-fashioned anarchist--and not popular. He
dropped out of sight several years ago. I presumed he was dead."

They soon had the new equipment installed and again began exploring
the wave bands, beginning with the comparatively lengthy ones and
working down into those only slightly longer than light. It was
tedious work, but all were by now as adept as Jack in combing the
ether and their task progressed rapidly. Despite the labor, however,
nothing could be heard. There was only the universal, breathless
silence. At times they moved to the commercial bands and tried to pick
up the stations they had heard on the previous day, but even there
they met with failure.

* * * * *

By the evening of the third day they had left the wave bands which
could be measured in meters and were exploring those strange and
almost wholly uncharted depths of the ether which must be calculated
in centimeters. There at last luck favored them. It was Jack who
caught a strange pulsating tone on the three-centimeter band. It rose
and fell, rose and fell, then died away like the keening of a lost
soul.

"Listen," he whispered. "Plug in here. I've found something."

June and the doctor followed his instructions. Delicately fingering
the coils, Baron picked up the sound again, only to lose it. Then it
came once more. This time he followed it as it changed to the five
centimeter band. Back and forth it went as though weaving an intricate
and devilish web.

"What do you make of it?" queried the doctor at last.

"Don't know." Jack bit his lips. "It's no natural phenomenon, I'll
swear. Somebody is manipulating a broadcasting station of terrific
power not far from here and playing with that wave as a helmsman
brings a sailing ship into the wind and lets her pay off again."

"What do we do now?" The little chemist, finding his theory apparently
confirmed, was at a loss. "Could we wreck that station?"

"Fat chance!" The engineer laughed bitterly as he reached for a
cigarette. "Whoever has conceived that bit of hellishness is well
guarded. The three of us wouldn't have a ghost of a show. What I can't
understand is--"

"No use talking about theories now." Manthis sat down, crushed.
Dropping his head in his bands, he pulled his few hairs as though that
might drag out an idea. "What's to be done? Do you realise that we
hold more responsibility than ever man has held before? Caesar!
Napoleon! They were pikers. We have to