"I don't get it. I don't understand this business at all. First the Department of Agriculture extends an urgent letter of invitation to a completely forgotten man out there in the Never-Never land. Then almost on the heels of the letter the government sends a plane. I would have been glad to mail to the Department samples of "Ant-termes Pacificus" sufficient for most scientific purposes if they needed them for experiments in termite control; that would have been the simple and the sensible thing to do. But no, they want everything I have; you fellows drop out of the sky with a sort of habeas corpus and a whole wrecking crew. You disturb the lives of my species, which took me ten years to breed; you pack up their mounds lock, stock and barrel. And then you drop me at some place I never even heard about--Cephalon. What is this Cephalon, anyway? If the place had any connotations to entomology, I would have known about it...." * * * * * The flight engineer glanced at the irritated scientist curiously and sympathetically: "If you don't know, I couldn't tell you what it's all about myself, I'm sure," he said slowly. "Cephalon--Cephalon is a place alright, but it doesn't show on the map. Sort of a Shangri-la, if you know what I mean." This cryptic statement failed to have a calming effect on Lee. "Nonsense," he frowned. "If it is an inhabited place it must be on the map and if it isn't on the map the place doesn't exist." "Look here," the flight engineer pointed through the window to the horizon ahead. "What do you think this is, doctor, a mirage?" Lee stared at the apparition which swiftly materialized out of the ground haze at the plane's supersonic speed. "It _does_ look like a mirage," he said judiciously. "Is that Cephalon?" The engineer nodded. "Prettiest little town in the U. S. for my money. Ideal airport, too. Rather unusual though--I mean the architecture. Take a good look while we're circling around for the come-in signal." Pretty and unusual were hardly the words for it, Lee thought, as he gazed in admiration. Below, Cephalon spread like a visionary's dream of a far-away future blended with a far-away past. Along wide, palm shaded avenues the flat-roofed terraced houses fanned out into the desert. Style elements of ancient Peru and Mexico were blended together with the latest advances of technology, such as the rectangular sheets of water which covered and cooled the roofs. The business center, dotted with helicopter landing fields on top of the pyramidal buildings, was reminiscent of the classic Babylon and Nineveh. At the center of the man-made oasis a huge fortress-like structure sprawled and towered like a seven-pointed star. Even so, for all its impressiveness of masonry, the lush green of its parks, the bursts of color from its hanging gardens, made Cephalon resemble one enormous flower bed.