d back.

The both of them listened in on the conversation, on the grounds that
testing the quality of reception was a necessity. E McGinnis's pilot was
quite explicit.

"E McGinnis left orders that under no circumstances was he to be
disturbed," the pilot said. "He, E Gray and Mrs. Gray are in his cabin,
in conference."

"E Gray! Mrs. Gray!" the chairman exploded. "Impossible. How the devil
did they get into your ship?"

"Don't ask me," the pilot said in a tired voice. "I just work here. I'm
sitting here minding my own business. I see E McGinnis's door open. He
leans out the door and gives me my orders. I look past him and I see E
Gray and Mrs. Gray sitting in the room. Don't ask me how they got in
there. I don't know. But I do know this, I'm going to get myself a nice
quiet milk run to Saturn or someplace, soon as I get back to E.H.Q. If I
ever do get back."

"Now, now," the Board chairman soothed. "I'm sure there's a simple
explanation." Crewmen willing to pilot an E around the universe were
hard to find.

"Yeah? After what I've seen out here, I don't think I'd even want to
hear it," the pilot said, and without apology cut off the
communication.

28

Had the pilot been able, a moment later, to look into the E's stateroom
he would have seen still another visitor, another who had not entered
his ship by any normal means.

Attorney General Gunderson sat in a chair facing the two E's and Linda.
He seemed stunned, frozen into immobility. Only his eyes were alive,
darting here and there, unbelieving. There is limit to the number of
shocks the mind can withstand, and the series had come too fast for him
to adjust to them.

He too had picked up Junior E Gray as soon as he came through the arch
of the quartz outcropping on top of the mountain, the structure that
somehow interfered with their visoscope's ability to penetrate and see
what went on inside. He had been watching when Gray suddenly disappeared
from where he had been talking with the astronavigator. That had been a
shock, immediately followed by a greater one, when the ship's operator
had scanned the valley and found Gray talking with the E's pilot and the
chief of the colonists. There was no way in which the journey could have
been made that rapidly.

He was still watching when the village, the fields, the escape ship, the
E ship all had suddenly materialized before his eyes. And the people
were all clothed. It couldn't be done, but he had see