Miss Green seemed either less sure of that, or less confident that the rescue would be easily effected. Some minutes later, she pointed to a different section of the sky, where the yellow circle--or another very like it--was now moving slowly about. Presently it vanished again, and when it reappeared for the second time, it was accompanied by two others. Meanwhile, Miss Green might have been transmitting some understanding of the nature of her doubts to Mel, because the ghostly vagrants now gave him an immediate impression of insubstantiality: not space-spanning luminous globes but pictured shapes projected on the air. His theory of interplanetary travelers became suddenly much less probable. In the next few moments, the concept he was struggling with abruptly completed itself in his mind, so abruptly, in fact, that there was no longer any question that it had originated with Miss Green. The rescue craft Mel thought he was seeing actually were just that. But the pictures in the sky were only signals to possible survivors that help was approaching. The globes themselves were elsewhere, groping their way blindly and dangerously through strange dimensions that had nothing to do with the ones Mel knew. And they were still, in some manner his imagination did not even attempt to clarify, very, very "far away." * * * * * "I was wondering what you'd done with the bird box," Maria de Guesgne explained. "It's not there in the bush any more!" Mel told her annoyedly that the bird box had been damaged by the storm, and so he'd thrown it into the incinerator. "Well," Maria said vaguely, "that's too bad." Her handsome dark eyes were shifting about his living room meanwhile, not at all vaguely. Mel had left the apartment door partly open, and she had walked right in on her way to the market. When she wasn't drinking or working herself up to a bout of creative painting, which seemed to put her into a tranced sort of condition, Maria was a highly observant young woman. The question was now how to get her out of the apartment again before she observed more than he wanted her to. "How does it happen you're not at work on Monday afternoon?" she inquired, and set her shopping bag down on the armchair. Keeping one eye on the kitchenette door, Mel explained about his vacation. Miss Green hadn't been in sight for almost an hour; but he wasn't at all sure she mightn't come out to inspect the visitor, and the thought of Maria's probable reactions was unnerving. "Two weeks?" Maria repeated chattily. "It'll be fun having you around for two weeks--unless you're going off to spend your vacation somewhere else. Are you?" "No," Mel said. "I'm staying here--" And at that moment, Miss Green came in through the kitchenette door. At least, Mel assumed it was Miss Green. All he actually saw was a faint blur of motion. It went through the living room, accompanied by a high-pitched hum, and vanished behind Maria.