the shadows can't back enough or go forward enough to see the bottom. Is that what you mean? Because the high sides cut off their vision?"

Her wide smile and sparkling eyes were his answer.

Curt Wing, nursing a new set of bruises after plunging into a fifteen-foot hole and scrambling out after the shadow-things had finally floated by above them, led Pat and lanky George Packer at a loping run back to the rocket car.

It was almost nightfall and the fire and noise and stench of White City were far behind them by the time the speedy little car made it to the mountain retreat of the Council of Seven.During the ride, Curt Wing's sense of loss with Dead-Eye gone was softening, mingling with a gratitude deep and strong to the big, black-bearded giant. With a child's intuition for solving a problem simply, Dead-Eye and his Elizabeth had given man a chance to fight. "A chance, Curt?" Pat had overheard his whisper. Her hand on his arm was warm and vibrant. Curt clasped his fingers softly over hers. "Yes," he said, "if there is only time."

Jan Eliel, senior governor of the Council of Seven, pulled his red-rimmed eyes from the telecast when Curt Wing and Pat and Lt. Packer entered the consultation room. Old as his face had stamped him those few days ago when Wing had brought the fleet back, Jan Eliel now was a broken and bent caricature of the man who held the direction of a world in his hands. "Yes?" he asked, and the life was out of his voice. Then he saw the four miniature earths which still glinted proudly in a row across Wing's torn and burnt tunic's left breast. "Wing!" He rose from his seat on the telecast bench, hurried forward. "You've solved it!" Wing shook his bandaged head. "I don't know for sure, Governor, but I think we do have a way of stopping the shadows--if there's time." Jan Eliel ran a shaking hand through his white hair. "I don't know. Zhan Nekel's fleet is moving faster than we thought it would, and the fleet units you smashed at the Moon have been re-organized and now are swinging toward us. That, at the most, gives us two days--and I thought we'd have at least two weeks."

"But enough of that; what is the way to stop these terrible shadows?" Instead of answer, Wing asked: "How much of that obsolete Twentieth-century artillery is available?" Jan Eliel's old eyes widened. "You're mad, Curt Wing," he said wearily. "We've tried everything we have, the finest weapons, the heaviest atom machines, and we get nothing in return except our own power turned against us. Powder would be worse than useless. You can't 

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