"Well, that's that, folks," said Seaton as he shut off the power. "We can't do much more for a few days, until the gang gets here for the council of war. How'd it be, Rovol, for me to practice with this outfit while you are finishing up the odds and ends you want to clean up? You might suggest to Orlon, too, that it'd be a good deed for him to pilot those folks over here." As Rovol wafted himself to the ground from their lofty station, Crane and Margaret appeared and were lifted up to the place formerly occupied by the physicist. "How's tricks, Mart? I hear you're quite an astronomer?" said Seaton. "Yes, thanks to Orlon and the First of Psychology. He seemed quite interested in increasing our Earthly knowledge. I certainly know much more than I had ever hoped to know of anything." "Yeah, you can pilot us to the Fenachrone system now without any trouble. You also absorbed some ethnology and kindred sciences. What d'you think--with Dunark and Urvan, do we know enough to go ahead or should we take a chance on holding things up while we get acquainted with some of the other peoples of these planets of the green system?" "Delay is dangerous, as our time is already short," Crane replied after a time. "We know enough, I believe; and furthermore, any additional assistance is problematical; in fact, it is more than doubtful. The Norlaminians have surveyed the system rather thoroughly, and no other planet seems to have inhabitants who have even approached the development attained here." "Right--that's the way I dope it, exactly. We'll wait until the gang assembles, then go over the top. In the meantime, I called you over to take a ride in this projector--it's a darb. I'd like to shoot for the Fenachrone system first, but I don't quite dare to." "Don't _dare_ to? You?" scoffed Margaret. "How come?" "Cancel the 'dare'--change it to 'prefer not to.' Why? Because while they can't work through a zone of force, some of their real scientists--and they have lots of them, not like the bull-headed soldier we captured--may well be able to detect a fifth-order ray--even if they can't work with them intelligently--and if they detected our ray, it'd put them on guard." "You are exactly right, Dick," agreed Crane. "And there speaks the Norlaminian physicist, and not my old and reckless playmate Richard Seaton." "Oh, I don't know--I told you I was getting timid as a mouse. But let's not sit here twiddling our thumbs--let's go places and do things. Whither away? I want a destination a good ways off, not something in our own back yard." "Go back home, of course, stupe," put in Dorothy, "do you have to be told every little thing?" "Sure--never thought of that," and Seaton, after a moment's rapid mental arithmetic, swung the great tube around, rapidly adjusted a few dials, and stepped down upon a pedal. There was a fleeting instant of unthinkable velocity; then they found themselves poised somewhere in space.