The Escape
Astounding Science Fiction – May 1935
(1935)*
John W. Campbell, Jr
(as by Don A. Stuart)

The story of two human beings in a world of walking machines.

-

	Aies Marlan permitted a slight scowl to creep across her face as she straightened from her posed attitude for a moment. Across the grass court she could see her father's laboratory and that most unwelcome adjunct, that behemoth of tactics condescension, the unbearable, insufferable Bruce Randall. Bruce was looking out of his window toward her with his usual, idiotic grin, that condescending grin with which he watched all her work.

	Aies looked across the studio toward Paul Treray. He had not noticed her looking up. He was very busy with his little knives and inductance softeners, working at the silver plastium he was so deftly shaping. The scowl relaxed to a little tonic. Paul was so busy with his work, modeling her and the little laboratory bench she had set up, as a scientist at work. Paul had made second place in the competition in 2017; this year he might get the coveted first with one of his little figures—

	Abruptly a gesture and a deep scowl of anger caste over his clean-lined face.

	"What's the matter. Paul?" she asked.

	"It—it just won't be you. It's still—metal I can't make it you—human."

	Aies straightened her back and stretched. "Well. I'm not sorry. That means no more to-day, and, frankly, my back is beginning to say the same thing." She smiled teasingly at him "I wish you'd start working on seated figures at ease. Do you enjoy breaking my back?

	"At any rate—I do want to finish that projector. Besides modeling as a scientist. I like to try to be one."

	"You are. Aies." said Paul, his face changing to a sunny smile as quickly as it had scowled before. "You are, but you are so much more interesting as a human—but the metal just won't see it. It wants to be atoms and protons and molecules, I suppose you'd say.

	"I still don't see how any one as thoroughly and abstractedly a physicist as your father, and a woman as completely and distractedly a chemist as your mother could have had a daughter so different."

	"Paul, you are prejudiced. And remember, please. I am very much interested in science, myself." She laughed at them as she took his hands in hers, "Besides—they didn't spend most of their thoughtless youth with one so foolishly unscientific as you. Perhaps you acted as a sort of balance to me."

	"Bah—trying to analyze the situation? Foolish. Results are all that count. I do not know how to model a figure: I cannot give you the angles, the degree of sphericity of the human head—the radius of curvature of a forearm. Only one man ever attempted to reduce art to mathematics—and that was Leonardo da Vinci He thought he did. But his own students said he didn't, because his formulas didn't work. Results are all—"

	"Bah." he said abruptly. Aies was looking with a long face at the little figure which Treray declared "would not be human."

	"Results." whispered Aies softly to herself almost as she walked slowly, apparently thoughtful, out of the door. "I should say the main trouble was that the ratio between the size of the bead to the over-all height of the body was slightly too great."

	"Get out!" cried Treray in mock anger. But partly real anger, because he suddenly realized that that ratio was not quite what it should be. But he didn't like to call it a "ratio;" he didn't like the word.

	Aies walked toward her father's laboratory, smiling to herself. Gradually the smile departed to be replaced by a look of determination and coldly repellent dignity. Bruce Randall would be in the way. Aies made up her-mind to dislike him the day he came to the house, though not consciously, because she had a pretty good idea why he bad been sent to "assist" her father in his research on the new accumulator.

	Aies was twenty sears, twelve months, and twenty-seven days on the final and thirteenth month of her twenty-first year now. Automatically at twenty-one she knew the Population Control Commission would call her in to "decide" what type of man she should marry. And Aies had not the slightest desire to have it decided for her. What she disliked most was that when they had decided they would, with the aid of the conditioning and control division make her decide the same thing. They'd make her like their decision.

-

	That was the rankling thing. She wouldn't have will power enough to disagree with them. They'd make her actually like whoever they picked by their conditioning and control.

	It was bad enough to have some one else make your decisions for you—but to be psychologically manipulated to like it!

	And she knew blamed well that they'd already just about decided. Bruce Randall was the decision. Well, they'd find she'd take a good bit of conditioning to like him. His face was wrinkled like an old man's; he thought at the rate of about two inches a year, and he spent ten minutes thinking up the answer to a simple question; and that grin, that insufferable, unbearable, awful, condescending grin!

	She walked briskly into the laboratory. Her father, she knew, was down at the physics conference this afternoon, seeking some hints on the accumulator connections for use in the plane he had designed. He needed aerodynamic aid for maximum efficiency of weight distribution, the accumulator was perfected; Aies herself was using it in a little device she had perfected.

	But Bruce wasn't out. He looked up with his slow smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes. Little glints of humor tacked in his eyes. "Hello. Aies, Paul's chisel slip? He looked peeved when you left." he said in his slow, deep voice.

	"No. Paul gets along quite nicely, thank you. Have you finished that accumulator bank dad told you to hook up?"

	"NI 3? I guess I haven't. I've been making a cape for myself.'

	Aies was piqued. She didn't recognize that NI 3 formula. "I didn't know you were a tailor," she said, going on toward her bench.

	Aies was an excellent mechanician and on a miniature lathe she was spinning out an aluminum tube. She paid no attention to Bruce's smiling work and his occasional glances. In some half hour, she had the little tube finished, and fitted into her apparatus. Then she started on some delicate wiring, her attention so concentrated on it she did not notice as Brace left the laboratory, and scarcely noticed as night fell outside.

	There was a grim little smile on her face as she finished, and held in her hand a device the size of an overgrown .45 revolver, connected with a long, flexible lead to an accumulator on the bench. With a quick tread she went to the next room where she had been keeping some pets—ten guinea pigs and a monkey.

	She brought the monkey into the laboratory on a leash, the chattering little animal hopping and running about her, squealing and scolding. She released him as she picked up her newly-made device. The monkey dashed off across the room turning half a dozen somersaults as he went—and fell fiat on his little pot-belly, and skidded ten feet across the floor as a single blue-green glow surrounded the weapon for an instant: His miniature hands lay limp and bedraggled, the prehensile, looped tail dragged mournfully.

	"But under the bright gas-glow lights his bright, beady eyes flickered and wabbled about, terror in them. His breath came regularly and evenly. His lips curled back, his mouth and tongue shaped for a scream—and no sound came!

	Aies smiled softly to herself as she gathered up the relaxed little figure and carried him to his cage. Then she sat down beside it with a notebook and a stop watch. Presently the little primate gave a hoarse, gasping gurgle. Instantly some of the terror in his eyes fled, and excitement took its place. Aies smiled at him, spoke to him, and patted his furry back. Then a shoulder twitched. Aies made another note. In forty-five minutes a tremendously scared and immensely excited monkey chattered and threw himself about his cage.

	There was a very decided look of determination and decision about Aies' face as she turned out the laboratory lights. She went down to the kitchenette and prepared a little something to ea.t Then she went across to her father's laboratory. There was a ship there, a beautiful thing, with every tiniest brace and protuberance faired into the streamlined hull. The wings were of the newest, variable-pitch design. The propeller of the noiseless type, more highly efficient because it wasted no energy in useless sound.

	It was so simple in line and form it was a frozen symphony of speed. To look at it brought the whistle of extreme speed in one's ears. To see it made one rise on one's toes as though to fly. Aies looked at it with a smile and a nod.

	Then she went over to Treray's studio. He was reading and sketching on a sheet of paper, a picture of the character described in the book, his favorite pastime.

	"Ah, hello. Aies." He rose and went toward her as she looked around the-door at him. "Come in. I thought you were working to-night."

	"I did, too. But I finished what I had on hand. And I'm feeling jangled. Bruce Randall sticks in my teeth."

	Paul laughed. "What's he done now?"

	"Nothing." said Aies explosively. "He wouldn't do anything but grin anyway. It's what the commission may do. I know that geologic cross section has been stuck there by the commission. I hate him."

	Paul smiled at her. "Now—but how about later?"

	"Then I'll hate myself. They'll change me—and that will make life more miserable. You have to live with yourself every second of the day, of the month, of your whole life. And—it makes me crawl to think of it! Loving somebody—and knowing that they decided coldly and scientifically that A and B were a desirable combination, so they took A and made A and B combine. Knowing that somebody decided it was desirable—and made you like it—decided and made you—oh—I can't say what I mean. Two parts of you—one hopelessly and helplessly doing what was scientifically decided you should, and knowing with the rest of you that you didn't decide that at all.

	"It makes me crawl. And I'll have to be with myself forever—so far as I know, forever. And know that.

	"Well—I won't."

	Paul's smooth face looked up suddenly, startled. "Won't! But what can you—"

	Her voice was intense. "I won't. And I think I know how I won't, too. Dot Walden is in the statistics and records office, and I'll be able to know—I'll know—and I'll—-

	"I won't, anyway." She sat silent and tense.

	Paul walked over to her, and took her hands in his. "Aies, can I help you any? I think it is hopeless. You can't go elsewhere than in this country without a passport, and in this country the commission's ratings and classifications board would simply act to find you.

	"But if I can help you—"

	Aies looked at him. A queer little timid look. "You can. Paul—but why, or why, in the name of Heaven did our forefathers ever permit this awful system to start? Why? Why?"

	"They were practical—they were scientific!" exploded Paul There were more people in insane asylums than in schools. The average man had the intelligence of a good thirteen-year-old. So they turned scientific, and eliminated nature's system of normal choosing—and decided to choose scientifically." He put bitterness and sarcasm into his words.

	"They rearranged the world to suit themselves. And they doomed some to live and their children to be the 'hewers of wood and bearers of water' for the rest of the world, with never a chance of having children better than they, because they were scientifically, correctly mated. And they doomed every one to live and marry as was decided for them. I—I must presently marry some woman I have never seen, never known, Some one who is no more to me than that tree out there. But that is scientific. That is correct. Because I am an artist, and she will be an artist, so our children must be artists.

	"Bah—their science will breed art out of the world. Their science has no conception of humanity. It sees it all in terms of A's and B's that will make Cs or—"

	"Hell. Hell on earth. Art is not science. It is above science; it is comprehension without knowing. It is a true result without the logic, the barren, stupid logic.

	"Look how stupid those scientists were. We, we of art, drew beautiful forms, forms beautiful in simplicity, and right, eminently right in beauty of line and mass and form. Now, now at last the scientists make similar forms and cackle forth to the world. 'See—see what we have done. We have found the perfect streamline shape.' Years, centuries before them, we knew those forms were perfect.

	"Do you know the Golden Mean? It is the ratio of two to three. That is the shape, the ratio for most perfect beauty. Now they have discovered that it the ratio of diameter to length for high-flying, swift ships.

	"And they, they try to tell art how to mate for art's best good.

	"Aies—Aies—they do not know. Art is above science; it is the comprehension of the whole without the knowing of the parts; it has results, ends without means." His heat of passionate denunciation cooled suddenly to a tenderness, his voice fell to softer tones.

	"Aies I love you—I know you—you are the one for me. They cannot know. They would make you marry some scientist, some heavy, thick-headed, slow-moving scientist. They cannot see the light and the air in you—the swift race of your very thoughts. 

	"Aies—they are so stupid. They mean so well, and they are so pitiful in their stupidity. Playing with lives, with loves and hates, with things they do not know. Only love can know what love is for.

	"Why was I made so to love you, were I not meant to? They are so—" His voice trailed off, his head sank. "So inexorable. I—I am sorry. Aies. I should not say that."

	A small, cool hand lifted his face. Aies was smiling down at him, her eyes dear and bright with something that perhaps art comprehended, but it could not find the means to put on canvas, where atoms and protons and strange chromatic groupings must be given the impossible task of translating a radiation to a mere bit of oil.

	"I don't want any slow-witted scientist, Paul." said Aies very, very softly. "I don't want any great elephant with a face like the crinkled hide of a hippopotamus, and a grin like a jackal. I want you. Paul.  I want you."

-

	Slowly Paul rose to his feet. Slowly Aies rose not quite as far—but far enough. He felt solid and hard and supple against her as he held her to him. And Aies was quite sure her plans were right, right in every possible way.

	She told him her plan then. It was simple. It was—scientific. It was based on one of the rules science itself laid down. "When theory meets with fact contrary to the theory, then the theory is wrong, not the fact." It was very simple. The theory of eugenic mating could not, by the law, controvert the fact of a marriage already existent.

	"We could not hide forever. We could not escape permanently for their board would find us. But that is not necessary. Just a month—two—three. Theory—their theory, of eugenics—can not break fact. The fact of our love, Paul." she said. "I will hear from Dot Walden hours before they make any active move. And then—dad's plane, so new even the patrol hasn't one—will be able to leave anything and everything. Lost—somewhere among the one hundred and forty-seven millions of people of the United States. They will find us—but not soon." She paused. "And I hate one other thing, too." There was a steel of determination in her voice as she said it.

	She left soon, for it was growing late. And she went home determined.

	She saw Dot Walden that day, and spoke to her, and she did a number of other errands. She was quite busy, and away from the house all that day. And that evening she spent talking and planning with Paul Treray. It was ten thirty when she returned home. And found that Dot Walden was calling her.

	"You are right," said Dot's image on the screen. "They decided and sent the official decision through this evening. I've been trying to get you since five thirty. By the way—there's something special about it. It's Bruce Randall all right—and congratulations—he certainly is a fine man—but it's special some way. I haven't been in this office very long, and Miss Cartwright was out when it came through. It's on a blue form, instead of the usual white. I don't know what that means—"

	Neither did Aies, but she had some faint suspicion. She knew that her father had been questioned by one of the commissioners while he was at the physics association the day before—and she had a suspicion. The suspicion was right. The blue forms meant action.

	Aies acted, too. She called Paul Treray at once. Her voice was calm,  tense actually, and her brain was clear and determined. Treray was ready. In ten minutes his things were ready, in five she joined him, and together, with their light packs, they went toward the shop where the new plane rested. Aies opened the door as Paul stumbled in the darkness. Automatically the gas tubes glowed into light as he crossed the capacitance plate.

	Aies' things slipped to the floor in dull surprise. The plane was half dismantled. The powerful motor hung with dangling cables from a crane. The propeller lay on the floor to one side. The accumulator stacks were racked in the storage shelves. Her father had spent the day installing the improvement he intended!

	Aies' body whipped erect abruptly, her voice suddenly hard and sharp. "By all the laws m existence, and out of existence. I'll break that law if I die trying. Come on!"

	In an instant her hat was off, her coat flying, loose and floppy, and grimly she set to work.

	It was surprising how much such a really trained woman could accomplish in an hour. By eleven forty-five she had the motor back in place, the prop stepped, and the racks replaced. The accumulators were going in. The plane still looked half dismantled, but actually lacked only the fairing and the Venturi cowlings, and a little tuning and rebalancing of circuits. Three quarters of an hour would see that done—"

	"We'd be farther away if we'd taken the standard plane you have." said Paul uncertainly. "There is still so much to be done—"

	"We'd have been grounded before we left town." snapped Aies. "Give me that secondary accumulator bank there." She snapped it into place, put the nut on the bolt, and over the whir of the electric wrench added. "I'll bet dollars to a stripped bolt they've got a blanket order out to the patrol to ground me. And probably that darned Bruce Randall, too. I just know I'm right in guessing what the blue form means and—"

-

	The whir of the wrench stopped. Bet the whirring sound didn't; it kept on, slightly heavier in tone, and growing loader. Aies snapped erect, brushed a streak of grease across her forehead, and a stray hair out of her eyes.

	"Paul—the patrol Yes, we'd have been grounded." She was busy wiping face and hands on clean waste. Then she slipped the accumulator block of her new projector into her pocket, slipped the lead up her sleeve, and a rubber band held it in place. The projector was almost hidden in her folded hand as she stepped to the door. The patrol plane was just settling softly to the grass court. Paul stepped back out of sight into the shop.

	"Hello—what of interest brings you here?" asked Aies as she stepped out, smiling.

	A broadly smiling patrolman leaned out of his window. "You an' Dan Cupid. I guess, sweetheart. With the sanction and suggestion of the commission. Will you take a bit of a ride along with me?"

	Aies started back a step. "The commission—to-night? There—there must be some mistake. Why—I haven't received any notice—I—I'm not ready at all—I can't go to-night!"

	The patrolman looked puzzled, looked at his order form, then smiled at her again. "It does sound screwy, but unless you have somebody else's face by mistake. I guess I'll have to take you along back. The order's kinda plain, honey."

	"But—but I just can't—"

	"Well, why not come along and tell 'em about it I just ain't a commissioner and I can't do a darned thing about orders except carry them through. Step in and come along, won't you?" The patrolman was getting confused and worried.

	Aies wasn't. She stepped into the plane. "Oh, Paul!" she called a moment later. "Paul, come and help me get them out, will you?" Paul stepped into the plane, and lifted the first of the two men out, grinning down at him.

	"So." he laughed, "and are you comfortable?" He laid the patrolman out on the lawn, carefully. The man's angry, startled eyes followed them. Faint twitchings of jaw and lips told of his efforts to speak. But only a low, gurgling sound came from his throat. A moment later the second man joined the first, and thirty seconds later they watched as the SPX-254 rose gently from the field and started up. It hung for a moment, and Aies leaned out, smiling.

	"Sorry, fellows—It's just a paralyzer, and you ought to be quite O. K. in about ten minutes. I'll have to be going along now." She turned back to her companion, and faintly the man on the ground heard her ask: "You've got the Boston charts. Paul?"

	Then the ship rose out of sight and drifted off at the leisurely fifty miles an hour of the patrol ships in a city area.

	"She mis—cal—culated." said a jerky, rasping, almost unintelligible voice from Patrolman Larry Mallory. "I can—wiggle my toe." His voice cleared up rapidly, and in scarcely three minutes he was able to roll a little, and he started for the still-lighted shop. There would be a communicator there. Halfway there he got to his hands and knees, and weakly crawled a few feet, then staggered to his feet, and as though thoroughly drunk, rolled and swayed to the telephone in the shop.

	"Ptrool 'edquart, quick." he said as the hum of the operator's 'connection came on. Ten seconds later the desk captain responded.

	. "Ptrolman Mulry." he said thickly. "Th gurl—Merlin—gadget knocked us—stiff. Tooka shup—oo-tree-fir—spota numbers easy."

	"Mallory? Mallory! You're drunk. Report here at once!" snapped the captain. "Where's O'Halley?"

	"Cap;n, rrrn't 'runk—paralyzed. Grl 'da wepon. Somepin knocked us stiff. Olley's cumin. She stole the ship, sir. Thank goodness I can talk again. The girl had something or other that knocked us stiff—a ray of some kind—couldn't wiggle a toe for a while, then slowly recovered. Honest, captain, we're not drunk, and she's got our ship."

	"You're soused." stopped the captain. "I'm sending a man out there at once. Stay where you are, and consider yourselves under arrest."

	"Yes, sir." said Mallory, dolefully. "He don't believe us, O'Halley." he said, turning to his companion. "He thinks we're drunk."

	"Well, we ain't. But the damn girl got the ship."

	A patrol ship, siren screaming, settled swiftly down one minute later, and picked them up. They were bundled unceremoniously into the back, with the evident anger of the two patrolmen in the ship, ashamed that a brother patrolman should get drunk on duty.

	Five minutes later, the ship landed on the headquarters' roof and the two men were taken below. "Take them in to Commissioner Stracey." ordered the desk captain. "He wants to interview them."

-

	The two men were escorted down the corridor, through the connecting bridge to the conditioning building. Commissioner Stracey's office was somewhat crowded. Dr. Harrison, head of the department, and a young, powerfully-built man with an unusually blank face already filled the small office.

	"What's this you reported about Miss Marlan?" demanded Stracey, as they entered.

	"She had some kind of a weapon, sir, that throws a paralyzing beam. It made us helpless instantly—conscious, but unable to move or even speak."

	"The paralyzer—I thought she'd use it." said the young man, chuckling.

	"They haven't any defense, and I'll bet she gets away."

	Stracey looked at him, sharply. Then he looked at Harrison. "What's this?" he demanded.

	"Primary state." smiled Harrison. "I brought him in here as I said because he confirmed the Primary statements of her father and added some interesting statements. He mentioned the paralyzer."

	"Just what is the Primary state? How much can it be trusted? Is his mind clear?"

	"In the Primary state he merely thinks out load. His mind is perfectly clear, and normal, save that the censor of the brain is out of the circuit, and the memory tracks are out. He cannot censor his thoughts, and he cannot remember what he says. It corresponds to the Secondary state used in criminal proceedings. There the suspects speaks his thoughts, but memory is associated so that he remembers and knows, when waked, that he has convicted or freed himself.

	"Here, while his mental processes are normal, he can neither remember nor censor his thoughts."

	"Then Miss Marian had a paralyzer?"

	"Had a paralyzer?" Bruce Randall chuckled. To him, it seemed he was chuckling and thinking to himself. "Oh. She had one—a little honey. Only she didn't develop any protection. She'll have lots of fun when she tries it on me."

	"Why?" 

	"Because I did develop protection. I know just how delightfully mad she'll be when she tries to paralyze me and the cloak stops the rays. Then—I think my tube will be powerful enough—probably more powerful than hers."

	"She definitely has a paralyzer?"

	"She certainly has! She's been playing with it for months. It's a great invention—extremely useful for the patrol when they finally get it—quell disturbances instantly. Harmless, but effective. They'll have a fine time catching her. They won't believe she can do it. They'll think the men are drunk."

	"She said she had one, sir, and the captain did think we were drunk.'" interrupted Mallory. "And she said she was headed north. You'd better have the patrol strengthened there—said to the man with her: 'Have you got the Boston charts?" I think she didn't know we could hear."

	"Probably thought she was out of ear-shot—maybe realized—no, she intended him to hear her. She knew her weapon." said Bruce. He chuckled. "She'll probably—hmmm." Bruce fell silent.

	"Send orders to withdraw three of the ships from the north sector and re-enforce the west and south sectors." ordered the commissioner after a few seconds. The little fox."

	"Where is this protection you have?" he asked, turning to Bruce.

	The cloak." said Bruce. The cloak in my laboratory. They'll probably never catch her. If she can make it—let her. I won't interfere, and the patrol probably won't get her."

	Stracey looked at him in puzzlement, then smiled. "Peculiar statement, eh, doctor. I wonder why he doesn't want to help? Doesn't he like the girl?"

	"She's wonderful." said Bruce softly. "She's as clever as any woman that ever lived, and the way she looks at me—I love her. The way she turns her back—that's almost all that I have seen—most of the time." He smiled tenderly.

	"There's your answer to the last question, commissioner." smiled the doctor. "He wants to play fair. I suspect. Feels it isn't right to aid in hunting her down."

	"It wouldn't be fair; she's fighting enough already—it's her fight, and the little thing may win, too." sighed Bruce.

	"Mallory. I guess you're right. Release him, men I think you two can realize that we did have reason to think you drunk. You really can't blame us for the mistake. But now, the pair of you go up to that laboratory and see if you can find those cloaks.:

	"Silvery-gray cloaks—in the cabinet—I hope they don't find them." said Randall. "I have the key—they won't want to break in."

	Stracey looked from Bruce to the doctor. "Harrison, do you think he will give us-the key?"

	Harrison looked at the powerful young man and smiled. "You might get a half dozen good husky patrolmen in here, and possibly they could get it. But just because he must speak the thoughts doesn't mean he'll give up those keys at all. He thinks he's sitting here silently."

	"Then take some pick locks and open it. I wonder if it will be safe—or will they ran into some dangerous stuff?"

	"There's nothing dangerous—they'll probably forget the accumulators—the whole secret—"

	"Don't." smiled Stracey, looking at Mallory. Mallory was looking at Randall uneasily, shifting his weight on his feet.

	"No, sir." replied the patrolman. "Shall we go?"

	"Yes, go ahead."

-

	"She's going to Boston." said Randall, suddenly. "She meant the patrolman to hear her, knew that they'd expect her to go anywhere but to Boston, since they knew she knew they had heard. So she would go to Boston, because the patrol would not expect her there."

	"What?" gasped Stracey. "Whew—do you think she—I mean—is he right?" asked Stracey, looking at Harrison.

	"She's a very clever girl, evidently." said the doctor, thoughtfully, "and just an abstruse line of reasoning might occur to her."

	"I know her. I know she won’t do that. They will probably miss her, unless by blind chance she runs into the few planes in that sector."

	"Commissioner—" the desk captain's voice came from the small speaker under the table. "We've just gotten a report from the north field that ship XP-47 came in on automatic controls, with the two pilots completely drunk. I think the girl was paralyzing them. They—further report. They say that they saw the 234 and were suddenly knocked out, made helpless, while their ship went into a power dive, exceeded the 500-mile limit, and the automatics took over and landed them safely."

	"She went toward Boston." nodded Randall. "Tough luck. She hit one of the planes. I wonder what she’ll do now. She's beyond any of the planes of the New York patrol now, and her ship was just as speedy as any other patrol plane. Dr. Marlan's plane was disassembled, of course, so no one can catch her. Ah—the accumulators. Patrol planes have undersize accumulator banks to make them theft of them difficult. I wonder if the banks were well charged?"

	"They were half full," said O'Halley, goggling at the young physicist.

	"Then they carried a charge good for only 150 miles or so at cruising speed, not more than 200 absolute maximum, and 100 at high speed. She'll have to rent a plane. But if she .goes into the city, she'll be spotted because of the patrol plane. If she lands outside, it will take hours to get in a large city, and—she'll go to a medium-sized city. Too small—they'd notice and report. There wouldn't be a plane-rental agency.

	"Too big—the patrol would be too active."

	"What city will she stop at? New Haven—New London?" asked Stracey tensely. It was like asking a thinking machine. Immediately the mechanism started  on the new problem.

	"No. By no means. Shell circle New York and head south now, because she's beyond the reach of the New York patrol and free to go in any direction. They'll expect her to put the most possible distance between herself and New York. That would be by going due north. So she'll circle to an unexpected quadrant. Probably due south. Newark—too large. Suburbs are solid clear out, too. She won't go there. Elizabeth—too large. Too much part of Newark. Ah—Amboy—one of the Amboys. Perth Amboy—South Amboy—"

	"Commissioner—Mallory reports he can't find the cloaks Randall described. Are you sure he isn't bats? Mallory claims his laboratory has no cabinet or locker of any kind that isn't open and, full of just plain junk. He's afraid to paw around much."

	They can't find the cabinet." Randall chuckled. "It's hidden. He mustn't paw around. A worried frown came over Randall's face, and for a moment a different, intelligent look appeared on his face; the lines about his eyes and mouth, the lines of character and thought and intelligence, grew firm again.

	He spoke with a deeper, more pleasant voice. "Commissioner Stracey. I'd advise that any one looking about in our laboratories be very careful as there it a great deal of dangerously charged apparatus." Then as suddenly as it had come, his face lapsed again into placid thought.

	"He meant that, commissioner. It probably is dangerous." said Harrison. Stracey spoke into his communicator, and relayed the warning to Mallory.

	"But how are we to find the hidden cabinet?"

	Harrison chuckled. "That's locked up in memory. It's probably between memory and censor sections. We can't, that's all. He'll have to hunt. Get some of the patrol technicians out there with apparatus. If we wake him, so that memory it available he won't want to tell us, and the censor is on the job.  Too bad—but we can't do it with him. A low-class or unbalanced mind we could handle, but remember, it was only with his consent and aid that I was able to get him to the Primary state. He would object a second time, right now—and that would be that.

	"Hmmm—that will take time. Then you'd better order the patrol in the Amboy region to picket all rental-plane agencies, and watch out for her paralysis device."

	"They won't believe it, although it comes as an order, so that's all right." said Randall complacently. Stracey turned red, then roared in laughter.

	"By gosh, he's right? They won't. They'll get knocked over like a row of tin soldiers. But it's all we can do. What will they do then?"

	"It depends on the color of the plane they take." said Bruce thoughtfully. If it's gray, or black, or dark brown, that's one thing. But if it's bright red or bright blue or a bright color of any sort, why that will mean something else."

-

	Aies looked at the lights below, and pondered Then she looked back at the chart. That's Perth Amboy, all right, Paul," she sighed at length. "The motors are getting weak, so we'll have to land pretty quickly. It's 1 a.m. so we'd better land away from houses. It'll be a two-mile hike. But then—walking is good for one." She laughed softly. "I'll bet they're burning up the night between New York and Boston about now."

	They left their things in the plane, when it grounded gently with almost, the last gasp of the accumulators, and walked. It had started to fog over, a heavy wet fog, and Airs feared for her not-too-perfect little weapon's insulation They walked rapidly toward the outskirts of the city and stopped at a lighted drug store. In a classified directory they located the largest plane-renting establishment in town, took the tube to the nearest station, and walked to the office. White light made a vague, slanting, rectangular shaft in the mist at they turned in.

	Aies stopped in dismay. Four large patrolmen started up at her entrance; two more appeared just outside the door almost instantly.

	Six large patrolmen and two company clerks sat sleeping in their chairs two minutes later when a customer walked in. Thirty seconds later he, too, was sleeping in a chair. Aies passed the beam over her nine victims once more for surety, and then carefully tilled out a rental blank, but the deposit on the table, and wrote "Boston" as her destination. Then she and Paul walked back into the hangar. "The red one there, Paul, she said thoughtfully. "It's a Crossing—fast."

	"But Aies—it's red—so conspicuous." objected Treray.

	"That's what I want." laughed the girl. They'll look hard for it. Come one, and I'll explain, sweetheart."

	The plane rose gracefully as Aies made sure the accumulators were fully charged. Then laughingly the explained her plan. The plane had scarcely left the city when Patrolman Sargeant knocked the telephone off the table with a slightly mobile hand. "Rud." he croaked. " 'edquart—'ell 'em—rud. 'rite rud."

	"Bright red." said Aies, looking at the plane. They'll be looking all over for it, and stopping all the bright-red planes in the air to-night with a man and a girl in them. While this particular bright-red plane rests peacefully in a deserted shack some three and a half miles from its starting point. Now for the rest of the hike." The heavy, wet mist still hung low, scarcely ten feet deep. It was clear here, but half a mile away it hung like a fleecy blanket. "It'll be wet. Brr—"

	It was near dawn when they reached the Elizabeth tube entrance. Five minutes later they alighted at 200 Street, in upper New York. "Naturally." Aies had said, "they don't expect to find us in the heart of things after that escape."

	They took the moving walk on the second level downtown, then shuttled across town, and took a subway to the 33rd-Street terminal. The crowds were getting thicker once more, and they melted into it, then the most exposed part of the trip began. They took the moving walk over to Brooklyn. The other walk was crowded, but very few people were going this way. Aies saw soddenly in the dim, cold dawn light two patrolmen in the familiar capes. Paul felt her stiffen against him and looked at the pair himself, wide-eyed.

	The patrolmen cast a casual glance at the pair and turned away. "Uhmmm—Aies sighed in relief. Her voice was somewhat shaken as she went on. "That's one difficulty—every blue uniform will mean a man staring at us. It won't be much fun for the next few months."

	The walk carried them on, off the bridge and to the Brooklyn terminal. They were nearing it when Aies saw two rather peculiar figures. They wore their blue uniforms, but over their uniforms they wore a nonstandard cape. Aies frowned in puzzlement. Somewhere she had seen that dirty-gray cloth—stiffish cloth.

	Suddenly she stiffened The two were looking directly at them, two elderly men with kindly, paternal smiles. They looked at her reprovingly. Jerkily. Aies raised her arm. In the dim light the little tube glowed brightly, a faint beam reached out.

	They did not fall. Their cloaks were washed with a softly wavering light, violet, and their expressions were as a father might look down at the angry child pounding at his legs. Aies felt the little tube grow hot in her hand; it began to sputter. With a soft fowf it collapsed into darkness.

	"Wide-eyed. Aies looked down at it, then in wonder, hurt surprise she looked up at the two men. One raised his hand, and something glowed softly. A greenish-blue light. Aies felt a sudden tingling through her muscles, a rapid weakening. And suddenly she recognized the material. "Bruce—stuff he—worked—"

	She'd remembered that peculiar gray stuff, hard to recognize under this light. Then her lips wouldn't work any more, and she was picked up gently by two of the men as two more appeared to pick up Paul. She saw quite clearly that Bruce had been watching her experiment rather quietly and had not only duplicated her paralyzing device—but had gone her just one, slight step better. He'd rigged a protective device.

	And she was quite furious that Bruce had spied on her, and beaten her, and helped catch her. But she couldn't wiggle her little finger when they brought her into the conditioning laboratory.

-

	Bruce looked across at Stracey, half embarrassed, half annoyed. "It wasn't exactly fair, sit. It isn't usual to make a man help as I did."

	"Help capture his runaway fiancée?-chuckled Stracey. "Well, nowadays we aren't used to chasing the aforementioned fiancée. And I don't know that we could have kept ahead of her without your very valuable assistance. The bit of reasoning on the color of the plane was most interesting."

	"Thanks—I don't remember it." said Randall sourly. "Tell me so I can enjoy my brilliance."

	Stracey laughed. Try going up to room 73. That may be more enjoyable." He handed Bruce a pass, and Randall rose hastily.

	"Thank you, sir." he said and was gone.

-

	Aies rose with a smile as Bruce came into her room. There was a half-pout half-smile on her lips and a golden-red halo of sunlight shining through the window that formed a frame for her head.

	"Hell. Bruce. I hear you helped capture me?" she stated.

	"So I heard—when they were quite through with me." answered Bruce. His eyes crinkled very slowly, and the crinkles spread down his cheeks till the corners of his mouth twitched.

	Aies looked at him for a moment, and slowly a little smile of surprise and tenderness came over her face. "Funny, I never liked the way you smiled—-but now—I think it's—awfully nice to have around."

	"It isn't funny." said Bruce, tenderly. "It's natural. They changed you a little, dear girl You're supposed to love me now, you know."

	She looked up at him slowly. "It is funny—because I think I do, In fact—I'm sure I do. Bruce." She came toward him slowly, and he put his arms around her very gently.

	"You'll break. I know you'll break in two. You're very small"

	"Uhmmm—" said Aies. "I'm not—but you are nicely large." She looked up at him. Her eyes changed for a moment; a doubt seemed to creep into them. "I suppose they made me feel that way. I suppose I don't really do—"

	Bruce looked down into her eyes. "Does it matter, dear? Does it matter in the least? All we seek in life is happiness. Happiness—peace—and it matters not one iota how we reach them. Love is the greatest happiness in the world—isn't it, little sweetheart?—and so if it is, does it matter whence it comes or why? Does it matter if it is because some one else thought it wise or because we developed it by association and contacts that were pleasant?"

	"Perhaps—perhaps it does. Because love can be real—and not last. It must wear, and only similar characters, similar ideals, similar ideas can make it. And wisdom can help there, when the heart is not very wise. Unfortunately, till men learned the secret of conditioning, the head could not rule the heart. Does it matter, now that the love is, when it came?"

	"No." said Aies, and stopped further discussion.

The End