The public address system came alive suddenly. "This is your Captain. All passengers will now prepare to leave the shuttle and board the Mars liner. Hand luggage should be made ready. All luggage stowed in the hold will be transferred without your attention. It has been a pleasure to have you aboard. Contact with the liner will be made in fifteen minutes." From the buzz around him Mel knew that this was as much a surprise to everyone else as it was to him, but it was greeted with excitement and without question. Even Alice was growing excited now and others crowded around them when it was discovered what they were viewing. "It looks _big_," said Alice in subdued voice. "Bigger than this ship by far." Mel moved away and let the others have his place before the screen. His sense of uneasiness increased as he contemplated the approach of that huge black ship. And he was convinced its color _was_ black, that it was not just the monotone of the view screen that made it so. Why should there be such a transfer of passengers in mid-space? The Martian Princess was certainly adequate to make the journey to Mars. Actually they were more than a third of the way there, already. He wasn't sure why he felt so certain something was amiss. Surely there was no possibility that the great Connemorra Lines would plan any procedure to the detriment of the more than five thousand passengers aboard the ship. His uneasiness was pretty stupid, he thought. But it wouldn't go away. He returned to the crowd clustered at the viewing screen and took Alice by the arm to draw her away. She looked quizzically at him. "This is the most exciting thing yet. I want to watch it." "We haven't got much time," Mel said. "We've got a lot of things to get in our suitcases. Let's go down to our stateroom." "Everyone else has to pack, too. There's no hurry." "Fifteen minutes, the Captain said. We don't want to be the last ones." Unwillingly, Alice followed. Their stateroom was a long way from the salon. The fifteen minutes were almost up by the time they reached it. * * * * * Mel closed the door to their room and put his hands on Alice's shoulders. He glanced about warily. "Alice--I don't want to go aboard that ship. There's something wrong about this whole thing. I don't know what it is, but we're not going aboard." Alice stared at him. "Have you lost your mind? After all our hopes and all our planning you don't want to go on to Mars?" Mel felt as if a wall had suddenly sprung up between them. He clutched Alice's shoulders desperately in his hands. "Alice--I don't think that ship out there is going to Mars. I know it sounds crazy, but please listen to me--we weren't told anything about the Martian Princess being merely a shuttle and that we'd transfer to another ship out here. No one was told. The Martian Princess is a space liner perfectly capable of going to Mars. There's no reason why such a huge ship should be used merely as a shuttle."