thanks.

"Never mind the thanks," said McBride, "or we'll be into that original wrangle as to who owes who what kind of a favor. Where we sit out here in the lens, favors are not weighted and set down as an asset. Forget it. G'wan out there and get Steve Hammond—and do not forget for one minute I'm coming after you if you're gone more than thirty days. Seven hundred and twenty hours! Get me?"

"Sure thing," said Drake. "And, John, you're pretty swell."

"Nuts!"

"All right, 'Nuts!' But some day I'm going to settle down and be a good girl, and then you can believe me."

"That, I'll believe when I see it. Go on, Sandra, go out and get Steve."

"I'll get Steve," promised Sandra. "Oh, but definitely."

"Well, good luck."

"Thanks."

The space lock closed, and the men retreated inside of the Station's air lock. The gigantic doors swung open, letting a huge puff of air out into space. Then the Lady Luck lifted gracefully for all of her tons of mass, and wafted out through the opened door. It was a dead-center passage, one that could be made only with a master pilot running the board personally.

Then she was gone. Halfway around the lens she would have to go before Sirius came into a safe line of flight. Sandra was taking no more chances on contacting the surface of that mighty space-warp that focused Sol on Pluto.

McBride wondered: Has Sandra learned her lesson?

One week passed. One week, filled to the very brim with all of those routine things that make life full of wonder—as to whether there isn't something better in the hereafter. The sheer millions of miles of gravitic-induced space-warp refracted Sol's light endlessly and perfectly to make for Pluto a synthetic sun that sported a dozen darting points. On Pluto, men lived and worked and pursued happiness, and the valuable ore came up from the ground in the Styx Valley and created the need for Pluto and the lens. Over Mephisto, the smelters cast their glow against the sky, which the inhabitants of Hell always 

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