She nodded. "He told me just now, while he was putting something in your milk to make you sleep." Her face was bitter and resentful. "He said, 'This is a lesson for you, Ching, if you ever do any work with individuals like this. You have to humor them, tell them anything they want to believe, in order to get your data.'" Maitland put his feet on the floor, stood up. His face was white and he was breathing fast. She grasped his arm. "What are you going to do?" He shook her hand off. "I may not get to the Moon, but I'm going to teach one superman the advantage of honesty!" "Wait! That won't get you anywhere." "He may be bigger than I am," Maitland gritted, "but--" She squeezed his arm violently. "You don't understand. He would not fight you. He'd use a gun." "If I could catch him by surprise...." She took hold of his shoulders firmly. "Now, listen, Bob Maitland. I love you. And I think it's the most important thing in the world that you get to see the stars. Swarts will never let me time travel, anyway." "What are you thinking?" "I'll go down to the village and get a _vliegvlotter_. It won't take twenty minutes. I'll come back, see that Swarts is out of the way, let you out of here, and take you--" she hesitated, but her eyes were steady--"wherever you want to go." He was trembling. "Your career. I can't let you...." She made as if to spit, then grinned. "My career! It's time I went home to the fiord, anyway. Now you wait here!" * * * * * The _vliegvlotter_ was about 50 feet long, an ellipsoid of revolution. Maitland and Ingrid ran hand in hand across the lawn and she pushed him up through the door, then slammed it shut and screwed the pressure locks tight. They were strapping themselves into the seats, bathed in sunlight that flooded down through the thick plastic canopy, when she stopped, pale with consternation. "What's the matter?" he demanded. "Oh, Bob, I forgot! We can't do this!" "We're going to," he said grimly. "Bob, _sometime this morning you're going to snap back to 1950_. If that happens while we're up there...." His jaw went slack as the implication soaked in. Then he reached over and finished fastening the buckle on her wide seat belt. "Bob, I can't. I would be killing you just as surely as...." "Never mind that. You can tell me how to run this thing and then get out, if you want to." She reached slowly forward and threw a switch, took hold of the wheel. Seconds later they were plummeting into the blue dome of the sky. The blue became darker, purplish, and stars appeared in daylight. Maitland gripped the edge of the seat; somewhere inside him it seemed that a chorus of angels was singing the finale of Beethoven's Ninth. There was a _ping_ and Ingrid automatically flicked a switch. A screen lit up and the image of Swarts was looking at them. His eyes betrayed some unfamiliar emotion, awe or fear. "Ching! Come back here at once. Don't you realize that--"