and asteroids.

Plato sat lost in thought. A planet whose habitation required a spacesuit was out of the question. Spacesuits his size were hard to get. The sensible thing would be to choose a place where the physical conditions, from gravity to atmospheric pressure and composition would tend to resemble those here on Venus or on Earth. But full of the most thrilling danger.

A boy's voice said, "Get up, you dopy philosopher. It's all over."

He raised his head and realized that the principal had stopped droning from the platform, that all the pupils were standing up to leave. He stood up and marched out.

When the signal for lights out came that night, Plato lay motionless for a time in the dark, his mind racing far too rapidly for him to think of sleep. He had plans to make. And after a time, when the dormitory quieted down, he went to the well of knowledge for inspiration. He slipped on his pair of goggles and threw the special switch he himself had made. The infra-red light flared on, invisible to any one in the room but himself, and he drew his book from its hiding place and resumed his reading.

The ship curvetted in space like a prancing steed. Panic-stricken by the four-dimensional space-warp in which he was trapped, Rogue Rogan stormed at his terrified followers. "By all the devils of the Coal Sack," he shouted, "the man doesn't live who can take me alive! You'll fight and die like men, you hen-hearted cowards...."

But they didn't die like men. In fact, they didn't die at all, and Plato permitted a slight sneer to play across his youthful features. Though he considered himself a passionate admirer of Comets Carter, even he felt dissatisfied with the story. When they were trapped, they were never really trapped. Comets Carter, sterling hero that he usually was, always showed weakness of intellect at the last moment, giving his deadly enemy an incredibly simple way out, one that Comets had, in his own incredibly simple way, overlooked.

Plato would never be guilty of such stupidity. He himself—and now he was Comets Carter, a quicker-thinker, smarter Carter, dealing out to Rogue Rogan a retribution many eons overdue. He was whistling through space at ten light-speeds. He was compressing light-centuries into a single second. He was—

He had just time to slip the goggles from his face before his eyes closed in sleep.

During the day, he continued to make his plans. There was a spaceport a hundred and forty miles away. At night, if the students poked their heads out of the window, they could see the distant ships as points of flame racing away into the darkness, like shooting stars in reverse. He would steal out of his room in the night, take a glider-train to the spaceport, and stow away. It would be as simple as that.

Of course, he needed money. He might travel at half fare, but even that would be expensive. And then there was the matter of food. He'd have to stay hidden until the spaceship took off and there was no turning back, and at the thought of crouching in some dark hold, motionless for hours, cramped, and with an empty stomach—

He wasn't going to starve himself. Even Comets Carter couldn't have gone without eating and got very far in his pursuit of Rogan. Plato would have to acquire money for flight, fare and food.

The book, of course, he couldn't think of selling. It was only a decicredit novel in the first place, and somewhat worn at that. And the other students would have laughed at him for reading it. But his infra-red bedside lamp and his goggles and the space-receptor radio he had built out of spare parts—those should bring him enough to travel and live on for a few days.

He made his first sale in the free time that evening, to a young squirt in the neighboring dormitory who had a passion akin to his own. He liked to listen to tales of high adventure, of the kind the radiocasters loved and the teachers in the school frowned