"I wonder what we forgot," Lanya said, wishing she could remember something. "We didn't forget anything! Not a thing! Let's get going now!" Virgil climbed in deliberately without a backward look. He was trying to impress her, Lanya knew. The girl, feeling suddenly very small and afraid, glanced apprehensively at the metal hull of the ship, then lingeringly at the familiar landscape. Finally, setting her face into a mask of unflinching determination that successfully hid the palpitations of her heart, she climbed into the open port and sealed the lock. In the tiny pressurized cabin, air-cushioned against acceleration, Virgil was already seated and watching the erratic instruments with absorbed interest. Lanya dropped into the cloud-like softness of her seat and snapped the safety straps securely, about her small body. "I hope Muuck is watching," Virgil muttered under his breath. He turned to his sister. "You ready?" She smiled sickishly. They watched the hand sweep slowly across the chronometer and approach 0900. A steady vibration pulsed rhythmically throughout the hull. "Are you sure you're ready?" Virgil asked, grinning bravely. "Here we go." The scream of the jets was almost inaudible in the cabin. They floated with eerie slowness from the ground ... then rose faster and faster. Below, the details of the desert merged into a dull red haze. The horizon began to have a noticeable curvature, which became more and more pronounced. A thick, bunched mass of cloud flicked by in an instant. [Illustration: _The scream of the jets was almost inaudible._] A strange pressure knotted Lanya's stomach. Then she blacked out. * * * * * "You what?" "We rayed the thing out of space as a menace to navigation." "Why'd you stop us?" Virgil's voice was shrill with annoyance and frustration. "We were rocketing to Earth!" "Earth!" the other voice rasped. "Great god Bongo! What loony stunt will you kids think up next?" Lanya forced her eyes open and looked toward the voices. A large, red-thatched man in a space-police uniform was chuckling at Virgil who sat on the edge of a bunk. They were on the inside of a sleek atom-powered police interceptor. "Next time you try this stunt, kid," the old space-dog was saying, "paint some identification on the hull. And install a radio, if you do nothing else." Lanya crawled out of the bunk and approached the two speakers. "Oho!" the burly space-policeman roared. "The little lady!" He became suddenly serious. "Don't you kids know that at the rate you were accelerating you wouldn't have come out of the fog until your fuel was gone and you were past Earth? If ever. I've been a space-pilot for twenty years but I don't think I could have taken that kind of acceleration for long." Lanya looked silently at Virgil who seemed kind of sick. "We thought the air-foam cushions in the cabin were enough. Besides I'm pretty tough."