An officer in uniform climbed out, waved his hand, and walked over to the transport. He climbed up the ladder and the pilot and co-pilot followed him. They took their places. The door closed. One by one, the jets chugged, then roared to life. The officer talked to the pilot and co-pilot for a moment. He came down the aisle toward Joe. Mike the midget regarded him suspiciously. The plane stirred. The newly arrived officer said pleasantly, "The Navy Department's sent me out here, Kenmore, to be briefed on what you know and to do a little briefing in turn." The transport plane turned clumsily and began to taxi down the runway. It jolted and bumped over the tarmac, then lifted, and Joe saw that the island was nearly all airfield. There were a few small buildings and distance-dwarfed hangars. Beyond the field proper there was a ring of white surf. That was all. The rest was ocean. "I haven't much briefing to do," admitted Joe. Then he looked at the briefcase the other man opened. It had sheets and sheets of paper in it--hundreds, it seemed. They were filled with questions. He'd be called on to find answers for most of them, and to admit he didn't know the answers to the rest. When he was through with this questioning, every possible useful fact he knew would be on file for future use. And now he wrily recognized that this was part payment for the efficiency and speed with which the Navy had trailed them on their landing, and for the use of a transport plane to take them back to the United States. "I'll try to answer what I can," he said cautiously. "But what're you to brief me about?" "That you're not back on Earth yet," said the officer curtly, pulling out the first sheaf of questions. "Officially you haven't even started back. Ostensibly you're still on the Platform." Joe blinked at him. "If your return were known," continued the lieutenant, "the public would want to make heroes of you. First space travelers, and so on. They'd want you on television--all of you--telling about your adventures and your return. Inevitably, what happened to your ship would leak out. And if the public knew you'd been waylaid and shot down there'd be demands that the government take violent action to avenge the attack. It'd be something like the tumult over the sinking of the _Maine_, or the _Lusitania_--or even Pearl Harbor. It's much better for your return to be a secret for now." Joe said wrily: "I don't think any of us want to be ridden around to have ticker-tape dumped on us. That part's all right. I'm sure the others will agree." "Good! One more difficulty. We had two space ships. Now we have none. Our most likely enemies haven't only been building rockets, they've got a space fleet coming along. Intelligence just found out they're nearly ready for trial trips. They've been yelling to high heaven that we were building a space fleet to conquer the world. We weren't. They were. And it looks very much as if they may have beaten us."