And Stephen looked down through the clearing mists and beheld an island.
"It happens to be a very special island," Turpan said. "The jurisdiction of no policeman extends here."
"Fantastic! What is it called?"
"I should imagine that they will call it 'Utopia Fourteen', or 'New Valhalla'. Idealists seldom possess one iota of originality. This is the same sort of experiment that has been attempted without success from times immemorial. A group of visionaries get together, wangle a charter from some indulgent government and found a sovereign colony in splendid isolation—and invariably based upon impossible ideas of anarchism."
The skimmercar shook itself like a wet terrier, dropped three hundred feet in a downdraft, recovered and glided in to a landing as gently as a nesting seabird. They were upon a verdant meadow.
Stephen looked around. "One could hardly call this splendid isolation," he remarked. "We are less than five minutes from the City, and I am sure that you will be reasonable enough to release me, now that I've brought you here, and allow me to return. I promise not to report this episode."
"Magnanimous of you," Turpan said, "but I'm afraid that what you ask is impossible."
"Then you refuse to let me go?"
"No, no. I merely point out that the cloud through which we arrived at this island was not, as you noted, a natural one. It had the ominous look of a Molein Field in the making. In other words, a space distortion barrier the size of which Earth has never seen."