"To the ship!" Foster called. He was up and running, and I hesitated just long enough to think about trying for the highway and being caught in the open--and then I was running, too. Ahead, Foster stumbled crossing the ground that had been ripped up by the rocket bursts, made it to the ladder, and went up it fast. The growl of the approaching bombers grew, a snarl of deadly hatred. I leaped a still-smoking stone fragment, took the ladder in two jumps, plunged into the yellow-lit interior. Behind me, the door smacked shut. I was standing in a luxuriously fitted circular room. There was a pedestal in the center of the floor, from which a polished bar projected. The bones of a man lay beside it. While I stared, Foster sprang forward, seized the bar, and pulled. It slid back easily. The lights flickered and I had a moment of vertigo. Nothing else happened. "Try it the other way," I yelled. "The bombs will fall any second--" I went for it, hand outstretched. Foster thrust in front of me. "Look!" I stared at the glowing panel he was pointing to--a duplicate of the one in the underground chamber. It showed a curved white line, with a red point ascending from it. "We're clear," Foster said. "We've made a successful take-off." "But we can't be moving--there's no acceleration. There must be soundproofing--that's why we can't hear the bombers--" "No soundproofing would help if we were at ground zero," Foster said. "This ship is the product of an advanced science. We've left the bombers far behind." "Where are we going? Who's steering this thing?" "It steers itself, I would judge," Foster said. "I don't know where we're going, but we're well on the way." I looked at him in amazement. "You like this, don't you, Foster? You're having the time of your life." "I can't deny that I'm delighted at this turn of events," Foster said. "Don't you see? This vessel is a launch, or lifeboat, under automatic control. And it's taking us to the mother ship." "Okay, Foster," I said. I looked at the skeleton on the floor behind him. "But I hope we have better luck than the last passenger." CHAPTER VII It was two hours later, and Foster and I stood silent before a ten-foot screen that had glowed into life when I touched a silver button beside it. It showed us a vast emptiness of bottomless black, set thick with corruscating points of polychrome brilliance that hurt to look at. And against that backdrop: a ship, vast beyond imagining, blotting out half the titanic vista with its bulk---- But dead. Even from the distance of miles, I could sense it. The great black torpedo shape, dull moonlight glinting along the unbelievable length of its sleek flank, drifted: a derelict. I wondered for how many centuries it had waited here--and for what? "I feel," said Foster, "somehow--I'm coming home." I tried to say something, croaked, cleared my throat. "If this is your jitney," I said, "I hope they didn't leave the meter ticking on you. We're broke."