"So then we managed to get Visual, as soon as it got dark and the satellite orbited to position. We had a prearranged system of light signaling to be used in case both radios failed. In the telescopes we could even see the reflectors sitting right out on the hub, completed untouched. But we waited all night and we never got a thing. "Now dammit, it couldn't have been a meteor!" Dundon began to pace back and forth and both Web and the colonel followed him, absorbed. "The station is shaped like a doughnut, with solid bulkheads all around. How could one meteor go all around the damn thing, kill everybody in it, knock out two separate radios, and still not disturb the orbit. It would take a swarm, obviously, even if you forget about the orbit, but there would have to be holes. And we had a close up view of that station, as close as the house across the street, and there wasn't a hole to be seen. "Well, that night we sent up a rocket. Nothing big enough to show on radar had approached the station, or left it, so the only other solution was sabotage. One or more of the men we sent up had to be enemy agents, and they were obviously in control of the station. We had to make damn sure we got them out real quick. If necessary, we were set to blow up the station. And then it got worse." Dundon stopped, came over and sat down on the desk in front of Web, looking straight at him, watching his reaction. Web was frozen in his chair. "The rocket," said Dundon slowly, "never came back. It's still up there, floating along a few yards from the station. We can see it clearly. Too clearly, damn it. And the interesting part is this: nobody got out of the rocket. Nobody went into the satellite. The rocket went up and maneuvered itself into orbit alongside the satellite, and there it sits. We haven't been able to contact _it_ by radio either." II There was an icy sting lancing her arm, and then a million furry brushes began rubbing in her body. In a moment Ivy was totally paralyzed. Black shapes, dripping and lean, picked her up gently, conducted her through the low hanging trees toward another place where a black square loomed. The hands were impersonal, but never in her life had she been touched like this. She was absolutely terrified. A door was opened. She was laid upon a dark hard floor. In a moment the floor began to move and she realized through her terror that she was in a truck. But they left her alone. She lay for a long while upon the floor unable to think. She could not possibly understand this, the who or the why, because she had not dreamed about it, or ever even considered it.