whispered.

We went to the moonlit balcony. "Way down there on the pedestrian
arcade," I said.

"We'll soon fix that," Snap said.

Inside the room, we made connection with a newscaster's blaring voice.
Under cover of it we could talk. Snap gathered us close around him.

"Halsey has something important, and it's about this interstellar
invader. It all connects. His office paged me on a public mirror. I
happened to see it at Park-Circle 40. When I answered it, Halsey's man
wanted me to talk in code. I can't talk in code; I have enough to
worry about with the interplanetary helios. Then they sent me to an
official booth, where I got examined for positive legal
identification, and then they put me on the official split-wave
length. After all of which precautions I was told to be at Halsey's
office tonight at midnight, and told a few other things."

"What?" demanded Venza breathlessly.

"Only hints. Why take chances, by repeating them now?"

"You said he wants me, too?" I put in.

"Yes. You and Venza. We've got to get into his office secretly, by the
vacuum cylinders. We're to meet a man from his office at the Eighth
Postal switch-station."

"Venza?" Anita said sharply. "What in the universe can he want with
Venza? If she's going, I'm going too!"

Snap gazed at her and grinned. "That sounds like a logical deduction.
Naturally he must want you; that's why he said Venza."

"I'm going," Anita insisted.

We left half an hour before midnight. The girls were both in gray,
with long capes. We took the public monorail into the mid-Manhattan
section under the city roof of the business district, and into the
Eighth Postal switch-station where the sleek bronze cylinders came
tumbling out of the vacuum ports to be re-routed and dispatched again.

A man was on the lookout for us. "Daniel Dean and party?"

"Yes. We were ordered here."

The detective gazed at the girls and at me. "It was three, Dean."

"And now it's four," said Snap cheerfully. "The extra one is Miss
Anita Prince. Ever heard of her?"

He had indeed. "All right," he said. "If you and Haljan say so."

We were put into one of the oversized mail cylinders and routed
through the tubes like sacks of recorded letters; in ten minutes, with
a thump that knocked the breath out of all of us, we were in the
switch-rack of Halsey's outer office.

We clambered from the cylinder. Our guide led us down one of the
gloomy metal corridors. It echoed with our tread.