y_ he had been kicking
it--to assure himself that the wall was really there. Higgins was a man
in a nightmare but instead of pinching himself to see if he was awake,
he kicked the wall.

"Damn it!" the captain muttered. "Why did this have to happen to us?"

"Destiny," Craig mused. "Fate. How did the steamer I was on happen to
get bombed? How did I happen to be in the life-boat that wasn't
machine-gunned? How did we happen to get picked up? The only answer is
fate."

"That's a darned poor answer," Higgins said.

"It's the only answer," Craig replied. "Your dove is coming back."

"What? Have you gone wacky on me?" the startled captain answered.

Craig pointed to the sea. Barely visible on the horizon was a tiny dot.

"Oh, the plane," the captain said, watching the dot. It was moving
swiftly toward them.

Craig watched it, a frown on his face. "I thought you sent out only
_one_ plane," he said.

"That's right. I did send one."

"Well," Craig said slowly, "unless my eyes have gone bad, three planes
are coming back."

"What?--But that's impossible?" Higgins snatched a pair of glasses,
swiftly focused them on the plane. It was still only a dot in the sky.
Two smaller dots were following swiftly behind it.

"Maybe a couple of those lizard-birds are chasing it?" Craig hazarded.

"Nonsense!" the captain retorted. "It can fly rings around those things.
Those lizards are too slow to keep up with it. But there is something
following it."

Higgins kept the glasses to his eyes, straining to see the approaching
dots.

"If those things are planes," he muttered, and there was a note of
exultation in his voice, "then Michaelson, and his talk of space-time
faults, is nuts."

What Higgins meant was, that if the two dots were planes, then what had
happened to the Idaho had been an illusion of some kind. Planes could
exist only in a modern world. They were one of mankind's most recent
inventions.

The stubby-winged scouting plane from the ship was easily visible now.
It was driving hell for leather for the Idaho. Craig watched it with
growing apprehension.

"That pilot is running away from something," he said.

"Impossible!" Higgins snapped.

The plane swept nearer. It was flying at a low altitude. The two dots
were hard on its heels. They were overtaking it. And--they were no
longer dots.

"Planes!" Higgins shouted.

* * * * *

Craig kept silent. They were planes all right, but-