ver our boys are
sent."

"Oh." Stephanie was disappointed. "That won't get them back to us."

"No. You're right, it won't get them back to us. That isn't the idea
at all, for there is more than one way to skin a cat, my dear. The
Nowhere Commission will be studying conditions--"

[Illustration]

"How can they? I thought everything was so hush-hush, not even
Congress knew anything about it."

"That was the first big hurdle we have apparently overcome. Anyway,
they will be studying conditions with a view of determining if one
girl--just one, mind you--can embark on the Nowhere Journey as a pilot
study and--"

"But I thought they could make the journey only once every
seven-hundred-eighty days."

"Get Congress aroused and you can move mountains. It seems the expense
entailed in a trip at any but those times is generally prohibitive,
but when something special comes up--"

"It can be done! Mrs. Draper, how I love to talk with you!"

"See? There you go, my dear, counting your chickens. One girl will be
sent, if the study indicates she can take it. _One_ girl, Stephanie, and
only after a study. She'd merely be a pilot case. But afterwards.... Ah,
afterwards.... Perhaps someday soon qualified women will be able to join
their men in Nowhere."

"Mrs. Draper, I love you."

"Naturally, you will tell all this to prospective C.E.L. members. Now
we have something concrete to work with."

"I know. And I will, I will, Mrs. Draper. By the way, how are they
going to pick the girl, the one girl?"

"Don't count your chickens, for Heaven's sake! They haven't even
studied the situation yet. Well, I'll call you, my dear."

Stephanie hung up, dressed, went about her canvassing. She thought
happy thoughts all week.

* * * * *

"Shh! Quiet," cautioned Arkalion, leading the way down a flight of
heavy-duty plastic stairs.

"How do you know your way around here so well?"

"I said quiet."

It was not so much, Temple realized, that Arkalion was really afraid
of making noise. Rather, he did not want to answer questions.

Temple smiled in the semi-darkness, heard the steady drip-drip-drip of
water off somewhere to his left. Eons before the coming of man on this
stopover point to Nowhere, the Martian waters had retreated from the
planet's ancient surface and seeped underground to carve, slow drop by
drop, the caverns which honey-combed the planet. "You know your way
around so well, I'd swear you