But they did not run out of time. At planet number four-hundred-something, Belle suddenly emitted a shriek--vocally as well as mentally. "Clee! Hold it! Here's something, I think!" "I'm sure there is, and I'm gladder to see you two people than can possibly be expressed." Belle whirled; so did Garlock. A man stood in the middle of the Main; a man shaped very much like Garlock, but with long, badly-tousled hair and a bushy wilderness of fiery-red whiskers. "Please excuse this intrusion, Admiral--or should it be plural? Improper address, I'm sure, but your joint tenure is a concept so new and so vast that I am not yet able to grasp it fully--but you are working at such high speed that I had to do something drastic. You will, I trust, remain here long enough to discuss certain matters with my wife and me?" "We'll be very glad to." "Thank you. I will return, then, more decorously, and bring her. One moment." He disappeared. "_Wife!_" Belle exclaimed, more than half in dismay. "They must be, then...." "Yeah." The thought of a wife did not bother Garlock at all. "Talk about _power!_ And _speed!_ To get all that stuff and 'port up here in the millisecond or so we had the screens open? Baby Doll, there's a guy who is what a Prime Operator _ought_ to be!" In less than a minute the man reappeared, accompanied by a woman who was very obviously pregnant--eight months or so. Like the man, she was dressed in tight-fitting coveralls. Her hair, however--it was a natural red, too--was cut to a uniform length of eight inches, and each hair individually stood out, perfectly straight and perfectly perpendicular to the element of the scalp from which it sprang. "Friends Belle and Clee of Tellus, I present Therea, my wife; and Alsyne, myself; of this planet Thaker. We have numbers, too, but they are never used among friends." Acknowledgments were made and a few minutes of conversation ensued, during which the two couples studied each other. "This looks mighty good to me," Garlock said then. "Shall we go screens half-down, Alsyne, and cry in each other's beer?" * * * In thirty seconds of flashing communication each became thoroughly informed. Those minds could send, and could receive, an incredibly vast amount of information in an incredibly brief space of time. "Your ship should work and doesn't," Garlock said. "Show me; in detail." Alsyne showed him. "Oh, I see. You didn't work out quite all the theory. It has to be activated. Like this...." Garlock showed Alsyne.