"Aye, aye, sir," said Borion with a wink, "little pitchers have big ears, don't they?" "How soon will we get out of the stratosphere?" Dynamon asked. "Well, I'm lifting her very slowly," answered the navigator, "I don't want to take any chances on friction. I would say in about three hours from now we will be ready to go." "I will be with you then," said Dynamon, and walked out the door. * * * * * The young centurion had in mind to make a thorough inspection of the entire ship, but he had scarcely been ten minutes away from the control room when the loud-speaker system boomed forth. "Centurion Dynamon is requested to come to the control room." Dynamon hurried up a metal staircase and then through a companionway. As he threw open the door to the control room, Borion turned quickly and laid a finger on his lips. Then the navigator gestured Dynamon toward a series of glass panels. There were six of these panels, each about a foot square, and ranged in two vertical rows of three each. One word, "periscopes," was stenciled at the top, and beside each mirror were other labels, "port bow," "port beam," "port quarter." The other three panels were labeled in the same way, designating their location on the starboard side. Borion flicked the switch beside the "starboard quarter" panel and it become dimly illuminated. Dynamon threw a swift glance at the altimeter, and saw that it said two thousand feet. Then he bent over and peered into the periscope panel. A wide panorama of twinkling lights spread out before him, the street lights of Copia. But the pale blue of approaching dawn was creeping fast over the city, shedding just enough light to reveal a dark shape a mile behind the Cosmos Carrier, and perhaps a thousand feet below. As Dynamon stared into the periscope screen, he thought he could detect a faint glow of red in the following shape. He turned questioningly to Borion. The navigator was writing rapidly on a piece of paper. A second later he handed the paper to Dynamon. It said: "I queried Headquarters and was told that the conference with the Martian delegation is still officially going on. But that Carrier following us is bright red, the color of the Martian Carriers." * * * * * Dynamon held the piece of paper in his hand for a minute and gazed doubtfully into the periscope screen. Then he took the pencil from Borion and, bending over, wrote the following: "I don't like the looks of this. Can we out-run them once we get out of the atmosphere?" Borion nodded slowly. "As far as I know, we can," he said, "unless--" he reached for the paper in Dynamon's hand and wrote "--unless they have developed a new wrinkle in their Carriers that we don't know anything about." "Well," said Dynamon, "we won't waste time worrying about things over which we have no control. Proceed as usual."