"We've destroyed two worlds," Halloway said at last. "Not one. Mars first. We finished up here, then we moved to Terra. And we destroyed Terra as systematically as we did Mars."

"A closed circle," Mason said. "We're back where we started. Back to reap the crop our ancestors sowed. They left Mars this way. Useless. And now we're back here poking around the ruins like ghouls."

"Shut up," Young snapped. He paced angrily back and forth. "I can't believe it."

"We're Martians. Descendants of the original stock that left here. We're back from the colonies. Back home." Mason's voice rose hysterically. "We're home again, where we belong!"

Judde pushed aside the scanner and got to his feet. "No doubt about it. I checked their analysis with our own archeological records. It fits. Their escape world was Terra, six hundred thousand years ago."

"What'll we tell Davidson?" Mason demanded. He giggled wildly. "We've found a perfect place. A word untouched by human hands. Still in the original cellophane wrapper."

Halloway moved to the door of the hut, stood gazing silently out. Judde joined him. "This is catastrophic. We're really stuck. What the hell are you looking at?"

Above them, the cold sky glittered. In the bleak light the barren plains of Mars stretched out, mile after mile of empty, wasted ruin.

"At that," Halloway said. "You know what it reminds me of?"

"A picnic site."

"Broken bottles and tin cans and wadded up plates. After the picnickers have left. Only, the picnickers are back. They're back – and they have to live in the mess they made."

"What'll we tell Davidson?" Mason demanded.

"I've already called him," Young said wearily. "I told him there was a planet, out of the solar system. Someplace we could go. The Martians had a drive."

"A drive." Judde pondered. "Those towers." His lips twisted. "Maybe they did have an outer space drive. Maybe it's worth going on with the translation."

They looked at each other.

"Tell Davidson we're going on," Halloway ordered. "We'll keep on until we find it. We're not staying on this God-forsaken junkyard." His gray eyes glowed. "We'll find it, yet. A virgin world. A world that's unspoiled."

"Unspoiled," Young echoed. "Nobody there ahead of us."

"We'll be the first," Judde muttered avidly.

"It's wrong!" Mason shouted. "Two are enough! Let's not destroy a third world!"

Nobody listened to him. Judde and Young and Halloway gazed up, faces eager, hands clenching and unclenching. As if they were already there. As if they were already holding onto the new world, clutching it with all their strength. Tearing it apart, atom by atom…

Prominent Author

"My husband," said Mary Ellis, "although he is a very prompt man, and hasn't been late to work in twenty-five years, is actually still some place around the house." She sipped at her faintly scented hormone and carbohydrate drink. "As a matter of fact, he won't be leaving for another ten minutes."

"Incredible," said Dorothy Lawrence, who had finished her drink, and now basked in the dermalmist spray that descended over her virtually unclad body from an automatic jet above the couch. "What they won't think of next!"

Mrs Ellis beamed proudly, as if she personally were an employee of Terran Development. "Yes, it is incredible. According to somebody down at the office, the whole history of civilization can be explained in terms of transportation techniques. Of course, I don't know anything about history. That's for Government research people. But from what this man told Henry -"

"Where's my briefcase?" came a fussy voice from the bedroom. "Good Lord, Mary. I know I left it on the clothes-cleaner last night."

"You left it upstairs," Mary replied, raising her voice slightly. "Look in the closet."

"Why would it be in the closet?" Sounds of angry stirring around. "You'd think a man's own briefcase would be safe." Henry Ellis stuck his head into the living-room briefly. "I found it. Hello, Mrs Lawrence."

"Good morning," Dorothy Lawrence replied. "Mary was explaining that you're still here."

"Yes, I'm still here." Ellis straightened his tie, as the mirror revolved slowly around him. "Anything you want me to pick up downtown, honey?"

"No," Mary replied. "Nothing I can think of. I'll vid you at the office if I remember something."

"Is it true," Mrs Lawrence asked, "that as soon as you step into it you're all the way downtown?"

"Well, almost all the way."

"A hundred and sixty miles! It's beyond belief. Why, it takes my husband two and a half hours to get his monojet through the commercial lanes and down at the parking lot then walk all the way up to his office."

"I know," Ellis muttered, grabbing his hat and coat. "Used to take me about that long. But no more." He kissed his wife good-bye. "So long. See you tonight. Nice to have seen you again, Mrs Lawrence."

"Can I – watch?" Mrs Lawrence asked hopefully.

"Watch? Of course, of course." Ellis hurried through the house, out the back door and down the steps into the yard. "Come along!" he shouted impatiently. "I don't want to be late. It's nine-fifty-nine and I have to be at my desk by ten."

Mrs Lawrence hurried eagerly after Ellis. In the backyard stood a big circular hoop that gleamed brightly in the mid-morning sun. Ellis turned some controls at the base. The hoop changed color, from silver to a shimmering red.

"Here I go!" Ellis shouted. He stepped briskly into the hoop. The hoop fluttered about him. There was a faint pop. The glow died.

"Good Heavens!" Mrs Lawrence gasped. "He's gone!"

"He's in downtown N'York," Mary Ellis corrected. "I wish my husband had a Jiffi-scuttler. When they show up on the market commercially maybe I can afford to get him one."

"Oh, they're very handy," Mary Ellis agreed. "He's probably saying hello to the boys right this minute."

Henry Ellis was in a sort of tunnel. All round him a gray, formless tube stretched out in both directions, a sort of hazy sewer-pipe.

Framed in the opening behind him, he could see the faint outline of his own house. His back porch and yard, Mary standing on the steps in her red bra and slacks. Mrs Lawrence beside her in green-checkered shorts. The cedar tree and rows of petunias. A hill. The neat little houses of Cedar Groves, Pennsylvania. And in front of him -

New York City. A wavering glimpse of the busy street-corner in front of his office. The great building itself, a section of concrete and glass and steel. People moving. Skyscrapers. Monojets landing in swarms. Aerial signs. Endless white-collar workers hurrying everywhere, rushing to their offices.

Ellis moved leisurely toward the New York end. He had taken the Jiffi-scuttler often enough to know just exactly how many steps it was. Five steps. Five steps along the wavery gray tunnel and he had gone a hundred and sixty miles. He halted, glancing back. So far he had gone three steps. Ninety-six miles. More than half way.

The fourth dimension was a wonderful thing. Ellis lit his pipe, leaning his briefcase against his trouser-leg and groping in his coat pocket for his tobacco. He still had thirty seconds to get to work. Plenty of time. The pipe-lighter flared and he sucked in expertly. He snapped the lighter shut and restored it to his pocket.

A wonderful thing, all right. The Jiffi-scuttler had already revolutionized society. It was now possible to go anywhere in the world instantly, with no time lapse. And without wading through endless lanes of other monojets, also going places. The transportation problem had been a major headache since the middle of the twentieth century. Every year more families moved from the cities out into the country, adding numbers to the already swollen swarms that choked the roads and jetlanes. But it was all solved now. An infinite number of Jiffi-scuttlers could be set up; there was no interference between them. The Jiffi-scuttler bridged distances non-spacially, through another dimension of some kind (they hadn't explained that part too clearly to him). For a flat thousand credits any Terran family could have Jiffi-scuttler hoops set up, one in the back yard – the other in Berlin, or Bermuda, or San Francisco, or Port Said. Anywhere in the world. Of course, there was one drawback. The hoop had to be anchored in one specific spot. You picked your destination and that was that. But for an office worker, it was perfect. Step in one end, step out the other. Five steps – a hundred and sixty miles. A hundred and sixty miles that had been a two-hour nightmare of grinding gears and sudden jolts, monojets cutting in and out, speeders, reckless flyers, alert cops waiting to pounce, ulcers and bad tempers. It was all over now. All over for him, at least, as an employee of Terran Development, the manufacturer of the Jiffi-scuttler. And soon for everybody, when they were commercially on the market.