stay healthy—'"

"What?"

"Jehoshaphat!" Pete groaned. "He don't even hear me!"

I stood up. "Okay, Pete!" I told him. "I heard you! Most of it, anyway. And I'll get myself spruced up. How close are we to the Heaviside?"

He heaved a high sigh of relief. "We'll hit it in half an hour, Jim!"

He grinned. "He's got to have a harness, Jim. I'll rig up a harness for him!"

CHAPTER IV

New York Kid

We made as good a landing as could be expected, considering the way my hands shook when I brought her down.

Right smack in the middle of La Guardia field! It's the biggest skyport in the System, and you can't miss it if you're a New York kid, with the lay of the land and the navigation lights burned into your brain from boyhood.

One of my own ancestors had brought a primitive skyplane down on that field during the Second World War, when the First Atomic Age was just starting.

They'd built the field up quite a bit in the intervening years—built it in revolving stations toward the Heaviside. You could make contact with the atomic clearance floats at sixty-five miles, and pick up a guiding beam from a rocket glider twenty miles above the grounded runways.

But you can't build the past out of existence. There were ghosts all over that field, grease monkeys in khaki jeans, and taking care of jet planes that had passed into limbo before the first space crate took off for Mars. At least, that's the way Pete seemed to feel, and I could sympathize with his screwball occultism.

I had a feeling that my own ancestor was down there, shading his eyes, watching me make a perfect twenty-point landing. His eyes shining with pride because I made such a good job of bringing her in. What he didn't know wouldn't hurt him.

I thought we'd have trouble with the clearance officials, but when I came striding out of the gravity port with the mirage pup clinging to my right shoulder I was greeted with nothing but merriment. Tickle a man's 

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