His eyes filled and his hands shook with the beauty and the wonder of it. The folder was like the one he had examined at Clelling-Herif's way-station, but with a difference; here colors and perspective had been rescaled to suit his familiar values, and the exposition was in beautifully lucid English. He fingered the round-trip coupons at the bottom of the last page. "To _see_ a place like that," he said reverently. "If I only had the nerve...." But he lacked the nerve, and knew it--how ever to explain it all to his Aunt Jessica?--and settled on the brochure as compensation in itself. It solved his difficulties with Aldhaferian story before he had finished the first two pages. The second planet of Aldhafera's major twin was precisely what he had needed for his space-rover's utopia, but with innovations wonderful to behold. Its dominant race owned a corner on pleasant privacy that put Swift's Laputans, with their magnetic flying island, to shame; this world was dotted with air-borne masses of tiny, gas-filled aerophytes which multiplied after the fashion of coral polyps to build personal estates of any size from a few acres to whole square miles. On these luxurious clouds, in sylvan groves and orchid gardens and dew-bright dells, lived a benevolent race of humanoids further advanced in the gentle art of keeping the peace with one another than humanity was ever likely to be. Below lay an ocean world dotted with green-and-coral archipelagoes, inhabited by a satisfactorily savage species of non-humanoids whose evolutionary line had worked the flotation principle into its own makeup. These monsters prowled fiercely upon the waters, following after the cloud islands in the perennial hope of discovering one low enough to plunder. The contrast, for Wesley's purpose, was perfect. His hero could land on a floating preserve, forcing it down by overload. There was occasion for a first-class battle with the water-walkers in which he could rescue his One Love at least twice, and a crashing denouement in which the argonaut atoned for his injury by blasting his ship away tenantless under robot control, so saving the day for all concerned and making it forever impossible to betray Her people to his own. Above all Wesley had at hand a wealth of detail, of color and atmosphere unarguably convincing because it was true, that offered him the idea-lode writers dream of. Ordinarily the most cautious of workmen, Wesley flung himself into such an orgy of creation that the Aldhaferian epic was reorganized, written and rewritten within three days. For Wesley, the wordage was tremendous. It ran to novelet length, and it was all good. "Damned good," said Wesley, who was more given to mailing his manuscripts in fear and trembling than in confidence. * * * * *