Only bo'sun Tug Skelly was idle as the _Lucifer_ neared the Pass. In the tiny cell underdeck, Tug accepted his enforced inactivity with the resignation of a martyr. But he learned from Andy, the galley-boy, that the _Lucifer's_ white coat lay still untouched, and that brought him some comfort. "There's things about spacin'," Tug told the boy, as he ate the food Andy had brought him, "that nobody learns in books. Don't make no mistake, Andy, edjacation is good--but it ain't everything. Nossir!" "Nuts," Andy remarked picking up the fast-emptied tray. "I've heard that the skipper is gonna have you examined in New York. Says you're bugs." Tug stared ahead of him and nodded with a long-suffering look. "People with real knowledge," he said slowly, "is always considered bugs, Andy. Sure. Look at Mad Old James Flaherty, the man who first reached Moon. And before him there was a feller named Gally Leo who told everybody the earth moved around the sun--like it does. Everybody thought they was bugs, until it turned out they was _geenyusses_!" "Yeh," Andy grunted unimpressed, "only you _are_ bugs." The galley-boy's simple but crushing logic left Tug without a reply. He merely growled contemptuously and watched Andy, as the boy leisurely gathered his utensils and exited from the cell. Alone, the big bo'sun shivered suddenly and sat motionless on his cot as if transfixed. It seemed to Tug that through the thick bulkhead before him a low, far-off wailing sound was coming--a sound just like the one Old Joshua MacLevy had described. By Tug's private reckoning, the _Lucifer_ was right at the Straits. And that wail could only be--! Despite the careful and costly precaution he had taken against the Witches of the Pass, Tug Skelly's eyes began to bulge. Up on the bridge, a few minutes before, Captain Chris Douglas also witnessed a peculiar thing. It was mate Pete Jackson, at the forward sight, who called his attention to it. Douglas reluctantly tore his gaze from the gleaming, many-dialed instrument panel before him, and answered the mate's summons. "A cloud," Jackson frowned. "Dead ahead." They were at the lips of the Straits; a few moments more and they would be inside. Captain Douglas glanced hurriedly at the plate. A vague and nebulous gray mist was swirling before the ship; but even as he watched it, it seemed to melt away and disappear. Douglas quickly volted up to maximum the ray-repellers and meteor-deflectors that lined the _Lucifer's_ hull. "Whatever's in the Straits," Chris Douglas said grimly, "is going to bounce right off our hull. The _Lucifer_ was made for heavy weather." "Sure thing, Capt'n," Pete Jackson said wistfully, "but I can't help wishing we were through already!" "We'll get through," Douglas said with more confidence than he actually felt. "The Pass can't be more than twenty-thousand kilos long. We'll be out the other side before you can whistle Home Sweet Home."