"Hurry, Jack!" he said. "Bring the rifles! Youll need those coats." Toh came in. "A report from Boston. A man outside told me-" There were tramping figures about the cabin, lights and figures and voices searching the nearby forest, planes landing on the lake. Confusion.

Our door and two of our window shutters were found burned loose. Marks in the sn~w showed where a struggle had taken place. Long red feathers from Tama's wings lay ill the snow. In the forest were marks where the space-vehicle had rested.

Toh was saying, "Jimmy Turk is reported missing!" Half an hour later came Grenfell's plane. We gathered our belongings, our equipment, and boarded it. The flight down to South Jersey through the glistening, frosty moonlight was like a dream.

The plant of the Bolton Metal Industries was another turmoil of confusion. The Bolton Flying Cube resounded with hasty, last-minute preparations.

From the Mount Wyndam Observatory, near Summit, New Jersey, came constant reports. The night was ideal for observation. The ascending silver ball was still plainly visible with the giant electro-telescope. The ball was swiftly but cautiously mounting. Too rapid a flight would have burned it from atmospheric friction-heat.

By 4 A.M. it was in the rarer, upper strata, a hundred miles up. Then two hundred. Swiftly, steadily accelerating its velocity. Clinging to the shortest, straight-upward path.

And then swinging eastward toward the Sun. Heading for Mercury.

Guy, Toh and I sat together near the doorway of the Cube. It loomed above us, a great fifty-foot sugar lump, with an observatory dome on top like a little conical hat, and the bulging balcony-deck girding its middle. There was nothing we three could do to speed our departure.

Dr. Grenfell came up to us. "Got your personal things all insider "Yes." Grenfell, commander of the expedition, was a middle-aged, thickset man with wide, deep chest and thick, hunched shoulders. He gazed down at us.