transformed, and that object was taken into Arret with the
Belt.

The recall mechanism functioned by broadcasting a power wave that
again reversed the atomic charge of the Belt and its contained
object back to that of Earth. At the same time the recall wave
exerted an attractive force that drew the atoms back to a central
point in the laboratory, where they were re-materialized upon the
same floor-plate from which they had originally been sent.

* * * * *

The twelve-hour time limit was half up when Benjamin Marlowe and
Larry Powell finally straightened up wearily from their work over
the recall mechanism, their repairs completed. It had been one
o'clock in the afternoon when Joan Marlowe vanished from Earth in
the roseate flare of the projector. It was now nearly seven o'clock.

With nerves tense from anxiety, the two men crossed over to the
control-panel of the recall apparatus. This time they donned goggles
of dark glass to shield their eyes from the blinding green glare.
Marlowe threw the main switch, and the banked tubes came to life in
a flood of vivid emerald light.

Marlowe began stepping the rheostat up gradually to more power,
advancing it with cautious slowness to avoid any chance of a
repetition of the previous accident. The green radiance streaming
from the tubes in every direction began to throb with an electric
force that the two men could feel pulsing through their own bodies.

There was a click as the rheostat struck the last notch. The green
radiance was now a searing flame that half-blinded them even through
the thick dark glass of their protective goggles, while the vibrant
force of the green rays was sweeping through their bodies with a
tingling shock that nearly took their breath away.

Tensely the two men stared at the metal floor-plate in the center of
the area bounded by the flaming green tubes. Just over the plate the
green radiance seemed to be thickening and swirling oddly. The
swirling eddy became a small dense cloud of darker green light. Then
abruptly, like the fade-in on a moving picture screen, from the
cloud over the plate the misty outlines of an object swiftly cleared
and solidified into a bizarre something at whose unfamiliar aspect
both Marlowe and Powell gasped in amazement.

Marlowe snapped the switch off, and the green radiance vanished.
Stripping the dark goggles from their eyes, the two men hurried over
for a closer view of the thing tha