"After?" asked Maynard. "Nonsense." He ripped the envelope and read: Dear Guy: I was right. You were lonely. Space must be lonely; even if for no other reason than its vastness. I've been told before, but I didn't realize. You've been lonely, Guy, and you will be lonely again, once you are back in space. I may not keep you from loneliness there, Guy, but please, never be lonely again when at home. Joan. "She's a fine girl," said Guy. "Joan Forbes is one of the world's finest," said Mother Andrew positively. She was gratified to see him put the letter in an inside pocket as he left. What was in Guy's mind, she could not guess, but she believed that he was slightly muddled, for some reason. * * * * * Guy was confused. There was something wrong with the way things went, and he was not brilliant enough to understand the trouble. He gave it up as a major problem after trying several times to unravel the tangle. Then, too, there was no time to think about it. His problem lost importance when displayed against the program he had set out to cover. And as the miles and the days sped by, the problem at hand became the important thing, and the other problem died in dimness. The _Asterite_ moved swiftly out into the region beyond the Belt, and into a completely untenanted region that was marked by absolutely nothing. On his astrogator's chart, a dotted line was labeled Neptune, but the planet itself was almost in quadrature with that position. Pluto was on the far side of Sol from him, and Saturn and Uranus were motes of unwinking light in almost-opposition to Neptune. He was alone with his crew. They worked diligently, setting up the barrier-screen generators, and when they had them working to satisfaction, they tried variations. The pilot worked upon their course day by day until it was corrected and stable; an orbit about a mythical point, the centripetal force of the outward-directed drive being in balance with the centrifugal force of their orbit. It made them a neat 1-G for stability, and did not cause them to cover astral units in seconds, or require continuous turnovers for deceleration and return, which would have been the case had no orbit been established. Their work progressed. The neat, orderly arrangement of the scanning room became slightly haywire as they ran jury-rigged circuits in from the barrier-generators. No petty quarreling marred their work. This was partly due to the training of the men at Patrol School, and partly due to Maynard's foresight in picking his crew. He had done a masterful job, for in this kind of job, the tedious nature of flight was amplified, and the lack of any variation in the day's duration, or of one day from the one past or the one coming next, made men rub each other the wrong way.