y and I stayed, we were still a little shaky over our narrow
escape. We stood on the sidewalk by the car for a moment trying to
decide whether to go up to my room, to Mallory's or down the street a
block to Jud's house. We compromised on Pokey's Malt Shop at the corner
and finally settled with a sigh of relief in a booth way at the back.

With a round of black coffee in front of us we settled down to business.
Nothing less than a space ship would do. Here in our hands, or rather
out in my car, we had the secret of untold power. With that little hunk
of tellecarbon and a certain amount of concentration on it we could
travel to Mars and back like nothing flat. During summer vacation for
the last two years Mallory and I had worked in the shipyards and gained
practical experience in welding, boilermaking and sheetmetal work. The
two of us could build a small space ship by ourselves. All that would be
necessary would be to make it airtight, with enough insulation to keep
our heat from radiating into space. The rest of the problem involved
only ordering stuff from catalogues. Carbon dioxide absorbers, tanks of
oxygen, food, various instruments, and so on. That would be Jud's work.

Just as we were finishing our coffees, Lahoma Rice, the secretary in the
Dean's office, came in and discovered us. Mallory and I had been more or
less competing for her affections for some time. It was the only thing
that had ever come between us in our years at college together and the
years since then. We both tried to keep it on a friendly basis, but
underneath it had become pretty serious.

When we saw her coming Jud whispered quickly, "Keep quiet about all this
in front of her. We don't want anybody to know about our amazing
discovery at this early date."

Coming over, she slid into the booth beside Jud and flashed a smile at
me and Mallory.

"Well, what's all the hush-hush about?"

"Oh, nothing," answered Mallory, looking completely unconcerned.

"Ha, ha. That's right. Absolutely nothing at all," I echoed, to make it
more convincing. But somehow it didn't sound quite as convincing as I
had intended. Even I noticed that at once, and a secret dangled before
the nose of a woman. It awoke in her an undefeatable urge. Before we
could rally our forces she was in on the secret and determined to go
with us when we went to Mars.

"But Lahoma," Mallory desperately pleaded, "you don't need to come
along. I'll be all right."

"I wasn't thinking