"What did it feel like, Belle?" Lola asked, eagerly. "You winced like he was drilling teeth and struck a couple of nerves."

"Uh-uh. More like being stretched all out of shape. Like having a child, maybe, in a small way. Let's go, Clee!"

They joined up and went.

"Ha, _there_ you are, you cantankerous little fabrication of nothings!"

Belle said aloud, in a low, throaty, gloating voice. "Take _that_--and _that_! And now behave yourself. If you don't, mama spank--but _good_!"

Then, breaking connection, "Thanks a million, Clee; you're tall, solid gold. Do you want to run some more tests, to see which of us is the intergalactic transporter?"

"Not unless you do."

"Who, me? I'll be tickled to death not to; just like I'd swallowed an ostrich feather. Back to Tellus, then?"

"Tellus, here we come," Garlock said. "Jim, what are the Tellurian figures for exactly five hundred miles up?"

"I'll punch 'em--got 'em in my head." James did so. "Shall Brownie and I set our blocks?"

"No," Belle said. "Nothing can interfere with us now."

"Ready." Garlock sat down in the pilot's seat. "Cl.u.s.ter 'round, chum."

Belle leaned against the back of the chair and put both arms around Garlock's neck. "I'm cl.u.s.tered."

"The spot we're shooting at is exactly over the exact center of the middle blast-pit at Port Gunther. In sync?"

"To a skillionth of a whillionth of a microphase. I'm _exactly_ on and locked. Shoot."

"Now, you sheet-iron bucket of nuts and bolts, _jump_!" and Garlock snapped the red switch.

Earth lay beneath them. So did Port Gunther.

"Hu-u-u-uh!" Garlock's huge sigh held much more of relief than of triumph.

"They did it! We're home!" Lola shrieked; and, breaking into unashamed and unrestrained tears, went into her husband's extended arms.

"Cry ahead, sweet. I'd bawl myself if Garlock wasn't looking. Maybe I will, anyway," James said. Then, extending his right arm to Garlock and to Belle, "I was scared to death you couldn't make it except by back tracking. Good going, you two Primes," but his thoughts said vastly more than his words.

Belle's eyes, too, were wet; Garlock's own were not quite dry.

"You weren't as sure as you looked, then, that we could do it the hard way," Belle said. "All inside, I was one quivering ma.s.s of jelly."

"Afterward, you mean. You were solid as Gibraltar when I fired the charge. You're the kind of woman a man wants with him when the going's tough. Slide around here a little, so I can get hold of you."

Garlock released Belle--finally--and turned to the pilot, who was just pulling a data-sheet from Compy the Computer. "How far did we miss target, Jim?"

James held up his right hand, thumb and forefinger forming a circle.

"You're one point eight seven inches high, and off center point five three inches to the north northeast by east. I hereby award each of you the bronze medal of Marksman First. Shall I take her down now or do you want to check in from here first?"

"Neither ... I think. What do you think, Belle?"

"Right. Not until you-know-what."

"Check. Until we decide whether or not to let them know just yet that we can handle the ship. If we do, how many of our taped reports we turn in and how many we toss down the chute."

"I get it!" James exclaimed, with a spreading grin. "_That_, my dear people, is something I never expected to live long enough to see--our straight-laced Doctor Garlock applying the b.u.g.g.e.r Factor to a research problem!"

"I prefer the term 'Monk's Coefficient,' myself," Garlock said, "from the standpoint of mathematical rigor."

"At Polytech we called it 'Finagle's Formula'," Belle commented. "The most widely applicable operator known."

"Have you three lost your minds?" Lola demanded. "That's nothing to joke about--you wouldn't destroy official reports! All that astronomy and anthropology that n.o.body ever even dreamed of before? You _couldn't_!

Not _possibly_!"

"Each of us knows just as well as you do how much data we have, exactly how new and startling it is; but we've thought ahead farther than you have. None of us likes the idea of destroying it a bit better than you do. We won't, either, without your full, unreserved, wholehearted consent, nor without your fixed, iron-clad, unshakable determination never to reveal any least bit of it."

"That language is far too strong for me. I'd like to be able to go along with you, but on those terms, I simply can't."

"I think you can, when you've thought it through. You've met Alonzo P.

Ferber, haven't you? Read him?"

"One glimpse; that was all I could stand. He pawed me mentally and wanted to paw me physically, the first time I ever saw him."

"Check. So I'm going to ask you two questions, which you may answer as an anthropologist, as Lola Montandon, as Mrs. James James James the Ninth, as a member of our team, or as any other character you choose to a.s.sume. Remembering that Ferber's a Gunther First--and pretends to be an Operator whenever he can get away with it--should he, or anyone like him, _ever_ be allowed to visit Hodell? Second question: if there is any possible way for him to get there, can he be made to stay away?"

"Oh ... Grand Lady Neldine and that perfectly stunning Grand Lady Lemphi they picked out for Jim ... they're such _nice_ people ... and the Gunther genes...." As Lola thought on, her expressive face showed a variety of conflicting emotions before it hardened into decision. "The answer to both questions--the only possible answer--is no. I subscribe; on the exact terms you stipulated. And you don't believe, Clee, that my thesis had anything to do with my holding out at first?"

"Certainly I don't. Besides...."

"What thesis?" Belle asked.

"For my Ph.D. in anthropology. I thought I had it made, but it just went down the chute. And I don't know if any of you realize just how nearly impossible it is to make a really worthwhile original contribution to science in that field."

"As I started to tell you, Brownie," Garlock said, "I don't think you've lost a thing. There's a bigger and better one coming up."

"_What_?"

"Sh-h-h-h," Belle stage-whispered. "He's got a theory--such a weirdie that he won't talk about it to anybody."

"It isn't a theory yet--at least, not ripe enough to pick--but it's something more than a hunch," Garlock said.

"But what could _possibly_ make as good a thesis as those extra-galactic tapes?" Lola wailed. "They would have made my thesis a summer breeze."