He turned her loose. "Give you a chance," he repeated and gave a short bitter laugh. "A chance to do what? Double-cross me like you have everyone else?" Nadia shrank away. "The dream!" she said in a frightened voice. "It's just as it was in the dream. You laughed!" Villanowski interrupted sadly. "You weren't dreaming during the little death. We're only equipped with three dimensional sense organs. We're blind to everything but the immediate instant. But time's a dimension. It's co-existent. When the Nova was projected across time, your entire life was spread out around you. What you actually did was experience a segment of your life. It happened to be a segment in the future." Nadia's lips were bloodless. "You guessed when I told you about the dream?" "I didn't guess," replied Villanowski. "I knew! Miss Petrovna, if you saw the Nova captured by the Interplanetary Patrol through efforts of Murdock who was a T.I.S. agent, then it was inevitable that it would take place exactly as you had seen it. There was nothing any of us could do about it!" A faint grin broke across Villanowski's homely face. "I saw that it behooved me to give Murdock a hand when and if he needed it." Gavin said, "I think I can promise you amnesty, Villanowski. I couldn't have captured the Nova without your help." "Oh, that's not all," Villanowski chuckled. "The Empire will want this space drive to power her ships. I'll be a valuable man. Even Y didn't intend to kill me until I had explained its mechanism to Tri-World's scientists." "How long," asked Gavin abruptly, "have we been on Jupiter? I lost track after that shell knocked me out at the cantonment." "This is the second day." Gavin wrinkled his brow. "The patrol ships should be here in about four hours." Outside the Nova, a gaping hole in space marked her position. The astounded crew of the Comet, who had landed prepared to refuel the captured Nova, eyed the eerie vacancy with mixed emotions. One of the crew flung a rock into the enveloping blackness. It disappeared. There was no sound of its falling to the ground. The commander of the Comet, deprived of Y's guidance, fumed nervously. He glanced at his watch at intervals, saying at length, "If the Nova doesn't reappear by dark, we'll take off. We can lay up and re-establish contact by radio." The men gathered about the maw of blackness staring into it with hypnotic fascination. They fell an easy prey to the five sleek patrol craft which plummeted down on them three hours later. The short Jovian day was on the wane when the Nova began to gather substance like a tenuous cloud. Her misty outlines grew solid. Then the port opened. Gavin Murdock appeared in the entrance. Commandant Samuels, a grizzled veteran of the T.I.S., was the first man up the gangplank. He shook Gavin's hand. "Nice work, Murdock. But it smacks damnably of witchcraft."