Mitchell Prell ended with another light laugh. He put the mask in his pocket and snapped a large suitcase shut. When he spoke again it was on a slightly different tack: "You probably won't see me for a while, Eddie. About your father, words just aren't any good at all. Maybe I'll ache over his end even harder than you. If anybody asks you questions about me, tell all you know. Don't try to hide anything for my sake. They'll pry it out of you anyway. And they'll only know what I want them to know. "Your mother may get a letter in a few days asking you both to report to the City. If that letter comes, see that she conforms to its request. It will also mean that I've delivered the results of my experiments with vitaplasm, as far as they've gone, into the proper hands and have probably succeeded in getting away into space. I hope that you and I and everybody make it to the Big Future, Eddie. That's all I have to say. Unless you care to remember a word that may crop up again--_android_." Mitchell Prell grinned reassuringly at his nephew and moved to put on his mask. "You don't want to say goodbye to Mom," Eddie stated, half angrily. Prell's look of concern deepened. His thin face was touched by a fleeting tenderness and worry. Part of it was surely for his sister. Then, mostly to himself, he muttered, "There's greater magnificence to come--if we can grow past the infancy of man; if new knowledge and old wild impulses don't do us all to death first." He chuckled sheepishly. "You say goodbye for me, Eddie," he urged. "I hate things like that." Mitchell Prell was gone then, out into the weird new night. Grimly, already half a man, young Ed Dukas watched him go, bitterness and grief, hatred and love, mixed up inside him. But the common denominator between himself and his uncle was the need for that future of stars and wonder and legendary betterment. "It _will_ happen," he promised within himself. For a second his body was taut with dread. He had already experienced the fury that knowledge made possible, and he could sense the potential of long silence beyond such things--no one left, anywhere! He wondered if, because life could go on and on now, it was more precious and death more terrible. Fifteen minutes after his uncle's departure a spy beam was put into operation from a mile distance. It covered the rooms of the Dukas house and the grounds around it. The principle of the device was almost ancient. The reflection of electro-magnetic waves. On a small screen in a distant room the plan of a house and its furnishings was outlined in a pale green glow. Shadowy blobs shifted with the movements of its occupants, robot and human. Only two people were there now. Eddie Dukas guessed that the spy beam was there, though its irregularly changing wave length would have made it almost impossible to identify, among the waves from many sources used for communication.