"Him? He's just building up a reservoir of false courage through his viewer." Yet, in fairness to the pilot, Stewart had to admit that he, himself, felt a deep and reasonable gratitude that wars were a thing of the historic past. Carol sighed and glanced at him. "I'm certainly glad," she said, straight-faced, "that wars are a thing of the historic past." He seized her arm. "Carol! Do you realize you're repeating _everything I'm thinking_? You've gone a step beyond radio empathy! You can pull in _thought_ waves too!" "No-o-o, you're joking!" "No. Honest, I--" But his words were lost in her welling laughter. He followed her amused stare to his portable voice transmitter and the mike that still clung to his throat. And instantly he realized that his subvocalizations, being picked up and broadcast, were to her like a window opening on his thought processes. "Why, you--" Feigning indignation, he caught her around the waist and pulled her toward him. Weightless, she drifted forward and spread out conveniently across his knees. But before he could bring a hand down resoundingly on the curvature of taut coveralls, Randall drifted in on the scene. Still laughing, Carol straightened and announced, "Saved--by the great, white-haired protector." * * * * * Randall grinned benignly, lighted his pipe and stared out the port. "Couldn't help hearing your conversation about the horror of warfare. I've seen all the documentary tapes. It _was_ rough." "Thank God it's a closed book," Carol said seriously. "But, _is_ it? There's still a large and articulate school that regards armed conflict as an instinctive human mechanism." "We've had no war in two hundred years," Stewart said. "Only because political subdivisions haven't had time for one. The instinct is blurred as a result of our expanding into a vacuum." "I see." Carol's eyes strained with disillusionment. "And the question is--what happens when we run out of galaxy?" "Fat chance." Stewart laughed. "We've got a few billion years to go before we find ourselves short on worlds." Having apparently lost interest in the conversation, Randall was staring ahead at the onrushing satellite. "That's one way of looking at it," Carol said pensively. "But there's also another possibility--resistance to the expansion." "You kidding? In two centuries we haven't run into a single life form that's the intellectual equivalent of a Terran fiddler crab. What do you think, Chief?" The director blew a stream of smoke at the swiftly expanding disc of Four-B. "I think our Maid of the Megacycles ought to start sniffing for that telepuppet team. I wouldn't want to rely on Mortimer's locating them with directional gear." Carol faced the view port with her eyes closed for perhaps three minutes. Then she grinned. "I think I've got it! Not just a single, strong signal. Bundles of weak ones."