nurse. Gone were the glasses, the mousy clothing, and the flat heels. From pedicure to hair-do and from hide to handbag. Ava Longacre was as changed as her personality.

And where Maculay had leaned against the bar, regaling a couple of women with idle chatter, Ava sat and watched four dazzled males vie against one another for the privilege of a dance, a smile, the purchase of a corsage or a drink—or the spacecraft itself.

She enjoyed it, but she remained a bit aloof; she had a job on her hands. She knew where she was going, and exactly how to find Cliff Maculay.

Alone in his office at night, while the Evening Star was starting the hike to Venus, Doctor Hanson sat thinking. He was piecing it together; and it was like playing with a jigsaw puzzle that had three-quarters of the pieces missing. He never would get the completed picture; it just took too many years of a man's life in study and application to finish the job. All he could do was to fit the meager pieces in where he thought they might fit, and then try to ignore the blank spaces that he could not possibly reconstruct.

At midnight, Hanson took to the telephone and called California.

He heard the operator say: "Chicago is calling Doctor Rober."

The switchboard girl at the far end asked: "Who is calling, please?"

"Doctor Jay Hanson."

"Doctor Rober is busy at the moment; may I have him call you back?"

Hanson roared: "I know he's busy. Tell him it's Jay Hanson and see what happens."

A moment later there came a grumpy voice: "Hullo. What's so infernal important?"

"Steve? This is Jay."

"That's what the gal said; it better be important."

"To hell with your precious telescope, Steve; I want some information."

"You'd think we had nothing to do but cast horoscopes," growled the astronomer. "Or answer damned fool questions about the end of the world."

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