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random flight path."
    Bud leaned forward. "Of course, they could go for the bottom line and just blow up the Inn."
    "Troublesome passengers will be ejected, Budworth," sniffed Bash daintily. "We might have flown more stylishly in your Silent Streak atomicar, Thomas. But it is only built for two."
    "We’re planning a four-seat model."
    "Alas for intimacy."
    "And besides, Bashi, that big dome doesn’t give much privacy anyway, down on lovers lane," teased Sandy.
    "So true. Alas for romance as well."
    Tom chuckled. "I guess it looks like science and technology are going to cause the death of romance."
    "Believe me, Thomas," said the pretty dark-haired Pakistani, "I have found that these days, romance can not even get started ."
    The jetrocopter landed at the Inn, stately and quaint next to a small tumbling stream whose banks were strewn with wild flowers. "Parking lot’s packed. Never knew I was so popular," Bud observed with a wink. "Well—I guess Hank has a few friends, too."
    Inside Bud was greeted with warm applause, as were Hank and Lauren Sterling. And soon the various relatives arrived, to handshakes, hugs, and kisses.
    "Now tell me, Sandra," said Bud’s mother with a mischievous smile, "Aren’t you just a little worried about Bud’s making a play for Venus?"
    "Why should I be, Mrs. Barclay?" Sandy replied impishly. "With all that time on my hands I’ll find myself a new steady with a classic profile, like Mars."
    Bud pretended to be shocked. "What, suddenly I’m your steady? I thought we were just a couple of pals who danced together!"
    "Don’t be too sure of him, sis," Tom joked. "His heart belongs to a rocket ship."
    "Not the Astrodyne-8, or that flashlight-powered sky buggy they’ve planned for me," Bud said disgustedly. "Lemme tell ya, folks, the Swifts’ Challenger can fly rings around both of ’em!"
    Dinner was still an hour away, and the clock on the wall said: Mingle . Tom found himself talking to Hank Sterling about his recent adventures in Kabulistan with the triphibian atomicar.
    "And now this freeze-ray stuff," clucked Tom’s chief engineer sympathetically. "Skipper, you’re the one who needs a vacation!"
    "Maybe so," responded the young scientist-inventor. Then his voice took on a thoughtful, dreamy tone that all his friends knew very well. "But the usual drama has accomplished one thing, Hank—an idea for a new invention. If my approach pans out, it’ll protect us from having our communications tapped into by lady ray-gun wielders, or anyone else."
    Sterling whistled jokingly. "I can see you’re going to put me right back to work! So what is it, some kind of new signal-coder?"
    Tom shook his head. "Nope. Try this on for size—a communications device that no one in the world can possibly listen in on—ever!"
     
CHAPTER 6
ENTANGLEMENT
    HANK STERLING nodded, and his expression revealed that he was intrigued—and startled! "That’s quite a statement, Tom. Of course we’re always coming up with new methods to keep disreputable types from listening in on us. But for each step we take, they take another. And they have bigger feet!"
    Tom joined his friend in laughter. "If you want a thumbnail explanation, Hank, here it is. I have a wild sort of idea to use the principle of quantum entanglement to link together a pair of communications devices in a way that, in a certain sense, annihilates the distance between them! In effect, it’ll be like speaking right into the other person’s ear—and I think you’ll agree that in a case like that, there’s just no room to insert any kind of bug or surveillance device."
    "Sounds good to me!" grinned the young engineer. "I’ve read a little about what they call ‘quantum cryptography’. But look, Tom, I’ve always understood that using the quantum principle for basic communications was just plain impossible. Someone give you permission to break the laws of physics?"
    "Not break them. But just maybe there’s a way to outsmart them!"
    Before Tom