as almost as hard as rock. Nevertheless, it was the most
comfortable bed either of them had ever had. When they were ready to go
to sleep, Temple said:

"Drat it, those Omans _still_ want to come in and sleep with us. In the
room, I mean. And they suffer so. They're simply _radiating_ silent
suffering and oh-so-submissive reproach. Shall we let 'em come in?"

"That's strictly up to you, sweetheart. It always has been."

"I know. I thought they'd quit it sometime, but I guess they never will.
I _still_ want an illusion of privacy at times, even though they know
all about everything that goes on. But we might let 'em in now, just
while we sleep, and throw 'em out again as soon as we wake up in the
morning?"

"You're the boss." Without additional invitation the four Omans came in
and arranged themselves neatly on the floor, on all four sides of the
bed. Temple had barely time to cuddle up against Hilton, and he to put
his arm closely around her, before they both dropped into profound and
dreamless sleep.

* * * * *

At eight hours next morning all the specialists met at the new Hall of
Records.

This building, an exact duplicate of the old one, was located on a mesa
in the foothills southwest of the natatorium, in a luxuriant grove at
sight of which Karns stopped and began to laugh.

"I thought I'd seen everything," he remarked. "But yellow pine, spruce,
tamarack, apples, oaks, palms, oranges, cedars, joshua trees and
_cactus_--just to name a few--all growing on the same quarter-section of
land?"

"Just everything anybody wants, is all," Hilton said. "But are they
really growing? Or just straight synthetics? Lane--Kathy--this is your
dish."

"Not so fast, Jarve; give us a chance, _please_!" Kathryn, now Mrs. Lane
Saunders, pleaded. She shook her spectacular head. "We don't see how any
stable indigenous life can have developed at all, unless ..."

"Unless what? Natural shielding?" Hilton asked, and Kathy eyed her
husband.

"Right," Saunders said. "The earliest life-forms must have developed a
shield before they could evolve and stabilize. Hence, whatever it is
that is in our skins was not a triumph of Masters' science. They took it
from Nature."

"Oh? Oh!" These were two of Sandra's most expressive monosyllables,
followed by a third. "Oh. Could be, at that. But how _could_ ... no,
cancel that."

"You'd better cancel it, Sandy. Give us a couple of months, and _maybe_
we can