splendid isolation—and invariably based upon impossible ideas of anarchism."

The skimmercar shook itself like a wet terrier, dropped three hundred feet in a downdraft, recovered and glided in to a landing as gently as a nesting seabird. They were upon a verdant meadow.

Stephen looked around. "One could hardly call this splendid isolation," he remarked. "We are less than five minutes from the City, and I am sure that you will be reasonable enough to release me, now that I've brought you here, and allow me to return. I promise not to report this episode."

"Magnanimous of you," Turpan said, "but I'm afraid that what you ask is impossible."

"Then you refuse to let me go?"

"No, no. I merely point out that the cloud through which we arrived at this island was not, as you noted, a natural one. It had the ominous look of a Molein Field in the making. In other words, a space distortion barrier the size of which Earth has never seen."

And Stephen, looking around them, saw that the cloud had, indeed dispersed; and that in its place a vast curtain of shifting, rippling light had arisen, extending upward beyond sight and imagination, to the left and to the right, all around the circle of the horizon, shutting them in, shutting the rest of the universe out. Impenetrable. Indestructible.

"You knew of this," Stephen accused. "That's why you brought me here."

"I admit that there were rumors that such a project might be attempted today. The underworld has ears," Turpan said. "That we arrived just in time, however, was merely a circumstance. And even you, my stolid friend, must admit the beauty of the aurora of a Molein Field."

"We are lost," Stephen said, feeling stricken. "A distortion barrier endures forever."

"Fah!" the Bedchamber Assassin replied. "We have a green island for ourselves, which is much better, you'll agree, than being executed. And let me tell you, there are many security officials who ache to pump my twitching body full of the official, but deadly, muscarine. Besides, there is a colony here. Men and women. I intend to thrive."

But what of me! Stephen wanted to cry out. I have committed no crime, and I shall be lost away from my books and my work! However, he pulled himself together, and noted pedantically that the generation of a Molein 

 Prev. P 5/15 next