did.

And I'd better classify this, too! Morrow thought slyly.

"Afraid I can't," he answered her, calmly.

She nodded and sipped her coffee in silence. Finally, she asked, "Will you be glad when I'm back on a day-shift?"

Morrow took his turn sipping coffee and took his time forming an answer. "I want to take you swimming out at the Lakeshore Lodge, again," he said. "I still dream about the way you rolled up your two-piece suit so it was a Bikini model—"

"Uh huh," she interrupted. Her tone was hardly enthusiastic. "If we do, you'd better not try making the passes at me you did the last time!"

"You expect me to resist the temptation of all that beautiful skin?" he retorted, grinning down at her.

She gave a pert shake of her head. "When I give in to a man, he'll be my husband," she said firmly. "And he'll be my husband because he loves me—not because he drools over my body!"

"Ummm," Morrow ummed, doubtfully. He decided it would be best to change the subject. "Read the latest Universe?"

"Uh huh! What'd you think of Sturgeon's story?" She was at once bright, smiling, interested. "Wasn't it wonderful? I mean, the way he so perfectly defined an alien being's intelligence—"

That was science-fiction. Gwyn read the science-fiction magazines avidly, from cover to cover. Morrow read a few, along with his other reading—the Post, Harper's, the Digest, and half a dozen technical journals—and he'd even written and sold a science-fiction story once. Nineteen editors rejected it, but the twentieth bought it after having him revise it three times.

But that one mutual interest had gone a long way in winning his esteem in Gwyn's mind, slight though it was. And she was cute as a bug, the sort of female who set a man's blood a-tingle.

So they talked science-fiction. Alien creatures that inhabited other planets, trips across space and out to the other stars, travels through time and into other dimensions, civilizations which spread clear across the galaxy....

It was over an hour before a young messenger boy came in with the expected telegram. Morrow tipped the boy, excused himself to Gwyn, and ripped open the envelope.

The message read:

DENVER, COLORADO

AUGUST 6 1960

BILL MORROW
WESTERTON, NEW JERSEY

ROGER, WILCO. E-T-A NEWARK AIRPORT 3:10 A.M. SUNDAY AUG. 8TH.
WHERE IN HELL IS WESTERTON?

D.P. SMITH

Grinning, Morrow folded the yellow sheet and stuffed it into his pocket.

"Everything okay?" Gwyn asked, forcing all concern from her voice.

"Everything is okay," Morrow affirmed quietly. "How much do I owe you?"

"Four coffees? Forty-five cents."

He laid the change on the counter, then stooped and kissed her cheek lightly. "I gotta go home and get some sleep," he murmured.

She smiled, a little wistfully. "Thanks for coming."

He went out into the cool darkness, then hurried down to the bar on the corner and went in to use the men's room. Then he came out, crossed the street, and climbed aboard his little motor-bike.

Thoughts drifted lazily through his mind as he chugged contentedly homeward....

Thoughts—and memories. They were cruising along peacefully at 40,000 feet. Morrow felt as if he were molded into the snug rear cockpit, an integral part of the tons of sleek, deadly metal that was the old F-94 jet-fighter. But he'd experienced that feeling so often it no longer mattered, then.

Before him was the familiar maze of instrument dials and signal lights and switches crammed around a glowing, green-blotched radar scope. Around him was the clear, transparent canopy, with the round crash-helmet of Smitty's head poking up from the front cockpit ahead of him. Below, off the edge of the razor-thin wing, was the criss-crossed gray surface of the Arctic ice-pack. The sky was an intense blue-black sprinkled with the hard, bright sparks of stars.

There were faint, rhythmic sounds around him. Familiar sounds. The warm, dry air blowing through his flight suit, circulating over his body. The air pushing into his face-mask. The rolling motion of the seat-cushions, massaging his backside with mechanical dispassion.

Then the flat, metallic voice in his earphones. "Forty-three degrees left. Contact in five minutes!"

"Roger!" Smitty's voice answered.

The ship tilted gently. Centrifugal force pressed Morrow against his seat. The world turned slowly beneath them. Forty-three degrees.

Two minutes later, a bright spark appeared on his radar scope. "Air spotted!" he spoke into his mike. "Two degrees right!"

"Over to you!" the metallic voice from ground radar answered. And the jet shifted slightly. Two degrees.

"Contact in two minutes," Morrow chanted. "One-thirty ... One ... Thirty—"

"Contact!" Smitty's voice cracked.

The F-94 whipped over into a turn. The force of two gravities shoved Morrow down in his seat.

For a brief moment—a breathless, eternal moment, all of two seconds—another F-94 exactly like theirs appeared directly before them. Long enough for red lights to glow and camera guns to record a direct hit. The practice mission was completed—almost.

Then Smitty snap-rolled the ship, missing the other ship almost by inches. The g's piled up, cramming Morrow down in his seat, pulling at his facial muscles. Then his vision cleared and he straightened up, bruised and somewhat battered.

It was the old bomber-interceptor game. That other F-94 could have been an enemy bomber, plowing toward American cities with a load of atomic death—

Smitty turned his head and looked back. His eyes crinkled into a smile under the green glaze of his goggles.

Smitty. Captain Daniel Purcell Smith, then—or "D.P." Smith, which were also the initials for "Displaced Person." A cool, thoughtful, and smart jet-fighter pilot in those days, and a darned good guy. They had taken Seattle apart at the seams on their one furlough, preferring the devilment of their own companionship to going home to Mom's apple pie.

Morrow's telegram had made sense, all right. The words scramble and May Day were fighter-lingo; scramble meant let's go! we've a fight on our hands, and May Day meant I'm in trouble!

He was in trouble, certainly. The mechanism he'd developed was, in itself, plenty of trouble.

And it was a special kind of trouble—the kind in which the only person he could dare trust had to be someone like Smitty. The Air Force camaraderie which existed between them had never quite faded out. Even after they'd been mustered back into civilian status, after Morrow had signed a government engineering contract and Smitty had gone on to commercial flying, they had kept in touch with each other. Diverging interests hadn't pulled them apart; the old school ties, the old trustworthiness was still there. An odd letter every few months or so, a postcard at Christmas....

He was fortunate to know a man like Smitty, Morrow knew. He couldn't have carried out his plan alone.

He reached home, stored his motor-bike in the garage, and walked into the living room. He snapped on the light and stood there for a moment, gazing across the room at his littered writing desk. If he were going to carry out his plan, there was one thing he'd have to do himself. People weren't going to like it. Good engineers were scarce.

He walked across the room, sat down at the desk, and crammed a sheet of Western Electronics stationery into his portable typewriter. He paused, lighted a cigarette, and then grimly proceeded to write his letter of resignation.

"It's a mechanism that floats in the Earth's field of gravity," Morrow began—

They were seated in a secluded booth in the modernistic restaurant