nt on. "He and Charlie had
figured another destination of opportunity--Mercury, the planet nearest
the sun, everlasting frozen night on one side, eternal, zinc-melting
sunshine on the other. But there's the fringe zone between the two--the
Twilight Zone. If you can live under stellene, you've got a better place
there than Mars might have been. Colonists are going there, to quit the
Earth, to get away from it all. Two-and-Two was about to leave for
Mercury, when I last spoke to him. By now he's probably almost there.
And even under the most favorable conditions, Mercury is hard to
beam--too much solar magnetic interference."

"That poor sap," Nelsen gruffed.

"It probably isn't that bad, anymore," Hines commented. "Sometime I
might go to Mercury, myself--when I get good and sick of sitting on my
tail, here--when I always was a man of action! Mercury does have
possibilities--plenty of solar power, certainly; plenty of frozen
atmosphere on the dark face. Interesting, Frank... Oh, hell, I
forgot--there's a letter here for you. And a package. Just arrived...
I'll scram, now. Got to go down to the quays. Hold the fort, here, will
you?"

Gimp Hines grinned as he left.

Nelsen was glad to be alone. The lonesomeness of the Big Vacuum was
getting grimed into him. When he saw the return name and address on the
package, and the two hundred-ten dollar postage sticker, he thought,
_Cripes--that poor kid--what did I start?_ Then the awful wave of
nostalgia for Jarviston, Minnesota, hit him, as he fumbled to open the
microfilmed letter capsule, and put it in the viewer.

"Hello, Frank--it has to be that, doesn't it, and not Mr. Nelsen, since
you've sent me this miraculous bracelet--which I don't dare wear very
much, since I don't want to lose an arm to some international--or even
interstellar--jewel thief! It makes me feel like the Queen of
Something--certainly not Serene, since it implies calmness and repose,
which I certainly don't feel--no offense to our Miss Sands, whom I
admire enormously. In a very small way I am repaying to you in kind--an
item which I made, myself, and which I know that some spacemen use
inside their Archers. You see, we are all informed in details. Paul,
Otto, Chippie Potter and his dog, and other characters whom you won't
remember, send their best greetings. Oh, I've got Stardust fever, too,
but I'll yield to my folks' wishes and wait, and learn a profession that
will be of some use Out There. May you w