on't believe it came from the Moon at all."

"You don't? You think it's somebody playing a hoax on Earth? You think
that wiping out of China was just an Earth-joke?"

"No, Sir." Brent stood steady under his superior's sarcasm. "But I was
chief teleradio operator at Greenwich before being promoted to the
Province of America. And what they don't know at Greenwich they don't
know anywhere."

Brent spoke with that self-assurance of the born cockney that even the
centuries had failed to remove, though they had removed the cockney
accent.

"Well, Brent?"

"I was with the chief electrician in the receiving station when
Axelson was radioing last week. And I noticed that the waves of sound
were under a slight Doppler effect. With the immense magnification
necessary for transmitting from the Moon, such deflection might be
construed as a mere fan-like extension. But there was ten times the
magnification one would expect from the Moon; and I calculated that
those sound-waves were shifted somewhere."

"Then what's your theory, Brent?"

"Those sounds come from another planet. Somewhere on the Moon there's
an intercepting and re-transmitting plant. Axelson is deflecting his
rays to give the impression that he's on the Moon, and to lure our
ships there."

"What do you advise?" asked Nat.

"I don't know, Sir."

"Neither do I. Set your course Moonward, and tell Mr. Benson to keep
his eyes peeled."

* * * * *

The Moon Colony, discovered in 1976, when Kramer, of Baltimore, first
proved the practicability of mixing neon with the inert new gas,
leucon, and so conquering gravitation, had proved to be just what it
had been suspected of being--a desiccated, airless desolation.
Nevertheless, within the depths of the craters a certain amount of the
Moon's ancient atmosphere still lingered, sufficient to sustain life
for the queer troglodytes, with enormous lung-boxes, who survived
there, browsing like beasts upon the stunted, aloe-like vegetation.

Half man, half ape, and very much unlike either, these vestiges of a
species on a ruined globe had proved tractable and amenable to
discipline. They had become the laborers of the convict settlement
that had sprung up on the Moon.

Thither all those who had opposed the establishment of the World
Federation, together with all persons convicted for the fourth time of
a felony, had been transported, to superintend the efforts of these
dumb, unhuman Moon