The needle went wild. It hit--_just where the original Griffin flight plan had ended--light-speed squared_! And then it fell off. And Ten cut out, and so did Nine, Eight, Seven ... Six--Five. Four hummed evenly. And Cragin knew that he'd never forget that impossible series of critical speeds for what remained of his life. Wherever they were, it was within seconds of the absolute ... a second Barrier, Cragin thought, which existed simply because men didn't know how to devise a way to go any further. But-- "You're in X ecliptic now," Lin Griffin's voice told him. But it was a different voice than it had been before. There was something new in it. Something Cragin couldn't find a word for. "Within it, you'll find flight conditions very similar to those of ordinary Deep Space. In a few minutes, you'll be able to pick up the machine-planet in your electroscopes. That's where we're going. Unless you want to turn back. You can, now that you know how the warp pattern works." "Trying to shake me?" His hands weren't slippery any more. "I won't shake. You're taking me straight to the boss or I'm placing you under arrest. I remind you that the Patrol's jurisdiction extends to wherever in Space one of its ships may fly. Acknowledge please." He felt a sudden, uncomfortable warmth in his cheeks when she laughed. It was a light, almost merry thing. She was doing it again! "Wherever I am, I rule, is that it?" "In effect, yes. And--" "There is no head man, no leader of a giant smuggling ring where I'm going, Patrolman. Just--" Her voice tapered off; the laugh was gone. "I will be easy to follow," she said. The planet toward which they flew--Cragin could see it easily now in the electroscopes, although he could see no other and the 'scope seemed to draw what stars there were no nearer--was hardly half the size of the moon of earth. It glowed, somehow, radiating a pale phosphorescence of its own, and its surface seemed entirely without configuration. Completely smooth, unmarked even by stray chunks of hurtling cosmic waste. It was in a definite orbit, yet around--nothing. It circled in an ecliptic described in three dimensions; they were no longer flying a tight-rope, and the comps were quiet. Yet it was an ecliptic that men had never found. Except for Fowler Griffin. As though reading his thoughts, his daughter spoke. "You wonder where its center is. It has a center. What did you say your name was? Cragin. It has a center, Cragin. Around which it has revolved for untold millenia. Only by accident, while he was searching for an almost negligible mass error in one of his computations, did my father discover that this ecliptic must exist, and must contain at least one revolving body. He found it. He determined its orbit. He found that the solar system itself is the center of the machine-planet's orbit. It has neither aphelion nor perihelion, nor does its ecliptic ever shift. It is always perfect."