* * * * * John picked her up and spun her around. "You just bet your boots I'm all right. I'm feeling swell! You've given us the answer we needed. You know right where the haystack is, and you know there's a needle there. But finding it is something else again. I don't think the invaders will be able to locate _this_ needle." He set her down. "Where are my shoes?" he said. "I've got to get back to the Capitol." Anne seemed faintly surprised. "Because of what I said? They're right on the floor there between you and the sofa. But I was just making conversation. What are you going to do?" "Oh, I'm just going to get started at taking stitches in time. Good-by, darling." He started out the door, ran back to give Anne a lingering kiss and was soon gone at top speed. Anne, waving to him, looked very pleased with herself. By the time Bristol arrived at the Capitol building, the rest of the Council was once again assembled and waiting for him. "Well, John," said the President. "You sounded excited enough when you called us together again. Have you figured out what the Oracle meant?" "Yes, sir. With my wife's help. It's obvious, when you finally think about it. It will save us from any danger. And we should have been able to figure it out for ourselves. There's no reason that we should have had to go to the Oracle at all. And it only took Buster--the computer, I mean--two or three minutes to think of the answer, and of a proverb that would conceal the answer. It's amazing!" "And if you don't mind telling us, just what is this answer?" The President sounded very impatient. "We almost had it when we talked of stitching Earth out of reach," John answered eagerly. "If we keep cutting back and forth from one universe toward the other, we will be out of reach, even if we can't move very far. Once a day we reappear in this Universe for a few million-millionths of a second--although it will seem like a whole day to us. "Then we spend the following day between this universe and beta. Even if the invaders are right on top of us when we reappear, we'll be gone again before they can do anything. Since we can vary the time of our return within limits, the invaders will never know exactly when we will flick in and out of the alpha plane until they hear our arriving 'bong' wave, and then we will already be gone, since we will be using accelerated subjective time." * * * * * The Chief Scientist shook his dark head and sighed. "No, John," he said, "I'm afraid that isn't the answer. I'm sorry. If we start the operation you suggested, we will be cutting ourselves off from solar energy. The Earth's heat will gradually radiate away. Although beta is at a higher entropy level than our universe, we can't use that energy, except to provide power for the stitching process itself. It's true that we would deny our planet to the invaders, but we would soon kill ourselves doing it."