He stiff-armed the big guard and leaped for the lock door. Ross suddenly came to life. “Bernie!” he bellowed. “Hold it! Don’t jump!” But it was too late. The one guard sprawling, the other staggering helplessly across the floor, Bernie was clear. He scrabbled at the lockwheels, spun them open. Ross tensed himself for the sudden, awful rush of expanding air; he leaped after Bernie just as Bernie flung the lock door open and jumped. Ross jumped after. There was no rush of air. They were not in space. Around them was no ripping, sucking void, no flaming backdrop of stars; around them were six walls and a Wesley board, and Helena peering at them wide-eyed and delighted. “Well!” she said. “_That_ was fast!” * * * * * Ross said, “But——” Helena, hanging from the acceleration loops, smiled maternally. “Oh, it was nothing,” she said. “Ross don’t you think we’re far enough away yet?” Ross said hopelessly, “All right,” and cut the drive. The starship hung in space in the limbo between stars. Azor, “Minerva,” and the rest were light-years behind, far out of range of challenge. Helena wriggled free from the loops and rubbed her arms where the retaining straps had gripped them. “After all,” she said demurely, “you _told_ me how to run the ship, and _really_, Ross, I’m not quite _stupid_.” Ross said, “But——” “But what, Ross? It isn’t as if I were some sort of brainless little thing that had never run a machine in her life. My goodness, Ross——” She wrinkled her nose. “_You_ should remember. All those days in the dye vats? Don’t you think I had to learn a little something about machines _there_?” Ross swore incredulously. To compare those clumsy constructs of wheels and rollers with the subtle subelectronic flows of the Wesley force—and to make it work! He said, unbelievingly, “And the ‘Minerva’ helped you vector in? They gave you the co-ordinates and radared your course?” “Certainly.” Helena turned to Bernie, who was staring dazedly around him. “Are you all right, dear?” she asked. Ross turned his back on them and faced the Wesley Christmas tree of controls. Don’t question it, he told himself; take a miracle for what it is. God wanted you out of “Minerva”—and God moves in most mysterious ways His wonders to perform. Anyway, they had to get going. When the court had exiled Helena in the starship they had gone through the customary rituals; not only was everything that looked like a weapon gone, along with all but a teacup of fuel for the auxiliary jets, but the food locker was stripped entirely. He put everything else out of his mind and began to calculate a setting. Bernie said over his shoulder, “Home, huh? That place you call Halsey’s Planet?”