ee
days, and to tie it in with our own super-ship. My first thought was
that we'd have to rebuild it iron-free, but Fred showed me my error--you
found it first yourself, of course."

"It wouldn't do any good to make the ship non-ferrous unless you could
so change our blood chemistry that we could get along without
hemoglobin, and that would be quite a feat," Cleveland agreed. "Then,
too, our most vital electrical machinery is built around iron cores. No,
we'll have to develop a screen for those forces--screens, rather, so
powerful that they can't drive anything through them."

"We've been working along those lines ever since you reported," Rodebush
said, "and we're beginning to see light. And in that same connection
it's no wonder that we couldn't handle our super-ship. We had some good
ideas, but they were wrongly applied. However, things look quite
promising now. We have that transformation of iron all worked out in
theory, and as soon as we get a generator going we can straighten out
everything else in short order. And think what that unlimited power
means! All the power we want--power enough even to try out such hitherto
purely theoretical possibilities as the neutralization of gravity, and
even of the inertia of matter!"

"Hold on!" protested Samms. "You certainly can't do _that_! Inertia
is--_must_ be--a basic attribute of matter, and surely cannot be done
away with without destroying the matter itself. Don't start anything
like that. Fred--I don't want to lose you and Lyman, too."

"Don't worry about us, Chief." Rodebush replied with a smile. "If you
will tell me what matter is, fundamentally, I may agree with you ... No?
Well, then, don't be surprised at anything that happens. We are going to
do a lot of things that nobody ever thought of doing before."

Thus for a long time the argument and discussion went on, to be
interrupted by the voice of the secretary.

"Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Samms, but some things have come up that you
will have to handle. Knobos is calling from out near Mars. He has caught
the _Endymion_, and has killed about half her crew doing it. Milton has
finally reported from Venus, after being out of touch for five days. He
trailed the Wintons into Thalleron swamp. They crashed him there, but he
won out and has what he went after. And just now I got a flash from
Fletcher, in the asteroid belt. I think that he has finally traced that
dope line. But Knobos is on now--what do you want him