The girls had to belt down on their couches again because of the mounting speed at which they were returning to earth. Beth felt herself sinking deeply into her cushion once more and she grew breathless again. Minutes later, the ship stopped moving. Beth hurriedly unbuckled and ran over to the window. Through a break in the _paloverde_ thicket she could see her father’s station wagon parked at the roadside. She was back at the same place she had started from. “Thank goodness!” she breathed. Linnia walked with her to the outer door. “My father said he’d like to have met you,” Linnia said, “but he is too busy preparing for our blast off again. We must hurry because we are behind schedule. Before you leave, Beth, Father has said that you must promise never to speak a word about all this to anyone. I have searched your mind and I know you to be honest.” Beth was disappointed that she could not make known her fabulous journey, but she promised that she would never tell. Linnia waved her hand at the door and the electric eye opened it. “Goodbye, Beth,” Linnia said. “Goodbye, Linnia.” Beth heard the sighing of the door as it closed behind her. Suddenly her head began aching and she remembered the fall she had taken earlier. As she made her way out of the thicket, she began to have a queer feeling about her adventure. It made her wonder if perhaps she might not have been unconscious and imagined the whole thing. When she reached the car, her father said with some concern, “You were gone so long I started to come for you, Beth. What happened to your forehead?” She told him about her fall but did not mention the space ship. “Did you see something land a few minutes ago, Daddy?” Beth asked. Mr. Harrison grinned. “You mean, maybe, a Flying Saucer? No, I’m afraid I didn’t. Are you sure your imagination isn’t working overtime again, Beth?” As they were about to get into the car, Beth saw a dark object in the distance rise from the ground and move off into the deepening twilight. She was certain she did not imagine this. “You saw that, didn’t you, Daddy?” Beth asked. Mr. Harrison nodded. “Probably a hawk. Hmm, it looks like it’s heading right for the Evening Star, doesn’t it?” Beth gazed at the brilliant light of Sirius, gorgeously bright now with darkness closing in. “I wish I knew if it really was,” Beth murmured. _GIB TAKES A SPACE TEST_ Gib Bromfield was nine, and the thing he wanted to do most was to make a flight into space. A colony on the Moon had already been started for scientific research, and a huge man-made space platform circled the Earth once every twenty-four hours. “I want to go back to the Moon with you, Father,” Gib would plead every time Mr. Bromfield came home on a furlough. “I’m afraid you’re still a little young, Gib,” his father would reply. “Some day you will be able to go out into space with me, but not yet.”