price. It worked out very well. We'll just wait for Mr. Audack."

Danny took a seat at the other's motion. He had barely dropped into the chair when Audack came through another door to sit behind the desk. There was still some strain on the man's face, but most of the good nature had returned to it. "Good evening, Danny. Where's Alvaro, Boris?"

The other man shrugged. "Checking up again, I suppose. He worries too much. Ah, there he is." The door had opened and the second United Nations observer came in. "Well?"

"Bjomsen made it," Alvaro reported.

Audack sighed in obvious relief and turned to Danny, studying him. "You're either lucky or one of those stubborn cases of a man who makes his own luck out of nothing. By rights, there wasn't anything you could do to hurt us, yet you made us more trouble than anyone except Roberts, who was one of the best men in the Bureau. No real harm has been done, of course. We were going to announce our plans in two months, anyhow. But you have ruined the usefulness here of the three of us and Meisner. How much do you know, by the way?"

Danny searched Audack's face for some sign that it was only a bold front, but the confidence there was genuine. He slumped back in the chair. All this trouble on his part and on the part of Roberts —and it had merely ruined the usefulness of four of the group, out of some untold but obviously large number. Audack had considered him a nuisance, rather than a threat, and only luck had made him any serious trouble to the group. Now his luck had run out, obviously.

"I suppose your group forced the advertiser to change his product," he said slowly. "You wouldn't want anyone else to stumble on the advertisement after you recognized what it could lead to. He discontinued it, and you took it over. That means you had practical space travel ten years ago."

"Six," Boris corrected him. "It wasn't perfect, in spite of that somewhat exaggerated advertisement. It took four years to develop."

"What else?" Audack prompted.

"I know you could have been spotted years ago, if anyone had really been watching the poles. But you counted on the fact that nobody expected anything there. Somebody must have located your ships taking off, before, though." Danny stopped then, staring at them. "Jet I"

Audack nodded. "Among a few others. It was always a risk, and we had to pick up several men because of it. If we hadn't had men placed where they'd get the first reports and turn them over to us instead of the Government . . . Anyhow, your cousin spotted us and then was waiting to make further observations when we picked him up."

Danny frowned as he remembered how carefully Jet had kept even a hint of it from him. He'd seemed his old, happy-go-lucky self. He hadn't told even his best friends of what he'd seen. And yet the group had found him.

"Covering up your slips and keeping the world from getting out into space until you could grab the power must have been quite a job," he said bitterly.

Boris smiled slowly with a glow of pride. "We barely won. It seems hard to believe we have won. But we have."

"It wouldn't have mattered too much," Audack said thoughtfully. "Nobody would believe in ships that went straight north from the pole. And they wouldn't have found the destination, anyhow."

"Your hide-out isn't that hard to locate!" Danny said. The cocksureness here was getting too thick, even if they had won. "There's only one place it could be. I was a fool to keep thinking it was a space station. I know better now!"

Audack leaned back slowly, studying Danny. "All right," he decided at last. "You pass. A very bright young man. Not too much use for authority and a bit reckless. But just the type who might somehow lead the world out into space in spite of itself."

"I suppose that gets me a medal," Danny said. He'd thought at first that a semblance of co-operation might make things better, but now he didn't care. "Or a bullet in the back like Roberts. Maybe you'll even let me write a letter to my mother like the one you dictated to my father for me!"

"I wrote it myself," Audack said calmly. "Part of my work was duplicating handwriting. A very useful hobby. As for what it gets you . . ."

A buzzer sounded on the desk, and he picked up a phone quickly. He listened for a few seconds. "All right," he said. He hung up and turned to the two men. "The party's breaking up upstairs. Better get everyone who's going together. Come on with me, Danny—and don't start anything now!"

They went down several short corridors, and then up a small elevator, to emerge in a small tunnel with several branches. Audack led down one that ended in a wooden door. "Just one of our cells," he said. "We have several places like this. And this last year, we've needed them. Your father was in this one, of course."

Danny caught the use of the word "was," but he didn't want to ask what it meant. He didn't want to give them a chance for more amusement at his expense, or to let them know the fear that was growing inside him.

Audack did something to the door and it opened slowly and quietly. There was a damp smell that indicated a basement. Light was streaming down from an open stairway, and there was the sound of voices from above. Audack stopped and looked back, just as Alvaro led Roberts down the tunnel. The FBI man seemed weak, and there was a bandage under his open shirt, but he smiled wryly at Danny.

"Still alive," he reported. "You're a good shot, Audack; your doctor tells me you missed the lung. Am I supposed to thank you?"

"We couldn't leave you there to bleed to death," Audack said absently. He counted the others coming from the tunnel and finally nodded. "All here. We go upstairs two at a time, while two guests come down here. When we're all up, we go out as if we were leaving a party. Your drivers know where the cars are and where to go. They'll indicate who goes where. No nonsense, now!"

He waited while a couple came down the little stairs, then motioned Danny up with him. "My car, and don't get yourself lost," he said on the way up. They passed through a kitchen, and into a living room where one wall was filled with shelves of books and gaudy old magazines.

Douglas Smith grinned in amusement at Danny's look. "Hi, Danny. Sure, I'm the general handy man for the party," he admitted. "Better get something to drink out of the icebox while you've got the chance."

Others began to come up. The man who was obviously the doctor made a quick examination of Roberts, and nodded to Audack. "He'll do."

"Probably better than some of the others,"

Audack agreed with a touch of worry in his voice. "There's a lot of bad weather up north, and the planes are going to pitch and toss most of the way. Then we'll have to leave at once. Half of these people were never conditioned for space, either. I don't envy you, Doc."

The doctor shrugged. "Can't be helped now. If it's too bad, we can always keep the worst cases under anesthesia."

Audack nodded and motioned for Danny to follow him toward the door. There was a rustle as others began to fall in behind. Outside it was almost completely dark, but enough light came from the windows to show three men and a woman out by the group of cars. They must have been upstairs all the time, waiting for the others to come from the underground headquarters.

Danny glanced at them and then back to the road. He was fighting to remember the details he had seen on his other visit here. There had been a culvert, leading into a ditch through some wasteland, with a row of houses beyond. It wasn't the best cover, but he couldn't be choosy. Once they were taken out into space, there would be no running away!

He forced himself to relax and begin a question. "How long will it be—?"

In the middle of it, he jumped into the darknessl The timing was right, and Audack was caught off

guard for the fraction of a second needed. A sudden wave of elation boiled up in him.

Then it washed out as the unmistakable voice of his mother cut through the darkness from the cars. "Danny! Danny!"

He jerked and stumbled. She couldn't be here! She'd been at the military quizzing, but . . .

Something hit him in the back, knocking him off his feet, and Audack's panting voice sounded in his ears. "Okay, Danny, if you want to be difficult, you'll go the other way."

There was the biting, aromatic smell of the anesthetic and then blackness that cut off all thoughts.

Chapter I / The Conspirators

I

HERE were jumbled memories in Danny's mind that indicated periods of near consciousness. Something about food and water, a meaningless snatch of conversation, and bitter cold while he tried to see the outlines of a huge fat rocket like none he had known before. But they were fading, now that consciousness was growing stronger, like a series of bad dreams.

He opened his eyes and sat up, feeling his head spin with the sudden motion. He rubbed his hand over his arm and looked down to see a pink spot there, as if someone had given him an injection of some drug to revive him. If so, it was working. The fuzz was almost gone.

He was conscious of a curious lightness, as if he were almost floating on the bed under him. He opened his eyes to a soft light that was reflected from rough rocky walls that seemed to be sprayed with some plastic sealer. It was still hard to see clearly. He could barely recognize the doctor as the man held out a hand to help him up.

He stumbled along, finding it hard to co-ordinate bis muscles in the combination needed for walking. The lightness bothered him, and his legs still seemed to be partly numb. But it began to be easier as he moved down a narrow corridor, "You'll be

all right now," the doctor s voice said. "Just go in there and sit down. Mr. Audack will be along in a minute."

It looked like the anteroom to an office, with padded benches and a couple of chairs. Danny dropped into one, slowly collecting his scattered thoughts and memories. There had been his mother's voice calling to him. He was sure of that. And it could only mean that the group had picked her up at the same time they took Roberts and him. He'd really made a mess of things. It wasn't bad enough to blunder into his own troubles, but he had to bring her in with him.

But he couldn't understand why she had been outside ahead of him, unless . . .

He put the idea out of his mind, but it kept creeping back. She couldn't have come into the group voluntarily! Then he considered it again, and had to admit that was possible; with him as a hostage, she might have done anything!

Anyhow, Audack had knocked him out. And now here he was on the Moon. It had to be Earth's satellite. The gravity fitted, the feeling that he only weighed about a sixth as much as he should. And it was the only logical place for the group. No space station could have avoided detection for any length of time, unless it was so far out that it was nearly as hard to reach as the Moon.

It was the perfect place to locate a site from which to rule the world! They could drop their bombs from here as guided missiles to gain control through fear, as well as from a station. And here they could hide even more completely, digging down under the surface. Their bombs could be sent from the light gravity of the Moon through the heavy pull of Earth with ease, but getting the missiles to work from Earth to the Moon would be nearly impossible, unless the group permitted the secret of the refractory material to leak.

A chuckle in Audack's voice sounded behind him, and he turned to see the man coming from an office beyond. "Welcome to Luna, Danny. Or at least the part we've dug out here. I hope you like it, because you're exiled here for life, probably. At least until we can convince Earth to accept our program!"

"I won't make much of a slave," Danny stated sharply. Then he remembered that his mother was somehow mixed up in the group, and that her saftey might depend on how good a slave he did make.

But Audack chuckled again. "Good! That's what we hope to end for all time, Danny—slavery to everything except common sense. That's one of the reasons you're here. We need men who won t bow to the old ways meekly—men who'll find answers for themselves."

"It sounds good. But a lot of dictators started that way."

"Not this one. This one started all wrong, and stumbled into its present ideas by accident." Audack dropped to a seat near him, seeming to float down in the weak gravity. "Remember the funds appropriated for the United Nations to build a space station? Well, this is what came of those funds."

"They weren't authorized to build the station, though," Danny said. He wondered how much of their obvious propaganda he was supposed to believe. If they thought they could convince him, it might be better to play along with them.

Audack shook his head reluctantly. "No, they didn't. They couldn't agree on who should control the station. It was a real problem with a station where only a few dozen men could live, and where the balance of nationalities would always be a major issue. But the funds were there, and there were men who knew that space had to be international. Some of those men were in the UN—like Boris and Alvaro. Some were in politics; the last two Presidents of the United States, for instance. Men of all classes and from all nations, who knew space had to be won, and knew no nation dared to do it alone.

"Our group got started as an international chess group. Today, most of the highest men on Earth are part of it, which shows what one man with an idea can do. My father, Danny—you never heard of him—but he was a supersalesman with ideals. Men in the highest offices have been willing to betray their own countries for a few years to help us— to make sure that someday their countries would exist in a world without a threat of hate or war. Were a strange crowd: writers like Smith, military men like Meisner, general semanticists like myself, politicians like the President, scientists like Hammond and his family—and just plain people."

He pulled a miniature tape player from his pocket and handed it to Danny. "I'm finishing getting my new job organized. Turn this on and listen. It gives the facts on what we've done."

Danny caught at him as he turned to leave. "Wait a minute. What about... ?"

"After you listen and know what we've got here. No questions before that," Audack said. "And by the way, you're free to come and go as you like. Forget that slave nonsense!"

Sure, Danny thought, he was free to leave as soon as he could figure out a way to breathe empty space and walk back from the Moon. They didn't have to keep him locked up on a world where there was no place to go. But he wasn't free to ask questions until they'd softened him up for the bad news.

He reached out and turned the machine on. The voice of the world's greatest comedian began telling the story of the beginnings of the project in a quiet, serious voice.

It was essentially what Audack had indicated. Audack's father had somehow found the basis for operations in an international club that slowly changed from chess to the politics of space conquest. They had finally urged the impossible on the United Nations and had proved that the plan was completely possible. They had the refractory material, and they had evidence that space travel was only a matter of time. Slowly, they had built a new faith among the men who listened. Politicians who had been fighting wordy battles over matters of boundaries were forced to face the fact that a race for space among competing nations might bring destruction which would destroy all boundaries— and all people with them.

Harmony had been built in the UN through that common realization, and the group had spread. In four years they had their perfected tube fining, and the UN secretly turned over its fund that had been voted for the space station. Leaders of the nations had helped to fake rocket explosions so that the group could take over the ships. They had reached the Moon five years before and pitched into the monumental job of making it a place where men could live.

As they expanded, they had needed more and more men, and increasing numbers of rockets to carry people and supplies. Some rockets had been built secretly by them, but most had to be stolen from other sources. Finally, in a desperate race against time, they had tried to get both men and rockets at once by having the various governments list the lost ships and scientists as exploded in space at a rate that could never stand examination. They had known there would be an investigation eventually, but had hoped to win their race before it came.

And now, it seemed, they had won. There was much still to be done, but they were strong enough to survive now, no matter what happened.

Audack came back into the room as the tape ended with their final success in keeping Earth from getting knowledge of space flight too soon, and in finishing their base and populating it with the best brains of the world.

"It's a nice story," Danny admitted. In spite of himself, he was impressed. It was somehow every man's wish dream. But dreams usually ended in bitterness, he remembered, when the dreamer awoke to reality.

"A nice story, and an old riddle: Who is going to rule the Moon that rules the world?"

"Everyone," Audack said quietly. "This will never be the seat of military or political power, Danny. We've got something too good and too big for that. We've got a group of over twelve thousand of the finest men alive, from every nation and every race. None of them want to take over the others, because they're too busy making this into a world where people can live full lives. That's going to take hundreds of years, and by then the hatreds will have been forgotten. We're going to make this a place where no Security is needed for science, and then let the world below help itself. We re going to let the United Nations set itself up here, free from all the pressures below. And we're going to tell every country down there that it is safe forever without one cent for armies or for wars."

"Lovely words," Danny said. "But how? By killing off any who oppose you?"

"They can't oppose us, Danny. From this airless world, with our telescope, we can see everything that goes on, practically. We'll always be able to stay one jump ahead of them. We're going to kill off any genuine aggressors, and then only as much as we have to. We're going to make sure that nobody jumps anyone else. We've made up our minds never to listen to the reasons given, but to watch the acts. When we see one nation attack another—and we can see which armies move where—we'll put everything we have on the side of the nation attacked. Aside from that, we're going to mind our own business and build the best world we can right here, to show the Earth what can be done. We're going to make life richer for all mankind!"

Something caught in Danny's throat at Audack's words and the triumphant note of his voice. But there had been the men who had been torn from their work down there, kidnaped and ripped away from their families . . .

"It sounds fine," he admitted again. "Of course, it would mean that everything I've done since I got out of college was completely stupid. But I wish I could believe you."

Audack smiled. He raised his voice slightly. "Sid!"

"Yeah, Ned?" Roberts had come to the door, carrying some papers in the arm not held down by the bandages.

"Do you think you and Danny here were stupid for what you did?"

Roberts shook his head positively. "No! There was a good chance the men behind this were out for selfish power and evil. Until we could be sure, we had to fight against it. We were fighting for decency and honor and a chance for men to grow. There wasn't anything stupid about it, even if we were lucky enough to have the group behind it turn out to be on the right side. Danny, they brought you up here because they wanted you—not just to quiet you."

Audack spread his hands quietly. "Would you join such a group, if it was what I said it was, Danny?"

Danny's certainty had been shaken completely now by Roberts' apparent conversion. But even without the doubts, there could be only one answer to such a question. "Who wouldn't? Of course I would!"

"Good." Audack went to the doorway and beckoned. "All right, everyone, he's joined up. Come on in and let's celebrate our new conspirator's conversion."

Danny's mother was first. She was running, and there were tears in her eyes as she caught him in a bear hug, then pushed him back to look at him. "Oh, Danny. You fool! You almost ruined everything/'

"Don't listen to her, boy," Danny's father said softly, his eyes beaming as he grabbed for a free hand. "We didn't plan it that way, but it's good to have a whole family again. So what if your mother didn't finish her botanical work down there, as we thought she should when we talked it over with Alvaro and Boris? We'll build the best botany lab in the universe right here for her."

"I meant his trying to escape, Henry," she said.

"Oh?" A startled look came into Dr. Cross's eyes. Then he shrugged and went back to beaming at them. "We must have been crazy to figure on your finishing college before you came up, boy. We De-long together. All families do."

Then another figure joined them, and Jet's voice seemed to purr over Dr. Cross's shoulder. "I tried to tell 'em they were wasting a good rocket pilot, kid. But I guess you had to show 'em. Welcome to Luna, assistant pilot!"

Danny stared at him with sudden growing suspicion. "You left those rocket manuals on purpose!" he accused.

"Well, now . . Jet began. Then he laughed. "I gave them so much trouble with the other stuff, trying to replace it or get rid of it, that I knew blamed well they'd never find that old manual! But don't tell our friend Audack that I put one over on him!"

Then there was a swarm of people streaming into the room. There were the Hammonds, with Jane looking better than he had ever seen her, Bjornsen without the beard, laughing at their encounter on the train when he'd had to rush down to cook up false leads to cover up Dr. Cross's rediscovery of the refractory material—and just people.

Just people, Danny thought, watching them swarm in to listen to Audack's story of the quest of Sir Danny Cross for the Grail that would save the world. He could even laugh at the account himself now; it felt good to laugh with them, knowing somehow that up here nobody would have time to laugh at anyone else.

Just people.Twelve thousand human beings who were proud to be simply that, without artificial divisions to keep them apart.

It was going to be a great conspiracy!