try to send some of the mob to China, and end up putting them in the Pacific, or maybe back in time."

"You've done enough tampering," Elvin declared. "I won't help you at all, unless you promise to leave everything as it is. You have to put yourselves in a position to help the world, not destroy it."

Elvin had injected just the right tone of nobility into his voice. The thirty adolescents consulted together in whispers. Then David asked,

"What do you want us to do, Mr. Elvin?"

"Let me act as your representative. I'll go to Washington and talk to responsible men in the government; I'll try to see the president himself. We should set up a scientific foundation for you, where you'll have the equipment you need and where your experiments won't do the rest of us any harm. But, if I'm to convince anybody, I'm going to have to do some tall talking. If you had one of the capsules left—"

"No, Mr. Elvin; they're all gone." David was not looking at him, and Elvin knew he was lying; but this was not the occasion to make an issue of it. Above everything else, he had to see to it that they had complete faith in his motives.

"Then one of your machines," he suggested. "I have to make them understand I'm not a crank."

"That sounds sensible. Which one, Mr. Elvin? The Degravitational Unit is the smallest, and it would do the least harm if—" David looked away again. "—if it got out of your hands."

"It isn't sensational enough. I rather wanted to show them this thing you used to transpose the bank and a square of jungle."

"Oh, no!" Marilyn broke in. "We couldn't—"

"Why that, Mr. Elvin?"

"I've already told you. It's the sort of thing that would attract the attention of the important officials immediately, because it could be converted so readily to a weapon of inestimable value."

There was a long silence, while the thirty youngsters looked from one to the other. It lengthened. Elvin felt a creeping edge of fear. David spoke at last,

"I think you're right, Mr. Elvin. We could show the world how to build a society adjusted to the needs of man; we could develop techniques for wiping out disease and mental disorders; we could show you how to conserve our resources, how to build 

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