Steve's return with the clean-up squad was made without mishap. It had been lonely work, for the half-dozen vortex-fighters swept the skies singly, roaming back and forth along the millions of miles across which the explosion had taken place. Sometimes they dropped into the realm below the speed of light to wipe out a bit of wispy cloud that looked as though it might be trouble brewing in the more firm structure of universal space. But mostly they raced back and forth at speeds that multiplied the velocity of light by many times. Nothing they saw reacted with their damping beams; nothing splashed against the nullifying bombs--and then, these, too, had to be destroyed lest they start a counter-vortex of their own. Steve had been too busy during the mop-up operations to pay attention to his own feelings. On the way home he had taken time to think, and then came that first recoiling in abject fear. Utter emptiness, absolute nothing, sheer black space closed down upon him with an inherent fear as strong as the inherent fear of falling. Man had a million of years of evolution on earth, with a constant of one gravity pulling him down onto something that his senses told him was flat, hard substantial, and everlasting. Of all that man could count upon, the earth was the one thing that he could consider unchanging. But here in space, with no solid planet below him to rest upon, to succor him and give him strength, Steve felt the abject panic of helplessness. The mighty power leashed in the room behind him was invisible; the surging drivers that hurled him along at a thousand times the speed of light operated without a murmur, a tick, or a sign of their positive power. The warp generator that folded space around him to create his own subspace, a feat of gravitic energy that not even Sol himself could perform, gave him no comfort. So Steve fought panic and was glad to see the first sight of Base One. He landed in his allotted space, climbed down out of his swamper shakily, and walked off the spaceport slowly, hoping that Lois Morehouse would be there. She was--standing at the edge of the landing area; she waved to him and Steve changed his course to go towards her. Lois was a good-looking girl of about twenty-three, a bit too healthy-looking to suit the present standard of fragile beauty. She glowed with health, could send a sizzling backhand, sink an iron shot, or ride water-skis with the best of them. She was the daughter of Commissioner Morehouse, the nominal top-brass of the Guardians, and as such was the eye of every single man in the squadron. Just why, in three or four days, Lois had found a raw rookie interesting had never occurred to Steve to question.