"Quick! Before the police get here! Jump!"
Prule looked up helplessly at the hazy circle.
"How"—he began, but Kunklin pushed him aside, assumed a broad stance in the center of the crowd. He thrust his arms outward dramatically, as if for silence. Just then the first cop broke through and into the center of the circle and began to speak virtuously, angrily, in the manner of cops, but the people around him were staring at Kunklin and waiting expectantly.
"Well," said Kunklin, speaking cheerfully in Galactic, "it's been fun." He threw the anti-gravity to full power, waited till he could feel that the lift would no longer increase. It was not enough to get him off the ground, but he now weighed next to nothing. He crouched, then leaped for the haze above. He shot up like a rocket, went through the circle and disappeared.
A moment later Prule followed him. As he sailed up through the haze the ship became immediately visible above, he reached out and caught on to a rung of the ladder below Kunklin. Thankfully, wearily, not bothering to look down at the stunned, open-mouthed crowd which he could see below him but which could no longer see him, he followed Kunklin up into the ship.
Kunklin did not wait at the airlock, he ran quickly away. Prule, puffing, paused to look down at last on the crowd below. Their ascent had been a success. The crowd was beginning to applaud.
Prule closed the airlock and the invisible, untouchable ship lifted. He went to join Kunklin. The big Galactic was bent over the controls, guiding the ship not upward—as Prule had thought—but horizontally down the length of the wide street.
"Eh?" said Prule.
"Got to get a live Faktor," Kunklin said anxiously, his eyes glued to the viewscreen. "We've lost the Earthman. He could be anywhere now, and we can't help him. He may be headed for the Faktor's main base. If so he will be killed. We've got to get to the base first."
Prule pursed his lips. "If he dies on our account, just because of your foolish idea to use him—"