He paused before the mirror, again. Glassless, he didn't feel like an Unterzuyder. Looking upon himself naked of face, he cringed. If only the whole thing were over. If only he were in the observatory under the greenly burning stars with-- Frantically he stopped that line of thought. He hauled out a sheaf of maps. He had come prepared. He had brought the duplico-camera, the film developing equipment, the pantograph, other odds and ends. He had a shelf-full of celestial mechanic manuals, as well as books on the more ordinary arithmetics. But he had had only one year of math. Somewhere along the line, he had outguessed his patriarch of a father and his matriarch of a mother: law had been the result. Well suited, he had felt at the time, to the trickery, the deceit, and the orneriness of the typical Unterzuyder mind! Anyway, he needed a slide-rule before he could tackle the equations. For the present, he would work out the date the map was made. Then it would be possible to discover X's present position. All that was necessary was, mathematically, to rotate the present-time position of the planets backward in time--clockwise, that is--until they coincided with map-position. The star-maps, the Emphemeris, and the Planet Catalogue should make that fairly simple. After an hour, his nerves began to quiver. He ran his hands distractedly through his awry blonde hair. He had the answer. And it was impossible. Except that it was correct. Apparently, the map had been drawn up in prehistoric times. 50,000 years ago! * * * * * After a virtually sleepless sleep-period, he went to breakfast. The settlers were in a happy chattering mood. Titan was only ten days away. Unterzuyder ate with the pressure of the Beechers' eyes on him. Nathaniel Beecher showed quiet menace on a face that ordinarily held grinning, shifty-eyed comraderie. Fayette had sullen, angry shadows under her eyes. Perhaps she was smarting under a humiliation that might make her do dangerous things. He had left her rather abruptly at the dance. Unterzuyder bit his lip. Perhaps he had not covered that situation as well as he might. Remorse was an emotion new to Unterzuyder. But then he had suffered some kind of mental upset when his glasses shattered under Fayette's heel. He could see as well as the next man, and consequently was beginning to have some shattering doubts about the wisdom of his immediate ancestors. And he _was_ a man. He gulped. All these were dangerous thoughts. He must continue to think like an Unterzuyder. Something devious. Something tricky. Something that would competently accomplish the task of fooling the Beechers, Bigger Bailes, and possibly Foshag! As he started out of the dining room, Beecher lunged after him, trailing a rocket-stream of cigar smoke.