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Peter Reed. "I want you to hear it directly."
    He turned on the televisor. The tired, wizened face of Jacob ben Ezra filled the screen. Ching paled, even through his nausea.
    ". . . Calling the Outward Bound  . . . Calling the Outward Bound . Calling Captain Peter Reed . . ."\
    The pale visage on the televisor paused to light a cigarette.
    "Really, Peter," said Jacob ben Ezra, "this is ridiculous. I know you're reading me."
    Peter Reed could not help smiling.
    "Very well, Peter," said the voice of ben Ezra, "we'll play it your way. So don't answer me. I'll do the talking. You probably have a Dr. Ching pen Yee aboard. I want him. I've come all the way from Earth for him, and, by space, I'll have him, or I'll blow you to bits. You have five minutes, plus the time lag, to answer. If you don't answer then , I will take appropriate action."
    Captain Reed turned the televisor off.
    "Well, Dr. Ching," he said, "do I turn you over to ben Ezra, or do you talk?"
    A new emotion crossed Ching's face. It did not seem to be fear; it was more of a manic defiance.
    "You don't understand. I do not care about death, captain," he said. "I have not fled to save my life. Had I remained on Earth, my life would not have been endangered. But—"
    "But what? You heard the admiral. You have five minutes to make up your mind."
    Ching sighed. "It is my work that must go on. That's what they want to stop. Very well, captain, I must take the chance."
    "So?"
    "There is no simple way of explaining it. I have told you that I am working on a corollary to the Special Theory of Relativity. It is the Special Theory of Relativity, as you must know, which limits all speed to the speed of light. Essentially, it means that at the speed of light, mass is infinite, therefore it would take an infinite thrust to accelerate to that limit, and exceeding it would be impossible. But, as I have said, I am working on transfinite substitutions. I hope to evolve an equation—"
    "Come to the point, man, come to the point!"
    "There is no simple point, captain. I am engaged in the preliminaries of a work that some day may lead to a theoretical means of exceeding the speed of light within the Einsteinian Universe—"
    "An Overdrive! " shouted Captain Reed.
    "Not for a long time," said Ching pedantically. "It—"
    But the captain was no longer listening. An Overdrive! Countless others had tried before, but Earth thought this man was close enough to send ben Ezra sixty light-years to . . .
    Reed's trader's brain analyzed the situation with the speed born of commercial instinct. An Overdrive would be the most valuable commodity any trader ever had to sell. The Outward Bound could sell it again and again, on each of the sixty-seven planets inhabited by Man, each time commanding a price undreamed of in all history!
    And ben Ezra would not take the chance that Ching wasn't on the Outward Bound . He would have to know . He couldn't . . .
    "Hang on to something," shouted Peter Reed.
    He yelled into the communicator: "Break orbit! Do it now!"
    "What course, sir?" came the tinny voice. "Who cares?" roared Reed. "Just get us away from here. Raise the sails, activate the ion drive. Maximum thrust on the reaction rockets! Do it now! Now! Now! NOW!"
     
    Jacob ben Ezra shook his head, with a Gallic shrug. Reed was running. What else could he do? But that means he knows . It must!
    Ben Ezra lit a cigarette. "Change course," he said to his navigator. "Accelerate. Follow them."
    "Are we going to attack?" asked Commander Dayan, floating alongside the admiral in the conning globe. His dark, mustachioed face was alight with an eagerness that ben Ezra found distasteful. But then, one could not really blame Dayan. Gunnery officers usually have nothing to do but sit around.
    "Not now, at any rate," said the admiral. "Better strap in. Acceleration coming up."
    Ben Ezra stared out the viewpoint at the stars.
    My stars, he thought. Our stars. Mine and Peter Reed's. No wonder my stomach isn't