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onto the collar of his hastily donned flight clothes, and opened the door to the ruins that had been the laboratory, now deserted except for the six guards and the hulk of the Enigma.
    He dismissed the men, giving them formal notes, and waited for them to leave. Then he switched the lights off and headed for the machine, again reassembled and ready for flight—or for plaguing men through the decades to come.
    In the gloom, there was a sudden cough, and he swung to see Enright at the doorway, his face almost glowing under the light of a single bulb still on. Mike grimaced, but it didn't matter. Enright seemed to have some odd attachment to the machine, and the guards had complained about his hanging around. Now he stood there, licking his lips and staring at the Enigma.
    His eyes switched to Mike. "You're taking her up, Mike? You're flying her again." He studied Mike, and nodded slowly, as if making up his mind. "And you're not coming back. You're going to destroy her. I thought
    of that, too. Mike—Mike, don't. Let me. I'm just a has-been, Mike—but I want to feel her in my hands once. After that, it won't matter. ..."
    Mike shook his head. "It's my trip, and I'm older than you are, tonight. You're off bounds, Enright. If you're caught in here now, you'll be up for another security check. Better get back. Maybe you're right, and I'm going to destroy her. But it won't do for you to be found with me, if I do. You've got your boys to worry about, and I don't have anyone. Go on, scram!"
    Enright licked his lips, and shook his head. "My boys! Yes, yes of course, Mike. Of course. But let me stay here a little longer, while you get her out."
    "Okay," Mike told him. The man must be getting senile, he thought. But he'd forgotten one vital thing, and Enright could watch the plane while he went for it. "Stay, then. But you'd better go as soon as I get back. Only a minute."
    He swung out to the entrance, and into the main hangar again. There was a flask of hydro-fluoric acid around somewhere, and that had already been proved capable of dissolving the trick metals and the trickier insulation, though they resisted even such a violent acid for a surprising length of time. He finally found it, and went back.
    Enright was gone, and the little light bulb was out. Mike stumbled through the darkness, banging his shins on something that shouldn't have been there. He cursed, and decided vaguely that something should be done about men who left things in the middle where nothing was supposed to be. Then he grinned bitterly as he realized he wouldn't be around to do anything about it.
    He found the steps to the control cabin of the Enigma, and went up them, and into the cabin. He reached for the door, just as a sudden loud noise shook the air of the laboratory. Probably the guards were trying to get back. He settled under the pseudo-transformer hastily, stuck his arms through the straps, and sent power into the wheels, to go moving out where take-off was possible.
    It was only as the ship was lifting savagely that he realized the laboratory floor had been bare before. Something had come out of nowhere! Maybe the control-panel had finally come back—and his father! For a second, he started to settle back. But it was pointless. The corpse of Bruce Dane could do him no good, and he might have no chance to finish this business, if he were interrupted now. The Danes had saddled the world with the worst Trojan horse it had ever known. Now their debt had to be paid, as far as it could be paid.
    He shook his mind almost free of thoughts, and went tearing upwards in the Enigma, crowding on full power. The ship almost flew itself, and he found the hatch that led down into its belly, throwing it open with one foot. He pulled the bottle of acid out, staring at its waxy surface. He uncorked it and waited.
    When the great capacitor that lay there blew up, it wouldn't do to have the Enigma too low!
    The needle went up, indicating twenty miles of height, and he