d off the plate. Were his
two friends, those intrepid scientists, alive and triumphant, or had
they gone to lengthen the list of victims of that man-killing
space-ship? Reason told him that they were gone. They _must be_ gone, or
else his ultra-beams--energies of such unthinkable velocity of
propagation that man's most sensitive instruments had never been able
even to estimate it--would have held the ship's transmitter in spite of
any velocity attainable by any matter under any conceivable conditions.
The ship must have been disintegrated as soon as Rodebush released his
forces. And yet, had not the physicist dimly foreseen the possibility of
such an actual velocity--or had he? However, individuals could came and
could go, but Triplanetary went on. Samms squared his shoulders
unconsciously, and slowly, grimly, made his way back to his private
office.

He had scant time to mourn. Scarcely had he seated himself at his desk
when an emergency call came snapping in; a call of such import that his
secretary's usually calm voice trembled as she put it on his plate.

"Commissioner Hinkle is calling, sir," she announced. "Something
terrible is going on again, out toward Orion. Here he is," and there
appeared upon the screen the face of the Commissioner of Public Safety,
the commander of Triplanetary's every armed force--whether of land or of
water, of air or of empty space.

"They've come back, Samms!" the Commissioner rapped out, without
preliminary or greeting. "Four vessels gone--a freighter and a passenger
liner, with her escort of two heavy cruisers. All in Sector M; Dx about
151. I have ordered all traffic out of space for the duration of the
emergency, and since even our warships seem useless, every ship is
making for the nearest dock at maximum. How about that new flyer of
yours--got anything that will do us any good?" No one beyond the
"Hill's" shielding screens knew that the _Boise_ had already been
launched.

"I don't know. We don't even know whether we have a super-ship or not,"
and Samms described briefly the beginning--and very probably the
ending--of the trial flight, concluding: "It looks bad, but if there was
any possible way of handling her, Rodebush and Cleveland did it. All our
tracers are negative yet, so nothing definite has...."

He broke off as a frantic call came in from the Pittsburgh station for
the Commissioner, a call which Samms both heard and saw.

"The city is being attacked!" came the urge