"_Complete life cycle accelerated_," he read on with an eerie thrill. Then, abruptly universal scientific language. "_One year equals approximately twenty minutes_...." Remembering the quick growing grass, he read on with amazement. Then, abruptly the page became a cross-word puzzle of chemical symbols--it would take time to figure them out-- "I don't want to stay out there, Mr. Norman," a voice interrupted him. It was Dorothy standing in the door. "They're saying such bad words." * * * * * Norman grinned. "Point your gun at 'em to hush," he said. She grinned back, wrinkling her freckled nose and went outside again as he returned to his perusal of the symbols. They were a description of the elements in _something_, in a very unusual combination. Then slowly his eyes raised from the notebook again. Something deep in the shadows of his mind was trying to speak--not about the symbols--about something else. Something he had done? Something he had seen? Anyhow, Norman had been in enough bad spots to pay attention when that ghostly feeling sounded its alarm. Closing the notebook, he stepped across the pilot room and walked into the cabin, into a pistol's point blank explosion. The burst of flame seared Norman's left side. In the same second, as his hand came up to grab the gun, he realized the impossibility of getting it in time. Swart was too close. His hand dropped to his blistered side. Swart had him between death and surrender. "You're lucky," Swart's mustache wiggled as he spoke. "Get outside." Dazed at the unbelievably swift change of events, Norman obeyed. And as his foot hit the first step he knew what had called him from the notebook. Dorothy--_was no longer Dorothy_.... * * * * * She had been changed when she entered the ship a moment ago but he hadn't realized it. Staring at her full lips, her higher cheek bones, her snub nose that had straightened into a smooth profile--he forgot the sudden switch of gun authority until Swart jabbed him in the back. He went down the steps, his eyes on what had been the fifteen year old fugitive from a high school journalism class. Just out of pig-tails and giggles--Dorothy Gray was suddenly a woman. Her freckles were weirdly absent now, her blond hair was longer, her arms were more full--her legs--her--! Her white coveralls had shrunk on what was now a slim, lithe figure. But it was really Dorothy--the same pert face, the same kitten-like eyes, wide with an astonishment as great as his own. Sade's laughter broke Norman's blank stare. "Next time you tie up a man with an artificial arm make sure it isn't electric. It's easy to cause a short circuit when you're soaked with fire extinguisher fluid and when they short circuit they burn through rope very easily."