"Well--good-bye, Father--good-bye, Frannie dear." Brett held her close; then released her, pushed her away. "Good-bye, Frank." His hand-clasp was warm and steady. Martt was jocular, but now at the last I could hear a tremble to his voice. "When we get to that girl out there--well, I'm going to tell her how interested you all are in her." His laugh was high-pitched. "That is, if we can handle that giant." "Good-bye, Brett. Good-bye, Martt." Our words were so futile, so inadequate to the surge of feeling within us! The door slid closed upon them. The vehicle, not to change size until it was far into the realms of outer interstellar Space, beyond our crowding little planets--lifted gently, soared upward, slid away from us, a glistening white shape up there in the quiet starlight. Gravely, silently, with what sinking of heart I could only imagine, Dr. Gryce stood regarding it. Beside me Frannie was crying softly. Explorers into infinity! And they were gone, to encounter--what? _CHAPTER 4_ THE WATCHERS We spent the rest of that night in the little observation room on the upper story of Dr. Gryce's home; with him and Frannie beside me I sat watching the vehicle's flight through the electro-telescope. It was not a high-powered instrument, but it served. I could see the vehicle plainly as it passed through our atmosphere and out into Space. A tiny blob with darker rectangles of windows. Dr. Gryce sat with instruments, charts and his computations before him. Occasionally he would ask me for the vehicle's position; and I would give him the points and clock the time with all the accuracy of which I was capable. He seemed solemn, perturbed no longer; the scientist in him was all-absorbing. He said once with satisfaction, "Brett is competent--the boy hasn't varied a hair from my directions." I knew that he and Brett had picked up the image of the girl and her assailants within a month past; and that Brett had accurate calculations which he could follow until able to capture the image on his own instruments. "How long will it take them to get there?" I asked. "When will they be back? You said within a few days. How long?" Dr. Gryce looked up from his work with a faint smile. "There's no answer to that, Frank. Without a change of their time it might take them to reach that realm out there a thousand years or a million years--the vehicle's maximum velocity we do not know--that they are to find out." "A million years! And another million to come back!" His smile broadened. "As we measure Time, yes. But they will change their Time-rate; the trip may seem to them only a few days." "But," I persisted, "two million years of our Time! And we can not change our Time." "No, Frank. But you speak thoughtlessly. Brett can return to any point in our Time he wishes. Not with exactitude--but, we hope, within a few days. They will return here--within that Time we have agreed."