Nothing ever flew faster not even the XXX that took me back into time. I sneak a glance out of the front office and expect to see a lost angel thumbing a ride, but instead I discover I am hedge-hopping an outer space atomic service station. I picture the solar system in my mind and look for Auxiliary Moon 3 that Quantum told me served New Mu. I must have flown ten million miles before I spotted it. I take a small notebook out of my pocket that I filled up with Celestial data when I studied Superadvanced Astronavigation at the Harvardian night school. On page 11 I find what I am looking for. “Consider now the location of Planet Q. We can specify its position in relation to Planet X by computing its zenith distance, ZQ, and the azimuth from angle QZS, and then multiply by 7.3416. Every star has its fixed time passing the meridian by the universal siderial clock and this time is called the right ascension of the star. By using the Einstein III theory of relativity, one planet to the other, it will not be too difficult to determine your way around the solar system. Nutation must be kept in mind, parallaxical phenomena kept in consideration.” “No wonder I flunked,” I says. “Just let me spot Nougat an’ I’ll know the rest of the way.” I fly close to Pluto and some nuclear fission plus hydrogel coughs up at me, and I pull a lever to the right and head for where I think I’ll find Saturn. I only miss it by ten thousand miles which was a close call seeing that was only a tenth of a second out of the way. But I do not need no sky map now. Just ten million miles southeast is the milky way and the dippers and even the dumbest astrogators know that you only have to slide down the little constellations making up the handle of the big one and head straight for good old Earth. I make it in ten minutes flat, circle over the Kremlin in Neo Moscow and hop the Atlantis in a fraction of a second. I keep flying in circles over Metropolita until I find the thingmajig that slows down the saucer. All the harnessed-up energy from the world’s uranium mines are tossed up at me but nothing has been invented or discovered anywhere that will penetrate the New Mu flying saucer. I finally glide down and land in Centralia Park, and thousands of citizens head for the bomb shelters. I get up and my legs buckle under me like dahlia stems, and remember I am still half a plant. I push the door open and stagger down the steps that automatically fall into place. Half the armored might of the Eastern Defense Area is rolling toward the saucer. I wave my arms and yelp, “It is I, Septimus Spink!” and then fall flat on my proboscis. And I do mean flat. I open my eyes and look up into the face of Commander Bjaal. “L-Look,” I says. “Get me to the Metropolita Medical Center an’ don’t spare the saucers. I am full of chlorophyl and need at least ten blood transfusions. These feelers on my dome ain’t pasted on, Buster!”