Bill agreed with her.
"Think of it! We may even go to Mars, to fight 'em on their own ground!"
"Remember, Paula," Trainor cautioned. "Don't tell Mr. Windsor too much."
"All right, Dad."
Again the little clatter of the elevator. Mr. Cain had come into the observatory, a tall, slender young man, with a quizzical smile, and eyes dark and almost as enigmatic as Paula's.
Bill, watching the vivacious girl, saw her smile at Cain. He saw her quick flush, her unconscious tremor. He guessed that she had some deep feeling for the man. But he seemed unaware of it. He merely nodded to the girl, glanced at Dr. Trainor, and spoke briskly to Bill.
"Excuse me, Mr. Win—er, Bill, but I wish to see Dr. Trainor alone. We will communicate with you when it seems necessary. In the meanwhile, I trust you to forget what you have seen here tonight, and what the Doctor has told you. Good evening."
Bill, of necessity, stepped upon the elevator. Five minutes later he left Trainor's Tower. Glancing up from the vividly bright, bustling street, with its moving ways and darting heliocars, he instinctively expected to see the starry heavens that had been in view from the observatory.
But a heavy cloud, like a canopy of yellow silk in the light that shone upon it from the city, hung a mile above. The upper thousands of feet of the slender tower were out of sight above the clouds.
After breakfast next morning Bill bought a shorthand news strip from a robot purveyor. In amazement and some consternation he read: