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SON OF THE SUN what Launie had not now at last given to it meaning and fullness. The living universe was she. If she could understand atomic function as he now understood it, she was truly his mate and not the mate of Leo. But with this thought Launie seemed to recede from him. She was once more distant, once more strange, once more a ravishing beauty seeking nothing but surface romance. This time Adam was not hurled into a lonesome limbo. Even though Launie was aloof, Saturn, Neptune, Orion, and Lyra were close in spirit with him. They talked small talk and bigger talk, and no talk. The peers were taking in every detail of what Adam said or heard, and his every reaction was recorded in their minds like photography. He knew this though they had not stated it, but he did not object. Indeed, he was grateful, for in his own way he was also recording them in his mind. The music from the wall slowly faded, and Saturn announced they would be leaving. When Adam awakened on the morrow Launie would escort him on short sojourns. He had only one question to ask of the group. It surged within him so strongly he felt it proper to ask. “How is it that I heard Launie and Lyra speak your native tongue into the receiving and sending set? Vega told me I would not hear it during my stay on Andromeda.” “Because,” Lyra spoke up, “you remembered five words which I had spoken sometime ago to a man of earth, and you quoted them to Vega correctly. Thereby you freed us of needing to take extreme care in order to spare you any undue confusion or feeling of inferiority. You have gained nothing and lost nothing. Every second of your trip here was recorded by our Antares, whom you will meet on the morrow.” Lyra’s loveliness reminded him of xr ad 1o4 1 a Vega. Ah, yes, he had another question. “T never saw such loveliness before as when Vega laughed heartily, laughed like a warbling youngster when I asked her why it was that we had not seen the sun, nor even its bright outline. var wierd 1 a» 102 Why did she laugh so?”