But now, of course, all that Headquarters permitted of flights was the most furtive of reconnoitering. You hoisted your scout ship aloft under high-gee, cleared the ecliptic, then swung out of normal space and _jumped_. When you materialized in the new sector, you set your cameras clicking, toggled all the other instruments into recording radiation, gravity pressures, spectroscopy, at slam-bang speed. The very instant your magnetic tapes got crammed to capacity, you pressed six dozen panic buttons and scooted like a scared jackrabbit for Home, Sweet Home. Adventure? It wasn't even mentioned on the travel posters, yet. But, adventure would follow. Some day. Meanwhile, at the taxpayers' expense, you--the guardian of the Peace--had enjoyed the billion-dollar thrill of viewing our Solar System from light-years and light-years of distance. Or so the manual said, right here on Insert Page 30-Dash-11-Dash-6. Lance thought about those veteran hype-pilots who'd already poked around in the great black Cold out there. How was it they were always compensating for their frustration? Now, he remembered. Having few tall tales to spellbind audiences with when they swooped back down on Home Base after their missions, the hype-pilots got around it by bragging up Terra itself, and how at least you could always depend upon good old Earth to come up with something to relax this Warp-Weary generation! "Something, for example, such as we now hold in our hand, brothers!" Lance could hear them now. "Namely, one of these superbly-programmed cocktails, as only Casey can turn out." (Casey was the Officers Club barkeep and much-beribboned mixologist.) "A real 'Casey Special'--look at its pristine beauty! What better consolation can a man ask, for not having gotten to land at the apogee point of his orbit?" "Besides"--this usually came out after two or three more tongue-loosening toasts had been quaffed to the beasts of Headquarters--"what's so blasted special about landing on some God-forsaken rock _out there_? "Hell's bells! Earth is a planet too, isn't it? And when you've been cooped up in a parsec-gobbling pot for a very, very long two weeks, any planet looming in your viewscope cries to be set down upon. Your own prosaic hunk of mud is good as any!" * * * * * Lance Cooper's rambling thoughts broke off their aimless tracking to swing one hundred and eighty degrees in midspace and dart right back to Earth. Here at this very moment--and less than a hundred yards away--came Terra's foremost attraction for him. His hammering heartbeat would have placed him on the "grounded" list immediately, had there been a medico with a stethoscope hanging about to detect it. The attraction's name was Carolyn Sagen, and she was hurrying directly across the concrete apron.