The sun was a huge, irregular disk of flaming yellow that had peculiar, symmetrical streamers flowing off; twelve of the main ones and a constantly opening and closing twenty-four minor streamers that flowed outward from the duodecagonal pattern of Sol. These streamers rotated, and looked for all the world like the pattern made by rotating two gratings above one another. Sol, from Pluto, was as big as a washtub, because of a series of man-made stations in space halfway between Sol and Pluto. These stations warped space by the maintenance of subelectronic charges that produced a subetheric gradient which bent the usable radiations of Sol into a focus. The fact that they were points in space instead of mighty, million mile rings of metal to carry the space-warping charge made the focus of Sol irregular instead of circular, but it served its purpose and men grew used to the scintillating sun. Certainly, it cost like the very devil, but uranium is not plentiful anywhere else, and men found it economically sound-- * * * * * John McBride cocked his feet on his desk at Station 1, and began to read his mail. At the fifth memo, he jumped, startled by what was on the page before him, and his feet hit the floor with a resounding crash. Angrily, he punched a buzzer, and a younger man entered. "Yes sir?" he asked. "What's wrong, Mr. McBride?" he finished noting McBride's startled expression. "Tommy, take a 'gram and slam it out of here on the rush. Some fool dame is going to try to fly through the lens!" "Oh, no!" "Yes! Can't get Terra on the phone, confound it, so fire a 'gram, but quick! Tell her that the restrictions are still in force, and that we aren't fooling! Also that it is illegal, dangerous, and foolhardy and that we absolutely forbid her to try!" "Yes sir!" answered Tommy and left immediately. The ticking of the teletype machine in the outer office came faintly to John's ears, but the knowledge of the message's departure did not ease the tension. Ten minutes later an answer came back: HAVE RECEIVED PERMISSION FROM TRIPLANET COUNCIL TO FLY FROM TERRA TO PLUTO THROUGH AXIS OF LENS. PERMISSION GRANTED BECAUSE OF STATEMENT OF NO DANGER EXPRESSED BY DOCTOR HOLMANN OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRO-GRAVITIC PHENOMENA. SAVE YOUR ELECTRICITY, I LEFT TERRA ON TUESDAY MORNING! SANDRA DRAKE "Holy St. Peter!" exploded McBride. Tommy winced in sympathy, because he knew what was coming. "Doc Holmann! My father studied electro-gravitics under him. He was an old fuddy-duddy then. The old drip owns that university, that's why he's still in the E. G. chair. I'll bet you a hunk of the lens itself that the old goat doesn't even know that we are now using magneto-gravitics in the front lens element. That's the stinker!"