"Yeah. I'd get it myself but someone's got to drive this rig." "Don't mind." She stretched languorously and stood up, stretching high; pulling in her stomach and arching her back with her arms stretched high above her head. Scyth whistled inadvertently as her body went taut against the wisps of dazzling white that crossed her breasts and hips. She came along the cabin top, dropped into the cockpit, and disappeared into the cabin. She came out a moment later with a bottle which she opened and handed to Dusty. She took the wheel while he poured. They toasted one another. They sat side by side, their shoulders touching. "Nice," she said quietly. "You bet." "Nice, quiet and peaceful." Dusty addressed his glass and held it high. "Here's to the G. D. Space Patrol." "What are you supposed to be doing?" Dusty laughed. "I don't know. I'll find out when we get back. Gramer will have some flanged-up explanation right and ready for me." "You'd better hope that the G. D. Space Patrol doesn't catch you all at sea with me." "Phooey," he said. He pursed his lips and Barbara gave him a gentle peck that made Scyth's blood bubble slightly. "Phooey nothing," she said. "You'd be--er--cashiered. Imagine a member of The Space Patrol consorting with a woman." "What's good enough for pappy is good enough for me." Barbara chuckled knowingly. "Where are we heading, if it's of any importance?" "There's an island dead ahead. We might camp on the beach for the night. It's fine clean sand and--" "You mean that hummock over there?" "Hummock--humm--Good Lord!" * * * * * The hummock, dome of Scyth's spacecraft, began to rise out of the sea. Yard after yard it rose, coming upward glistening wet, the sea water running down in rivulets along its sleek flank. Ponderously and inexorably it rose with a steadiness of living rock. Yet it carried the air of feather-lightness, of an untold monster of sheer power held in easy leash. This was no rocket, straining against the formidable pull of gravity; this was a thing above material forces, its engines idling, its control in complete command. Without a second glimpse it was no spacecraft of Earth. Up out of the sea it rose until its hundred yards towered above them. The spacelock was just above the waterline when the rising stopped and the alien spacecraft stopped, rock-steady. It was poised on its inexplicable driving forces with the same confident ease that an elevator shows when poised on its cables at the twentieth floor of a building. It stood rock-still and let the ocean waves break against its sleek, polished metal flank. Whatever it was, Dusty did not like it.