s near Bluevale.
He'll need tools. I've got Bluevale crammed with cops and
plainclothesmen. That whole town is one big trap for that kid right now.
And the cops will shoot! Because we don't know what that kid will make.
If those kids had something that'll read your mind, made by grownups,
maybe he'll make something that'll burn it out! He looks human, but he
came out of space from Godknowswhere. Maybe he'll make deathrays!"

Soames swallowed. He knew what Fran would want to make. A mere local
projector of deathrays would be trivial beside the consequences of what
Fran was desperately resolved to do for his own people.

He heard himself say something relatively soothing.

"Maybe," he observed, "he's not that dangerous. You're worried about how
he passed those electrified fences. He used stilts. He knew about them.
They interested him. So he must have made a pair some seven or eight
feet high, and learned to walk on them. And then he simply went to a
tree near the fence, climbed up it and mounted the stilts, and then
walked to the fence and stepped over it. At his age he wouldn't realize
the danger. He'd do it and worm his way past watchers.... He could have
done that!"

The security officer swore.

"Yes! Dammit, yes! We should've watched him closer."

"I want to get back East," said Soames.

"When do you want to head East?" asked the officer.

"Now," said Soames. "We've got a project started that's more or less
linked to the kids' gadgets, even though we don't understand them. The
sooner I can get back, the better."

The security officer used the telephone. He found there was a plane due
to take off shortly. Soames could get passage on that plane, not to the
East, but to a military airfield outside Denver where a cab could be had
to take him to the commercial airport to make connections East.

Before starting on this trip he'd suspected that he might need to take
part in the search for Fran. He'd cleaned out his bank account and had
the cash in his pocket. In half an hour he was on board the outbound
plane.

In two hours Soames was in Denver. In three he was lost beyond all
discovery. He'd taken an inter-urban bus instead of a plane out of
Denver, and gotten off at a tiny town whose name he did not even notice.
During the night, with closed eyes and in a silent hotel room in the
little town, he pressed one end of the miniature device that Fran had
made and Gail had given him.

He felt a queer sensation. He