In minutes there was the steady tramping of men marching into the helix which was the entrance to the other world. Each man vanished, only to appear on the other side of here.
Fran turned suddenly to Waldron.
"One question," he said harshly. "Lucy?"
"All right," said Waldron. "She's on the destroyer. Safe. We're getting married right away."
Fran had been pale. He went paler yet.
"You would.... We got the laboratories where her father was. He'll probably get here in an hour or so. Wish Lucy happiness for me. And I mean it!"
He did not smile, but Waldron believed he meant it. He turned and walked into the helix again, between two detachments of sailors.
"Now," said Waldron, to nobody in particular—because Nick Bannerman was feverishly on the way to dictate the story of the "plague" for his newspaper to print—"now to get back to normal!"
It did not take too long. Full realization of the benefits that would come from the doubling—but it would later appear to be much more than doubling—of the space available to the human race did not come for many years. But the affairs of the world went back to normal in a surprisingly short time.
In fact, only the next day the wedding of Steve Waldron and Lucy Blair was interrupted by a conscientious health official who insisted that there was a warrant for the arrest of Waldron, which had never been dismissed and so had to be carried out. It seemed that Waldron was required to be arrested for having violated an order of quarantine, forbidding anybody either to enter or to leave the plague-stricken city of Newark, New Jersey.