To Virginia, he added, "It is most convenient that Earth Three lies on the other side of Earth One from Earth Two. Were this not so, the fumbling of your friends to penetrate the barrier between the streams of time might cause them to stumble on us." "Why can't they get through to One?" asked the girl. Kingston smiled. "Within the hour," he said, "four keys will unlock four safety deposit boxes in four different banks in Albuquerque. Each box contains one subcritical mass of space-resonant elements. My men are finishing the job you started, but this time the key to invasion lies in my hands!" He turned to Maddox, who was fumbling with the controls. "Find him yet?" he demanded. "No," grumbled Maddox. Kingston turned to Virginia. "You want to live," he told her in a very matter-of-fact voice, "and therefore it is to your interest to see that we do not permit Bronson to harm our plans. Where is he?" "I don't know," said the girl. "I merely sent him through." "You are a brazen little traitor," snapped Kingston. "I believe you! You merely sent him through, you cared not where." Maddox spoke up. "That equipment she flanged up isn't the most accurate," he said. "But I've covered the entire neighborhood. You know, the closest mass of focal elements lies across the street, in Earth Two, in the laboratory of Virginia Carlson. Therefore, lacking direction and precision, she'd have sent him through to the focal zone of her own gear." Virginia gasped. Partially blinded as she had been, half-aware of the duplicity of her surroundings, close in the near-paralytic grip of the transmission equipment, Virginia had retained sufficient cognizance to know most definitely that when she looked through the veil, she had been looking into a room that parallelled Bronson's laboratory in shape, size and window-placement. It was not similar to her own. In her haste she had paid it little attention. Her only thought had been to dispose of the man. Knowing that there were no other critical masses on Earth One, she had felt that anywhere he went was elsewhere. The implication was clear enough. She had sent Ed Bronson into Earth Three, a simple mistake due to the fact that Two and Three were situated almost equally distant and on opposite sides of Earth One. Obviously, the crude equipment had selected the nearer critical mass--which had been on Earth Three in a cojacent house and not through to Earth Two and across the street to Virginia's own laboratory. Bronson, then, was on Earth Three, somewhere. CHAPTER X _Counterfeit_