looking. But great. Dr. Schaeffer in his underground laboratory in the City.

"You aren't going to try to reach a star, are you?" young Ed asked.

Uncle Mitch shook his head. "No. I won't wander so far off." He laughed. "But in a way I'll be going farther, I suppose. Though don't imagine that I mean time or hyper-dimensional travel. It's something simpler. But it's to a place where no one can journey exactly as a human being. I can't tell you much more. Because I don't want other people to try to dig too much out of you. But I want to look at things from a new angle. And from very close up, you might say. Maybe I'm trying to hide from danger, Eddie. Some. But the bigger reason is that I want to go on learning and exploring. Maybe my being a small man means something, too."

Mitchell Prell ended with another light laugh. He put the mask in his pocket and snapped a large suitcase shut. When he spoke again it was on a slightly different tack: "You probably won't see me for a while, Eddie. About your father, words just aren't any good at all. Maybe I'll ache over his end even harder than you. If anybody asks you questions about me, tell all you know. Don't try to hide anything for my sake. They'll pry it out of you anyway. And they'll only know what I want them to know.

"Your mother may get a letter in a few days asking you both to report to the City. If that letter comes, see that she conforms to its request. It will also mean that I've delivered the results of my experiments with vitaplasm, as far as they've gone, into the proper hands and have probably succeeded in getting away into space. I hope that you and I and everybody make it to the Big Future, Eddie. That's all I have to say. Unless you care to remember a word that may crop up again—android."

Mitchell Prell grinned reassuringly at his nephew and moved to put on his mask.

"You don't want to say goodbye to Mom," Eddie stated, half angrily.

Prell's look of concern deepened. His thin face was touched by a fleeting tenderness and worry. Part of it was surely for his sister. Then, mostly to himself, he muttered, "There's greater magnificence to come—if we can grow past the infancy of man; if new knowledge and old wild impulses don't do us all to death first." He chuckled sheepishly. "You say goodbye for me, Eddie," he urged. "I hate things like that."

Mitchell Prell was gone then, out into the weird new night. Grimly, already half a man, young Ed Dukas watched him go, bitterness and grief, hatred and love, mixed up inside him. But the common denominator between himself and his uncle was the need for that future of stars and wonder and legendary betterment.

"It will happen," he promised within himself. For a second his body was taut with dread. He had already experienced the fury that knowledge made possible, and he could sense the potential of long silence beyond such things—no one left, anywhere! He wondered if, because life could go on and on now, it was more precious and death more terrible.

Fifteen minutes after his uncle's departure a spy beam was put into operation from a mile distance. It covered the rooms of the Dukas house and the grounds around it. The principle of the device was almost ancient. The reflection of electro-magnetic waves. On a small screen in a distant room the plan of a house and its furnishings was outlined in a pale green glow. Shadowy blobs shifted with the movements of its occupants, robot and human. Only two people were there now.

Eddie Dukas guessed that the spy beam was there, though its irregularly changing wave length would have made it almost impossible to identify, among the waves from many sources used for communication.

Early on the third morning after the lunar blowup the police came to the house. They were very gentle. There was even a policewoman to ask the questions.

Eddie's mother was cool and wary.

"Have you information as to the whereabouts of Dr. Mitchell Prell, Mrs. Dukas?" she was asked. "We know that the last Moon rocket landed with him aboard."

Before she could lie Eddie blurted, "He was here all that day. He's gone now. He didn't make his destination very clear."

Eileen Dukas's eyes widened with panic and surprise. She had expected Eddie to be more discreet.

"You have no right to question my son!" she stated coldly.

"Mrs. Dukas," she was informed, "when there is an investigation of the deaths of two hundred million people, we have more than the right to question anybody."

Young Ed was scared. But he felt some of the hero-impulse. Or the desire to follow faithfully the instructions of his idol, Uncle Mitch.

"If you psych my memory, what little I know will come clearer than if I just told it," he challenged.

This was done forthwith, out in the police car parked in the street. When the helmet of the apparatus was removed from Eddie's head, the police had certain comments of Mitchell Prell's to study. Possibly they could puzzle out some of their hidden meaning. But this couldn't have satisfied them very much.

The next day the letter Prell had mentioned arrived. At least it could be assumed that it was the one. Uncle Mitch had managed to make one step of his purpose anyway! Under the heading of "Vital Section, Schaeffer Laboratories," it said:

Mrs. Dukas:

Will you kindly report at your earliest convenience to the above section. This is of greatest importance. Please bring your son.

Sincerely,

Dr. M. Bart

Ed was both cold with tension and hot with eagerness. The following day he and his mother were in the battered City. Fire had scarred it. A boiling tidal wave had washed over portions of it. But the great building over the many subterranean levels of the Schaeffer Labs had stood firm. Quakes had not broken it down.

An elevator took them below, to that steel- and lead- and concrete-shielded place which might have resisted for a while even a noval outburst of the sun. They were requested to lie down on something like sensipsych couches. A voice—maybe Dr. Bart's—spoke to them from a swift-gathering dream: "Think about Jack Dukas. Your husband. Your father. Things he said. His manner of speech. His expressions, gestures, temperament, likes and dislikes, hobbies, jokes, skills. The people that he knew. Their faces and mannerisms. As many of them as possible will be contacted and psyched like this, too. Think of his memories told to you. Think of everything ... everything ... everything...."

For Eileen Dukas it must have been much the same as for her son. Pearly haze seemed to float inside Eddie's mind. Like a million bits of ancient news clippings always in motion, his recollections of his father seemed to burst in a thousand ever-shifting fragments within his brain. He felt an awful compulsion to recall. It sapped his strength until all consciousness faded away. Yet before this happened he knew that the probing would go on and on.

The next thing he knew he was sitting groggily in a pneumatic tube train, with his mother, all but exhausted, too, leaning against him. Almost as an afterthought, their own minds and bodies had been "recorded" there at the laboratory. They seldom exchanged questions or speculations afterward about what had happened to them. It had been a dream. Let it be a dream.

II

Life had become hard enough for Eileen Dukas and her son. While most people treated them all right—from some they even received exaggerated kindness—there was, very often, a certain disturbing expression in eyes that looked at them.

Les Payten, Eddie's friend said once, "I promise, Ed. No more talk about your uncle from me. Finished, see? You've had enough."

Eddie suppressed the anger which sprang from loyalty to Mitchell Prell, for he understood Les Payten's good intentions.

At regular intervals there were police visits at the