At precisely that moment he knew beyond a doubt that those waiting jaws were illusion in form only. An atomic duplicator does not have to chew its intake. It merely dissolves the atomic bonds with the rays that flash between its power plates on either side of the disruption platform. The waiting mouth and teeth were mere symbols in Jerry's mind of what was about to occur. They were unreal--but they could be fatal. * * * * * He shut his eyes, shoved backward with his feet, and thought of Carol as he'd first glimpsed her. When he opened his eyes once more, she was standing before him in her ballroom gown again, and the band was just beginning to play their song once more. "Jerry," she said, taking his arm. "Dance with me." "No. We're in danger here. Come on, I'll get your coat. We've got to go away quickly." A spark of alarm showed briefly in her eyes. Then she nodded wordlessly and hurried up the marble staircase with him to the lobby. Jerry got her coat from the check-room--a marvelous silvery fur that covered her from neck to waist--and then they were heading out into the fog together. "Good evening to you, sir," said the doorman, eyes and buttons bright. Jerry grunted and led Carol off down the street into the fog. "Where are we going?" she asked, breathlessly trying to keep pace. "Away, I hope," he said. Even their movement from the ballroom could be sheer illusion. Jerry tried moving from the club entrance in the exact reverse of the motion in which he'd first approached it, trying to achieve the real doorway that led from the experimental room into the antiseptic hospital corridor where Burgess waited. But the fog continued to be fog. It would not take on the form of that intangible gray shimmering that guarded the entrance to Anthony Mawson's megalomaniac universe. "If I could only see where--" he began. Then every tendril of fog was gone. Before him lay the cold blackness of outer space, pinpointed with hard, unwinking stars. Jerry recoiled from the viewplate, shaken, and turned around to see Carol. Her eyes were wide and startled as she glanced about at the metal confines of the control cabin. Jerry had just time enough to think how incongruous she looked in her fur jacket and long blueblack gown ... and then she was clothed in the neat gray uniform of the WASP, trim short-sleeved shirt and sharply creased shorts. "Jerry," said Carol. She slipped her arm through his, staring at the infinite stars in the viewplate. "What are we running from?" He tried to think, but could not remember. "There's--some danger behind us. We have to get away from it, Carol. It means complete destruction if we're caught." Carol stared helplessly at the stars in the viewplate. "But where are we running to?" * * * * *