"Not dumb, Norman, no. Far from it. But I'm still working for my M. R. S. degree, and I haven't succeeded in snaring it yet. You'd be surprised at how cagy those officers got after a few of them had been captured. But they are just like any other hunted game, I suppose--the antelopes that survive get pretty wild, you know," she concluded, plaintively. "Well, that certainly is one tough break for a poor little girl," Brandon sympathized. "Quince, our little Nell, here, hasn't been done right by. I'm bashful and you're a woman-hater, but between us, some way, we've simply got to take steps." "You might take longer steps than you think," Verna laughed, her regular, white teeth and vivid coloring emphasized by her olive skin and her startling hair, black as Brandon's own. "Perhaps I would like a scientist better than an I-P officer, anyway. The more I think of it, the surer I am that Nadia Newton had the right idea. I believe that I'll catch me a physicist, too--either of you would do quite nicely, I think," and she studied the two men carefully. Westfall, the methodical and precise, had never been able to defend himself against Verna Pickering's badinage, but Brandon's ready tongue took up the challenge. "Verna, if you really decided to get any living man he wouldn't stand a chance in the world," he declared. "If you've already made up your mind that I'm your meat, I'll come down like Davy Crockett's coon. But if either of us will do, that'll give us each a fifty-fifty chance to escape your toils. What say we play a game of freeze-out to decide it?" "Fine, Norman! When shall we play?" "Oh, between Wednesday and Thursday, any week you say," and the two fenced on, banteringly but skilfully, with Westfall an appreciative and unembarrassed listener. Dinner over, Brandon and Westfall went back to the control room, where they found Stevens already seated at one of the master screens. "All x, Perce?" "All x. The observers report no registrations during the last two watches," and the three fell into discussion. Long they talked, studying every angle of the situation confronting them; until suddenly a speaker rattled furiously and an enormous, staring eye filled both master plates. Brandon's hand flashed to a switch, but the image disappeared even before he could establish the full-coverage ray screen. "I'm on the upper band--take the lower!" he snapped, but Stevens' projector was already in action. Trained minds all, they knew that some intelligence had traced them, and all realized that it was of the utmost importance to know what and where that intelligence was. Stevens found the probing frequency in his range and they flashed their own beam along it, encountering finally one of the monstrous Vorkulian fortresses, far from Jupiter and almost directly between them and the planet! Its wall screens were in operation, and no frequency at their command could penetrate that neutralizing blanket of vibrations.