hey do.
If you don't--well, old man, it'll just be too damned bad."

"I don't know that the _Clarion_ hires me to go out and shoot at
invisible invaders from another planet, but if I don't go with you, I
expect you'd just about call up the _Echo_ or the _Gazette_ and ask them
for a gunner."

"Just about."

"In that case, I may as well be sacrificed as anyone else. When do we
start?"

"You old faker!" cried Jim, pounding me on the back. "You wouldn't miss
the trip for anything. If you're ready we'll start right now. Everything
is ready."

"Including the sacrifice," I replied, rising. "All right, Jim, let's go
and get it over with. If we live, I'll have to get back in time to
telephone the story to McQuarrie for the first edition."

I followed Jim out of the laboratory and to a large open space behind
the main building where the infra-red generators with which he had
pierced the hole through the heaviside layer had been located. The
reflectors were still in place, but the bank of generators had been
removed. A gang of men were hard at work erecting a huge parabolic
reflector in the center of the circle, about the periphery of which the
infra-red reflectors were placed. In an open space near the center stood
a Hadley space ship, toward which Jim led the way.

* * * * *

I wondered at the activity and meant to ask what it portended, but in
the excitement of boarding the flyer forgot it. I followed Jim in; he
closed the door and started the air conditioner.

"Here, First Mortgage," he said as he turned from the control board and
faced me, "here are the fluoroscopic screens. They are arranged in a
bank, so that you can keep an eye on all of them readily. Beneath each
telescope is an automatic one-pounder gun with its mount geared to the
telescope and the light, so that the gun bears continually on the point
in space represented by the center of the fluoroscopic screen which
belongs to that light. If we locate anything, turn your beam until the
object is in the exact center of the screen where these two cross-hairs
are. When you have it lined up, push this button and the gun will fire."

"What about reloading?"

"The guns are self-loading. Each one has twenty shells in its magazine
and will fire one shot each time the button is pushed until it is empty.
If you empty one magazine, I can turn the ship so that another gun will
bear. This gives you a total of one hundred and twenty shot