With his eyes fixed steadily on Margo, he spoke into the transmitter, "Captain Staker." Christy's strained and tearful voice came over the wire. "Bill, oh, Bill, we're getting terrible news here at the field. Tom's ship is losing oxygen!" "Yes, I know," he answered. "I just got the Ultra on it. I'll be right out, Christy." As he replaced the phone he looked at Margo with a grim, loathing expression. "A female trick as old as the universe and I had to fall for it. You and your innocent questions about our Quadrant trajectory! What a sucker I was!" He drew back his hand to slap her but decided against it. She was crying when he left. On the way to the field the familiar but forgotten black tide of fear rose up like a spectre once more to scatter his gathering ideas for helping Tom. Resigning himself to its power and pulling over to the roadside, he sat still, gripping the wheel. Yes, he told himself tensely, here I sit while Tom and the others drift in space needing help. The realization of their need slowly gave him a greater objective clarity than he had ever had before. He began to see himself now for what he was--a cringing weakling stripped naked of all manliness at the first show of evil. Though he perhaps had been worse than the average, this was the trouble with his whole security minded generation. They never dreamed great dreams like George Staker and his era which wrested atomic power from the treasure house of nature. No, this generation carefully followed safe, charted paths in the world of ideas. It had given up its freedom to a world of government controlled monopolies. And Tom, taking up the torch left by their creatively imaginative ancestor, was trying to recapture a small facet of that golden age. * * * * * With the dawning in him of Mid-Twentieth Century mind, Bill felt a thrilling sense of freedom as the black tide receded over the horizon of his inner world. He took a new firm grip on the wheel, and took off again at high speed. Christy was at the field office waiting outside. As he stepped out of the car, she threw her arms around him. "Oh, Bill, what can you do for Tom now?" He said gently, "I'll bring him back for you." She drew back her head to look at him incredulously, "You still think--! Oh, Bill, you foolish guy, you're the one I love, the one I've always loved." For a moment he searched her eyes and saw only a revelation of honest feeling. A surging gladness flooded through him, releasing an unconscious hard ball of tension inside. "Christy, what a knothead I've been!" He gathered her up to kiss her fervently. "So long, Christy. Old Staker was a piker at dreaming compared to what I'm dreaming for you and me!" The field men had the rocket fueled up and provisioned to go. "This'll be no picnic, but there's a prize out there if we want it bad enough. You'll all have a share in it, instead of handing it all over to the government. Are you with Tom and me?"