Then nothing. Without fuss, the silvery film ceased to be. One could look completely through the archway which was the matter-transmitter. One could see what was on the other side instead of a wavering, pulsating reflection of objects nearby. The last man to come through spoke unconcernedly over his shoulder, to someone he evidently believed just behind, but who was actually now separated from him by the abyss between island universes and some thousands of parsecs beyond. Nobody paid any attention to matter-transmitters ordinarily. They had been in use for ten thousand years. All the commerce of the First Galaxy now moved through them. Space-ships had become obsolete, and the little _Starshine_--which was the first handiwork of Man to cross the gulf to the Second Galaxy--had been a museum exhibit for nearly two hundred years before Kim Rendell smashed out of the museum in it, with Dona, and the two of them went roaming hopelessly among the ancient, decaying civilizations of man's first home in quest of a world in which they could live in freedom. But the matter-transmitter had ceased to operate. Five millions of human beings in the Second Galaxy were isolated from the First. Ades was the only planet in the home galaxy on which all men were criminals by definition, and hence were friendly to the people of the new settlements. Every single other planet--save the bewildered and almost manless planets which had been subject to Sinab--was a tyranny of one brutal variety or another. Every other planet regarded the men of Ades as outlaws, rebels, and criminals. The people of Terranova, therefore, were not cut off from the immigrants and supplies and the technical skills of Ades. They were necessarily isolated from the rest of the human race. And then, besides that, there were sixteen millions of people left on Ades, cut off from the hope that Terranova represented. Kim Rendell was called on immediately. The Colony Organizer of Terranova, himself, went in person to confer and to bewail. Kim Rendell was peacefully puttering with an unimportant small gadget when the Colony Organizer arrived. The house was something of a gem of polished plastic--Dona had designed it--and it stood on a hill with a view which faced the morning sun and the rising twin moons of Terranova. The atmosphere-flier descended, and Dona led the Organizer to the workshop in which Kim puttered. The Organizer had had half an hour in which to think of catastrophe. He was in a deplorable state when Kim looked up from the thing with which he was tinkering. "Enter and welcome," he said cheerfully in the formal greeting. "I'm only amusing myself. But you look disturbed."