For but a brief instant he resisted. Then he yielded as her lips parted beneath his invitingly. His arms went around her and he cradled her close to him and he knew with sweet completeness that, alien mind or not, there was no question nor doubt about her responding to him. Minutes later she leaned back in his arms and chuckled at him. He grunted a wordless demand to explain. "Why," she said, still chuckling, "you'd have a terrible time explaining to any one of a hundred billion human beings that I am utterly alien and that this friendship of ours is strictly platonic and developed out of a desire for mutual desire for protection against our respective races." Carroll looked around. The streak of moonlight had moved. It was now casting a pale golden light on an easy chair. Draped across the easy chair back was a pale green negligee almost as intangible and diaphanous as the moonlight. Carroll blushed and remembered where he was--and also why he had come. "Rhine," he said. "You'll come with me?" "Of course," she told him. His suspicion returned vaguely. "Tell me," he pleaded, "Is it because you know that there is no return for you or--" "Sol is menaced," she replied simply. "Sol must be saved and you are the only man in the world that can do it. I want Sol saved." "But why?" he demanded. "Because," she replied. Carroll shook his head. Question and answer were pat. Human, alien, animal, vegetable or mineral--the same question and the same answer! Rhine chuckled again. "Beat it," she said. "But leave the teleport running. I'll be through as soon as I'm dressed." He nodded, arose and went through the teleport. Rhinegallis followed him in about ten minutes and once more they were in the laboratory of Carroll's Wisconsin home. CHAPTER XII _Negative Matter_ For an instant their gaze held. "Now," asked Carroll, "what is the Lawson Radiation?" "Should I know?" she queried by way of reply. "I think so." "Why?" "As an emissary, you should." She laughed. "I'm still giving no evidence, James. I cannot. I am human." He looked down at her, and the recollection of her kiss was strong. "There are times," he said ruminatively, "when you most certainly are!" She let her eyes drop. Then she raised them again. "I know very little about it," she told him. "And practically nothing but what you've told me. A lot about alien mathematics and sciences. I think that somewhere in the maze of data there will be the answer you seek." "And that," he replied, "may be either a chance statement based upon good prediction or the remark of an alien who knows where the body is hidden but will say nothing more than, 'Getting warmer'." "So what do we do?" she asked. "Shall we let this simmer down to the old unanswerable argument as to my mental status or shall we forget that and take to real investigation?"