d
shown little confidence in the countries of the old world, and he had
sworn Blake to an agreement that his strange liquids--that new form of
matter and substance--should remain with this country.

* * * * *

And swiftly the paper ship grew. The parts were in manufacture, and
arriving at the assembly plant in Ohio. Blake's time was spent there
now, and he caught only snatches of sleep on a cot in his office,
while he worked with the forces of men who succeeded each other to
keep the assembly room going night and day.

There was an enormous hangar that was designed for the assembling of a
giant dirigible; it housed another ship now. Hardly a ship, yet it
began to take form where great girders held the keel that was laid,
and duralumin plates and strong castings were bolted home.

A thousand new problems, and innumerable vexing errors--the "bugs"
that inhere with a new, mechanical job--yet the day came when the ship
was a thing of sleek beauty, and her thousand feet of length enclosed
a maze of latticed struts where ammunition rooms and sleeping
quarters, a chart room and control stations were cleverly interspaced.
And above, where the great shape towered high in the big hangar, were
the lean snouts of cannon, and recesses that held rapid-fire guns and
whole batteries of machine guns for close range.

Rows of great storage batteries were installed, to furnish the first
current for the starting of the ship, till her dynamos that were
driven by the exhaust blast itself could go into action and carry on.
And then--

An armored truck that ground slowly up under heavy guard to deliver
two small flasks of liquid whose tremendous weight must be held in
containers of thick steel, and be hoisted with cranes to their resting
place within the ship. And Captain Blake, with his heart in his throat
through fear of some failure, some slip in their plans--Captain Blake,
of the gaunt, worn frame, and face haggard from sleepless
nights--stood quietly at a control board while the great doors of the
hangar swung open.

* * * * *

At the closing of a switch the current from the batteries flowed
through the two liquids, to go on in conductors of heavy copper to a
generator that was heavy and squat and devoid of moving parts. Within
it were electrodes that were castings of copper, and between them the
miracle of regenerated matter was taking place.

What came to them as