"My dear sir, you can't order cyclotrons without making people suspicious. If you so much as mention an atom today, you accuse yourself." "Then we all stand accused here and now." "I'm not denying that." "What a terrible thing it is that the most precious part of our existence should be the most hated." "You speak of--" "The atom." The speaker gazed before him meditatively, then sighed and turned into the shadowy depths of the spaceship. I said: "All right, that's enough. Cut into the moment just before the black-out occurs. Take it inside the ship." The integrators quickened and the sound track began its shrill babble again. Quick scenes of the interior of the mother ship flickered across the crystal. A control chamber, roofed with a transparent dome passed repeatedly before us, with the darting figures of men snapping through it. At last the Integrator fixed on that chamber and stopped. The scene was frozen into a still-photograph--a tableau of half a dozen half-naked men poised over the controls, heads tilted back to look through the dome. Yarr said: "It doesn't take long. Watch closely." I said: "Shoot." * * * * * The scene came to life with a blurp. "--ready on the tension screens?" "Ready, sir." "Power checked?" "Checked and ready, sir." "Stand by, all. Time?" "Two minutes to go." "Good--" The graybeard in the center of the chamber paced with hands clasped behind him, very much like a captain on his bridge. Clearly through the sound mechanism came the thuds of his steps and the background hum of waiting mechanism. The graybeard said: "Time?" "One minute forty seconds." "Gentlemen: In these brief moments I should like to thank you all for your splendid assistance. I speak not so much of your technical work, which speaks for itself, but of your willingness to exile yourselves and even incriminate yourselves along with me--Time?" "One twenty-five." "It is a sad thing that our work which is intended to grant the greatest boon imaginable to the Universe should have been driven into secrecy. Limitless power is so vast a concept that even I cannot speculate on the future it will bring to our worlds. In a few minutes, after we have succeeded, all of us will be universal heroes. Now, before our work is done, I want all of you to know that to me you are already heroes--Time?" "One ten." "And now, a warning. When we have set up our spacial partition membrane and begun the osmotic transfer of energy from hyperspace to our own there may be effects which I have been unable to predict. Raw energy pervading our space may also pervade our nervous systems and engender various unforeseen conditions. Do not be alarmed. Keep well in mind the fact that the change cannot be anything but for the better--Time?" "Fifty seconds."