"Oh. Incapacitated in some way, I suppose?" "Yes," I said, grateful for the screen's tactfulness, unintentional or not. "But you have taken over for him?" the screen pressed. "Yes," I said, swallowing. I didn't know what I was getting us into, things were moving too fast, but it seemed the merest sense to act cooperative. "I'm very glad of that," the screen said with something in its tone that made me feel funny--I guess it was sincerity. Then it said, "Is the--" and hesitated, and started again with "Are the blocks aboard?" I thought. Alice pointed at the stuff she dumped out of the other seat. I said. "There's a box with a thousand or so one-inch underweight steel cubes in it. Like a child's blocks, but with buttons in them. Alongside a box with a parachute." "That's what I mean," the screen said and somehow, maybe because whoever was talking was trying to hide it, I caught a note of great relief. "Look," the screen said, more rapidly now, "I don't know how much you know, but we may have to work very fast. You aren't going to be able to deliver the steel cubes to us directly. In fact you aren't going to be able to land in Atlantic Highlands at all. We're sieged in by planes and ground forces of Savannah Fortress. All our aircraft, such as haven't been destroyed, are pinned down. You're going to have to parachute the blocks to a point as near as possible to one of our ground parties that's made a sortie. We'll give you a signal. I hope it will be later--nearer here, that is--but it may be sooner. Do you know how to fight the plane you're in? Operate its armament?" "No," I said, wetting my lip. "Then that's the first thing I'd best teach you. Anything you see in the haze from now on will be from Savannah. You must shoot it down." CHAPTER 5 _And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night._ --Dover Beach, _by Matthew Arnold_ I am not going to try to describe point by point all that happened the next half hour because there was too much of it and it involved all three of us, sometimes doing different things at the same time, and although we were told a lot of things, we were seldom if ever told the why of them, and through it all was the constant impression that we were dealing with human beings (I almost left out the "human" and I'm still not absolutely sure whether I shouldn't) of vastly greater scope--and probably intelligence too--than ourselves. And that was just the _basic_ confusion, to give it a name. After a while the situation got more difficult, as I'll try to tell in due course. * * * * *