His father must have been out of the house when Granger and the other man arrived, Ed thought. Did his going out on this chaotic evening mean anything special? Wanting to be loyal, and at least half sure that the wish was returned, Ed didn't care to complete the thought. He was concerned about his mother, yet he said, "Try not to worry, Mom. Go to bed. They'll have to guard the house. I can still insist on it. And I don't think I can be held very long, even now." "Your father will come to you as soon as he knows, Eddie," she said. So Edward Dukas was carted off to the local bastille. A helmet was put on his head. But what was learned from him about the whereabouts of Mitchell Prell must have been both confusing and disappointing. Certainly, though, it must have intrigued the police, as did that single name on the paper, which told them nothing under the most careful scrutiny. Bronson, the portly local police chief, introduced Ed to a man named Carter Loman, a bullishly handsome character with a mouth like a trap, a smile to match, and a gimlet scrutiny. A big wheel of some sort, Ed assumed. Was there something familiar about him? "You'll have to spend the night here, Dukas," Loman rumbled. Ed put out the light in his cell, but as he crept into his cot, he held a bit of paper from his coat pocket in one hand. He left his fountain pen open, on top of his clothes. For maybe an hour he lay quietly in the dark, listening to the scattered noises of the troubled night. Then he slept. He awoke as dawn grayed the east and glanced at once at the paper in his hand, which he had kept outside the blanket. Ed's heart leaped. A message had been written. Perhaps it had taken all night to toil it out at a creeping pace: "_Nipper--argue police--you go Port Smitty--Mars--at once_." The final _e_ of _once_ was already written, except that a line of it was still being extended. A little dot of wet ink was still laboring across the paper. Ed had no microscope or pocket lens, but he risked turning on the light. He peered hard. He was not at all sure that he saw anything special. But imbedded in the dark liquid he thought for an instant that he beheld a suggestion of form--impossible or entirely fantastic. Then the tiny minuscule of ink quivered, and the hint was gone. Ed whispered, so low that he himself could not hear, "Uncle Mitch. I know that you're around--in some form. I wish I understood what you're up to." Ed tore the message from the sheet of paper, chewed it to a pulp, and spat it on the floor. At least he was destroying concrete evidence that might provoke greater attention than his psyched memories. Of course they would psych him again--that was why they had held him, hoping that he would learn more. But he had learned very little. * * * * *