accomplished what they had failed to do in the previous 15 years. Just 4 days and 21 hours after Forster had first talked to General Morganson at the Pentagon, a treaty was signed ending the world atomic weapons race.

And it had all happened, was over and done, before the people of the globe could realize what was happening, before they could rise in mass panic in the face of the incredible unknown.

Almost immediately after the announcement, radio and radar communications suddenly returned to normal, and reports of the mysterious fogs ceased.

Back at the Center, as he walked down the floodlit ramp of the heliport towards his car, Forster found himself thinking of the experimental work on the dream state which he had performed as a graduate student. He knew that a dream which might take half an hour to recount took only a fraction of a second to occur in the sub-conscious of the sleeper as he awoke.

It was the same way with the events of the last five days; already details were becoming fuzzy and blurred as though they had happened five years ago.

He opened the car door, and the soft glow of the dome light filled the interior.

Then he saw again the neat rectangular discoloration on the seat covers, and the jolt back to reality was almost a physical thing. Relief, overwhelming, flooded over him.

He looked up into the indigo-velvet sky. Above him was the enormous triangle formed by Deneb, Vega, and Altair. Framed within it were a thousand other dimmer stars, but all, he knew, far, far bigger than the speck of solidified gases called Earth.

Somewhere out there, living, thinking, breathing was Bentley.

"Good night," Forster said out loud.

And somehow, he was sure he wasn't talking into thin air.

THE END

Transcriber's Note:

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