Morrison's heart sank. If they were using a hushicopter, which were extremely expensive and quite rare, then he was being treated as no ordinary prey. He was being treated as a big fish.

But I'm not a big fish, he thought desperately.

The automobile stopped and the headlights went out. There was still the faint purr and a few dim violet lights, hardly visible, marked the spot where the hushicopter sat.

The large man at Morrison's right threw open the car door and, again with a grunt, lowered his head and forced his way out. His large hand reached in for Morrison.

Morrison tried to shrink away. "Where are you taking me?"

The large man seized his upper arm. "Come out. Enough talking."

Morrison felt himself half-lifted, half-pulled out of the car. His shoulder hurt as it might be expected to do, considering that it had been nearly yanked out of its socket.

But he disregarded the pain. It was the first time he had heard the large man speak. The words were in English, but the accent was thickly Russian.

Morrison felt cold. These were not Americans who had him.

Morrison had entered the hushicopter - though that is not an accurate description of what took place. To enter implies a voluntary action and he had been much more nearly pushed into the vehicle.

It had pulsed its way through the darkness as he sat between the same two men between whom he had sat in the car. It was almost as though nothing had changed, although the whisper of the rotors was distinctly more hypnotic than the purr of the automobile engine had been.

After an hour - or possibly less - they came out of the darkness of the air and drifted downward toward the darkness of the ocean. Morrison could tell it was the ocean because he could smell it, was vaguely aware of the fog of droplets in the air, and because he could make out, very dimly, the dark bulk of a ship - dark on dark.

How could the hushicopter make its way out to the ocean and pinpoint a ship? - the right ship, he was sure. Even in his half-stupor of despair, Morrison's mind could not help searching for solutions. Undoubtedly, the hushicopter pilot had followed a shielded and pseudorandomized radio beam. The beam seemed random but, given the key, it could be found to have order and its source could be identified. Properly done, the pseudorandomness could not be penetrated even by quite an advanced computer.

Nor was the ship more than a temporary stopping place. He was allowed to use the head, given time for a hurried meal of bread and thick soup (which he found most welcome), and was then ushered - with the unceremonious hustle he had begun to accept as a fact of life - into a medium-sized airplane. It was a ten-seater (he counted automatically), but except for the two pilots and, sitting in the rear, the two men who had been on either side of him in the car and in the hushicopter, he was alone in the plane.

Morrison looked back at his guards, whom he just made out in the very dim light that filled the plane's interior. There was enough room in the plane so that they were not forced to hem him in. Nor did they need to do so out of fear that he might break and run for it. Here, he could break out only onto the deck of the ship. Once the plane took off, he could break out only into the open air with nothing beneath him but water of indefinite depth.

He wondered numbly why they were not taking off and then the door opened to admit another passenger. Despite the dimness, he recognized her at once.

He had met her for the first time only twelve hours before, but how could he have progressed from that first moment of meeting to the present moment in only twelve hours?

Boranova sat down in the seat next to his and said in a low voice, "I am sorry, Dr. Morrison." She was speaking in Russian.

And, as though that were the signal, the sound of the airplane's engines deepened and he felt himself pressed against his seat as the plane moved steeply upward.

Morrison stared at Natalya Boranova, trying to collect his thoughts. Dimly, he felt a desire to say something to her in a suave, imperturbable way, but there was no chance of that.

His voice was a creak and even after he cleared his throat, all he could say was "I've been kidnapped."

"That could not be helped, Dr. Morrison. I regret this. I really do. I have my duty, you understand. I had to bring you back by persuasion if I could. Otherwise -" She let the last word hang.

"But you can't behave in this fashion. This is not the twentieth century." He choked a little in his earnest attempt to stifle his sense of indignation to the point where he could speak sensibly. "I am not a recluse. I am not a derelict. I will be missed and American intelligence is perfectly aware that we spoke and they know that you wanted me to come to the Soviet Union. They will know I have been kidnapped - they may know it already - and your government will find itself in the middle of a kind of international incident it will want no part of."

"Not so," said Boranova earnestly, her dark eyes gazing levelly into his. "Not so. Of course your people know what has happened, but they have no objections. Dr. Morrison, the Soviet Union's intelligence operations are marked both by advanced technology and by over a century of close study of American psychology. I have no doubt that American intelligence is just as advanced. It is this equality of expertise, which is shared by several of the other geographical units of the planet, that helps to keep us in cooperation. Each of us is firmly convinced that no one else is far ahead on a road of its own."

"I don't know what you're driving at," said Morrison. The planet was arrowing through the night, speeding toward the eastern dawn.

"What concerns American intelligence most right now is our attempt at miniaturization."

"Attempt!" Morrison said with a note of sardonic amusement.

"Successful attempt. - The Americans don't know that it is successful. They don't know if the miniaturization project may not be a mask behind which something altogether different is going on. They know we're doing something. I'm sure they have a detailed map of the area in the Soviet Union where the experiments are proceeding - every building, every truck convoy. They undoubtedly have agents who are doing their best to penetrate the project.

"Naturally, we're doing our best to counter all this. We are not indignant. We know a great deal about the American experiments in antigravity and it would be naive to take the attitude that we can probe and that the Americans can't; that we can have our successes, but the American mustn't."

Morrison rubbed his eyes. Boranova's quiet, even voice was making him realize that his ordinary bedtime was past and that he was sleepy. He said, "What has this to do with the fact that my country will bitterly resent my kidnapping?"

"Listen to me, Dr. Morrison. Understand me. Why should they? We need you, but they can't be certain why. They have no reason to suppose there is anything of value in your neurophysical notions. They must think we are following a false trail and will get nothing out of you, but they can have no objection to getting an American into the miniaturization project. If this American finds out what it is all about, the information will prove valuable to them. - Don't you think they might reason in this fashion, Dr. Morrison?"

"I don't know how they would reason," said Morrison carefully. "It is not a matter of interest to me."

"But you spoke to a Francis Rodano after you left me so suddenly. - You see, we know even that. Would you care to tell me that he did not suggest that you play along with us and go to the Soviet Union in order to find out what you might find out?"