search of the area could be started. If the enemy were located he might even be regarded as a hero.

These thoughts raced through his mind as he performed the prescribed maneuvers to insure that the aliens could not possibly follow him back to Earth. By this time, he was light years away from the point of the encounter and he brought the ship out of hyper-drive as he had done so often before. The last few steps were nearly completed and he checked them off as he did them: computer on automatic; gravity at 0.2 Earth normal; warning system in reset position; and finally, ease the lever back to conventional drive.

The stars could not yet be seen when the alarm sounded again. This had not been covered in the training as no ship could possibly follow another into and out of hyper-drive. Joe turned off the alarm and considered his predicament. The obvious. answer was a faulty alarm system and perhaps there had never been an alien ship nearby in the first place. That had to be the answer. Joe was mad at himself for having been so easily frightened over nothing. He reached for a small gold handbag and shakily took out a cigarette.

A slight breeze blew a wisp of hair in such a way that it tickled his nose and Joe reached up lazily to brush it back into place. The impart of his action struck home like a drop forge and he sat up rapidly and blinked at the bright sunlight. At first he questioned his sanity, but a quick look around convinced him that we wasn't seeing things. There couldn't be any breeze or warm sunlight in a spaceship, but there they were. One minute he had been in his ship and the next he was . . well he didn't know where. He pinched himself through his skirt and it stung but he did not wake up. The bluish tint of the grass and trees convinced him that he wasn't on Earth, and he wondered where in the universe he was and how he had gotten here.

He was sitting on a grassy spot in what appeared to be a semi-tropical area for whatever that was worth. In the distance was a low hill and a path that seemed to lead in that general direction. He knew that he would have to look around and the high vantage point seemed like the place to start so he began walking down the path. The thought then crossed his mind, or perhaps it was woman's intuition, that this path might be a trail

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