chin. After a moment he whipped his hand from his face.

"You're an educated man, Jim," he said. "I'm not! If you tell me we're headin' straight for Saturn, I won't call you a liar!"

"You won't?"

"No, Jim. Say a guy brings you a watch. The hands go in the wrong direction, the tickin's so loud it drives you nuts. 'Buddy,' he says, 'if you want to know what time it isn't, this watch will tell you.'

"Well, say you've got to know the time, say your life depends on it. What do you do, Jim? Lift him up by his seat and toss him out the door? Shucks, no! You listen while he talks. You ask him to take the watch apart and show you what makes it tick."

"Fine!" I said. "So I'm the man with the watch! I put Saturn outside the viewpane just to torture you!"

He looked so miserable I felt sorry for him. "I didn't mean it that way, Jim," he apologized. "But I'm plumb scared! Somethin's happenin' to space! Somethin' ghastly awful! You must have some idea what's causin' it!"

"Don't kid yourself!" I told him. "A wild guess isn't an idea."

"Let me be the judge o' that, son!"

"Well—all right. Maybe we're seeing Saturn as a magnified image—through some kind of magnifying space drift. A big, floating lens in space, made up of refractive particles spread out in a cloud. A lens with more magnifying power than the five-hundred inch! It isn't as haywire as it sounds, if that's any comfort to you!"

"But no pilot's ever seen anything like that, Jim!" Pete protested, with unanswerable logic.

He tapped his brow. "It could be in here, Jim! That's what I'm afraid of! A sickness of the mind—"

"Don't start that!" I warned, striking my knee with my fist. "Don't even think it!"

My voice was getting out of control. I was yelling at him, and there was no reason for it.

He had every right to his opinion.

"What are we goin' to do, Jim?"

"Check up first!" I snapped. "If I have to use every instrument on the ship—"

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