and that was all. He felt a keen disappointment. Somehow
this thin-faced man had communicated to him something of his own
belief, his own earnestness.

"What kind of a laboratory do you call this?" he demanded. But the
other was busy.

In the wall an opening had been closed with a small iron door, with
cement around it. Winslow opened it and reached through. He was
evidently adjusting something.

The little dynamo began to hum. There was a crackling hiss from beyond
the iron doorway. The opening was flooded with a clear blue light.

Then the roar began. It was tremendous, deafening, in the echoing
cave.

"You may look now," said Winslow, and stood aside.

* * * * *

Jerry peered through. There was another cave beyond. In it was a small
metal cylinder, a retort of some kind. The blue light came from a
crooked bulb beyond. The retort itself was white-hot, despite a
stream of water flowing upon it. A cloud of steam drove continuously
out and up through a crevice in the rocks.

The water flowed steadily from some subterranean stream in the
limestone formation. It was diverted for its cooling purposes, but a
portion also flowed continuously into the retort. Jerry's eyes found
this, and he could see nothing else. For, before his eyes, the
impossible was occurring.

The retort was small, a couple of feet in diameter. It had no
discharge pipes, could hold but a few gallons. Yet into it, in a
steady stream, flowed the icy water. Gallons, hundreds of gallons,
flowing and flowing, endlessly, into a reservoir which could never
hold it.

The inventor watched Foster with complacent satisfaction.

"Where does it go?" Jerry asked incredulously.

"Into nothingness," was the reply. "Or nearly that!"

"See?" He held up a flask of pale green liquid. "And this," he added,
exhibiting another that was colorless.

"I have worked here for many months. I have converted thousands of
thousands of gallons of water. It has flowed into that retort, never
to return. I have gathered this, the product, a few drops at a time.

"The protons and the electrons," he explained, "are re-formed. They
are static now, unmoving. Call this what you will--energy or
matter--they are one and the same."

"Still," said Jerry, gropingly, "what has all that to do with the
moon? You said you were going there."

* * * * *

"Yes," agreed the inventor. I am going, and this is the driving fo